A guide to successful meal planning

• Do you need a plan for every day of the week? Or just a few days? For only breakfast, suppers, or lunches, or all of the above?
• Do you need to cater for family and food preferences?
• How much time can you put aside for food prep?
• What are your goals with a meal plan? Healthier eating? Saving money? Preventing food waste? Answering the perpetual question “what’s for dinner?”

Being clear on your intention will help keep you motivated and can guide the choices you make in your plan

• For the plan to work well it needs to work for your whole family and be sustainable. Getting the family involved in the process is a good way to get everyone on board and can also instil good planning and lifestyle habits
• Draw up a schedule of weekly errands, meetings, and commitments to see where you’ll have time to do the shopping and food prep, you can also check who will be home for which meals

• It makes choosing recipes a little easier. Whether it’s chicken, fish, meat, beans/ lentils, or Quorn, knowing your protein will make it easier to choose the starch and/ or vegetables to plan with it

• Start with easy recipes or ones that you know and like. Recipes that make good leftovers are helpful for time saving or if you need to prep for dinners and lunches

• Remember to make a note of quantities, too

• We’re combining all the ingredients from the list in step five. So, where an ingredient shows up in more than one recipe, combine the quantity of that ingredient and add it to your Master ingredients list

• We want to limit the waste and save money! If you already have some tinned tomatoes there’s no need to buy more, unless you don’t have enough as per your Master list…

• Grocery shopping isn’t always the most pleasant chore, so let’s try to make it as easy as possible. Group together all your vegetables and fruits, dairy products, meats, tinned foods, grains and so on

• Having a meal plan can help us avoid buying unnecessary and less-healthy foods. If we have nothing on the list from the sweet’s aisle, we may be less likely to go there!

• If it works for you and for some of your meals, try to do some meal prep the day before a busy day, or at the start of the week: things like washing and chopping the vegetables (and storing in an airtight container in the fridge), dicing the onions or making and freezing dough ahead of time. Some recipes have specific ‘prepare ahead’ tips