Meal Planning Made Simple

One of the principle keys to saving time, is preparedness. When we try to cook dinner without a plan, we are sometimes left scrambling for ideas at the last minute and not always providing a well balanced, nutritious meal for our families. With proper planning, we can ensure meals that we cook together are healthy and that the materials we need for each one are on hand.

Pick Your Meal Planning Method

You know what type of planning will be easiest and best for you. Choose between plans you generate yourself using recipe software, on–line resources that send a list of meals for the week right to your in-box or companies that do the work of planning, preparing and cooking for you.

Recipe Software

Several options exist for meal planning. One option is to make a list of your favourite recipes to cook for the week and to shop for them accordingly. Gone are the days of sifting through recipe boxes and spending time handwriting the ingredients on a sheet of paper. There are a few recipe software products available that will allow you to store your own recipes, do your meal planning for the week and generate the printable grocery list that applies. Of the products I've tried, I think by far, the best is the Cook'n Recipe Software program. If you follow the link you can read about the product features and watch a demo of what the software can do.

On–line Resources

Several on–line resources such as Wovenfare and Wish.ca become your 7 day meal planner by supplying weekly recipes and printable grocery lists right to your inbox. Wovenfare offers a free weekly recipe list that covers meals for six days a week. The site also offers customized, personalized meal plan options for a nominal fee, that would be an excellent option for diabetic meal planning, vegetarians or individuals with specialized diet requirements for other reasons. The meals on the free Wovenfare meal plan are simple and straightforward and include all side dishes and salads to make great meals. Wish.ca’s 20–Minute Supper Club offers a list of four dinner entrees as well as a weekend item (often a salad or something else light and easy). The recipes tend to be slightly more unusual and interesting, and are often true “keepers”. The weekly printable grocery list includes the ingredients for each of the recipes and is broken down by grocery store area. The only down side to Wish is that you often need to supplement side dishes to round out the meals and of course it assumes you will either be eating out or eating leftovers for the other three nights of the week.

Pre–made Meals

Supperworks takes all of the work out of meal planning, grocery shopping, slicing and clean up and do it all for you. In a 2-hour session at one of their locations, you prepare 12 full size entrees that you take home in containers ready for the freezer. When you’re ready to eat, you just re–heat with the cooking instructions they provide for you. This is a great way to stock the freezer for those nights when you just don’t feel like cooking at all.