2. Get input from your family. Ask your kids to each suggest a meal for the week, or ask your husband what he would like to eat. If everyone comes up with a meal that means less that you have to think of. And with some input from the family they are more likely to eat what you are making.
3. Only plan 5-6 dinners each week. Leave a night open for delicious leftovers or just call it ToBeDetermined (TBD) and see what you are in the mood for that night. Breakfast for dinner anyone?
4. Try one new recipe a week. Some times when I menu plan I get all excited and plan all sorts of crazy new meals and some weeks it ends up being the old stand-bys all week long. Setting a goal to try just one new recipe a week can expand not just your cooking horizons, but everyone's taste buds without being overwhelming or too ambitious.
5. Take stock of your fridge, pantry and freezer. Look at what you already have and try and use it first. Do you have supplies for a meal that you didn't use last week? What are some of the things in the back of freezer that it is time to get using?
6. Plan with your weekly schedule. If you have a busy day, plan a slow cooker meal or a meal from cook one - eat twice so your dinner preparation is easy. On days when you don't have any afternoon plans make that an evening where you spend some time in the kitchen cooking.
7. Have a theme night. There is nothing wrong with narrowing the focus of your menu planning and having a soup night, taco night or chicken and rice night. It can give you enough room to try variations of family favorites, but also make the decision making process not feel so enormous.
8. Keep your shopping list next to your meal planning list. As you are menu planning write down what you will need to make the recipe. Scan the whole recipe and then if you aren't sure if you have enough of a certain spice or frozen chicken breasts then now is the time to check.
9. Post your menu plan somewhere that you can see it. Having gone to all this work won't do you bit of good if you can't remember what you planned or you don't utilize all your hard work. Post your weekly menu on the fridge, write it on the calender or use something specific to display your weekly menu is a decorative way like a chalkboard or a restaurant menu board.
Menu planning is something that can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. For those of us new to this, now is not the time to organize all our recipes by nutritional value, neither is it the time to begin creating colorful templates and color coded by aisle shopping list. If we want those things, they can come later once we have established good habits and find what is working (and not working) for us. Start simple, get a piece of paper, write the days of the week on it, and then next to each day write your dinner plans.
