Last week we asked our readers for their best tips for meal planning. How do you get dinner on the table, week in and week out, without getting bored? How do you stay energized and engaged with the act of cooking at home? Here are fifteen of our best and most universal tips for learning how to plan your meals.
What Is Meal Planning?
What is meal planning? It's whatever way you organize yourself to cook a meal, whether that's breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It is the plan you make before you shop. Some people plan a month in advance, freezing neatly-labeled packets of soup and stew. Others wing it, shopping for that evening's meal at the farmers' market and picking up whatever looks good to them. Meal planning is a really personal thing. What works for you may not work for me. The goal, I think, is to find a process that is both enjoyable and effective.
One of the things I sensed in our readers' comments is that many of them enjoyed reading through cookbooks, clipping recipes from blogs and websites, and taking some time to anticipate cooking. I think this is an important part of meal planning. Meals aren't just solutions to the problem of needing to eat; making a meal is also an expression of creativity — even if it's just cutting a PB&J sandwich into a new shape. Find ways to inspire yourself and to look forward to cooking. That's the spirit that animates this whole endeavor.
Secondly, I saw that readers were doing whatever worked for them. There's no right way to plan your meals; you should just do what is effective for you. I read over ten ways of gathering and organizing recipes. Your way may be messier and less elegant than you like, but if it works, why worry? Don't spend too much time looking for the most perfect and impeccably-maintained system. The system is just the tool. The point is the meal. Well, really, it's people, and enjoying good food with them and nourishing oneself.
This list of tips is all over the map — there are plenty of ideas here for getting more organized and helping yourself think ahead. Others are to just jog your memory and help you get inspired to dream up meals you'd love to eat.
15 Tips for Meal Planning
- Spend time each week looking for recipes.
This may feel like an indulgence, but just let yourself do it. Browse blogs and websites for recipes that look delicious. Hang out on Tasteologie. Pile up some cookbooks and reach fo the sticky notes. Get inspired!In terms of figuring out what to make we have a list of meals that we love and are easy to cook hanging on our fridge. Those staples make it into the rotation frequently and then I go through my pinterest boards as well as cookbooks and magazines to find 1-2 new recipes to add into the rotation. Our staples list is getting longer and longer. - Shelf81
- Create a place to save recipes, and keep it SIMPLE.
Do whatever works for you. Don't get caught up in a system, just use whatever works best and most easily. Personally, I like Pinterest because it's easy to visually browse what I've saved. (Watch for another post coming soon with a rundown of our readers' favorite places to save recipes.)I use Springpad (kind of like Evernote), to store my recipes. I add them to a Board view, so I can create a visual display of what I'm making when, and with the way they have recipes set up, you can easily add ingredients to a shopping list. - Riddles
- Ask your partner, family, and roommates what they like to eat.
This might sound obvious, but it's easy to get caught up in our weeks and forget to ask our households what they would like to eat. I get extra inspired, too, when I feel like I'm cooking a meal as a gift — trying to please and delight the palate of someone I love.Meal planning can be daunting and to get my husband involved I had to take several steps back by asking simply what foods he liked. I wrote a post on the process. - KMarie
- Check the weather.
Again, you may say, duh, but seriously. Right now, the weather is changeable in many parts of the country. Look at the weather forecast, and try to predict if you're going to be in the mood for soup (or grilled shrimp salad!) on Friday.Maybe this is weird but am i the only one who checks the weather forecast before i meal plan? - Adamwa
- Keep a meal journal.
One of my best inspirations is my own record of things I've cooked in the past. Take a look at what you were cooking a year ago, two years ago. It's a good way to remember things you used to cook, and still love.I use a blank monthly calendar and plan the week's meals on the weekend, basing my grocery list on only those items. I now have a year and a half worth of meals to look back on - especially handy for ideas and to see what we were eating the same time a year ago. - JenniferJulia
- Start a calendar.
Now that you're getting inspired in what to eat, start a calendar of what you'd like to cook over the next few days or few weeks. It can be as organized as a Google Calendar, with notes on each day for that day's menu. Or you can just jot notes to yourself in the corner of your laptop screen. The important thing is to write it down.We have a shared Google calendar and I've created a sub-calendar just for meal-planning. We'll take an evening (after dinner, so our cravings are lessened slightly) and dig through all of our cookbooks and printed recipes for what looks good, putting them on the calendar as we go. - Knitasha
- Go with theme nights (soup night, pasta night, beans).
Some readers found it really helpful to have a theme night each week. Monday is pasta, Tuesday is fish, Wednesday is tacos. This doesn't work for everyone, but it may be especially helpful for those with kids. See if they want to get involved with planning their favorite tacos one week, or suggesting soups for the next month. Keeping the focus narrow will help you and your household make quick recipe decisions.I use general guides like Soup Night, Pasta Night, Beans to make it easier. I use Fresh Direct, and you can store shopping lists in there. I can simply dump the Tomato Soup Week list into my cart and I'll get everything I need for a typical week. - CMCINNYC
- Choose a shopping day and make a shopping list.
A lot of the readers who seemed to have success in meal planning shopped very purposefully. They looked at their recipes and made a shopping list. Some of the meal planning and recipe-saving services let you do this easily, extracting ingredients from the recipes you have saved.I start with a blank index card. I list at least 7 meals that I will be interested in cooking for the next week. Usually this includes a composed salad of some sort, a soup, something with beans, a fish dish, a pasta dish or two, and what we call a "thunder-bowl", which is usually whole grain+greens and veggies+eggs on top. Tonight it's bulger, kale and broccoli, eggs, and maybe a bit of chorizo. The shopping list goes on the reverse of the index card. This goes to the store with me, and the meals are crossed off when eaten. - PAMELA AT CLOCKWORKCROW
- Check what's on sale.
Some folks really like to organize their meals around sales. Is organic chicken a dollar off this week? Or canned chickpeas? Check out your grocery store circular and adjust your meal plan or shopping list a bit.I look online at grocery circulars to see what's on sale for the week and plan meals around that so I can save a little money. Then I go to that grocery store on Sunday to get non perishables and any veg or fruit I'll use within a few days. - Kristen44
- Plan for leftovers.
Most of us have at least some tolerance for leftovers. I regularly cook one or two big healthy casseroles at the beginning of the week and eat off them all week long for lunch. Some people can only eat leftovers for a single night. Either way, try to make your cooking always do double duty. Make a little extra of everything, and if you don't want it right away, freeze it.A big time saver for me (since I live alone) is that I usually make more than one serving for dinner so I have leftovers for lunch the next day (or multiple days). - Peachy44
- Prep food as soon as you get back from the store.
Wash and dry lettuce. Chop onions. Roast vegetables. Brown sausage for pizza. Shred zucchini for quick stir-fries. Stack up glass containers of prepped ingredients in the refrigerator and bask in your own awesome preparedness.I'm trying to get more in the habit of prepping all of the food as soon as we're back from the grocery store (i.e. shredding blocks of cheese if I know we're making tacos, slicing veggies and bagging them, etc), which makes cooking the night of a lot quicker. - Knitasha
- Cook components of your meals.
Going beyond prep, cook components of the meals. For instance, start a batch of tomato sauce while you wash greens and prep squash. The sauce can go on pizza one night, and in lasagna the next. Or roast a chicken right then that you can eat that night and use for sandwiches and pasta the rest of the week.I cook large batches of components on the weekend, then mix-and-match them according to what I'm craving during the week. Grilled chicken thighs, browned ground beef, and blanched veggies like broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower get turned into Italian Saute, Thai curries, stir-fries, and more with the addition of spices and sauces. We call them "Hot Plates." - MELICIOUS11
- Be strategic about freezing.
The freezer is your friend. Actually, it's the friend of future you. Make a double batch of that sauce mentioned above and freeze half for later. Make a double batch of soup, stew, chicken cacciatore, cooked beans — throw it in the freezer. Let a month go by, and those leftovers will look fresh and tasty!Be strategic about freezing dishes and components of dishes. It's surprising how many things can be frozen with good results. (Shredded cheese, citrus zest, peeled ginger, breadcrumbs, cooked beans, etc...) - - APK_101
- Don't overstuff the refrigerator.
It's easy to get overwhelmed when your fridge is over-full. Also, things get hidden in the back, lost behind the mustard. Don't let things go bad. Keep your fridge airy and light, with a sensible, realistic amount of food in it. Keep a list nearby of everything in the fridge, especially leftovers, as a visual reminder of what remains to be eaten.Don't stuff the fridge to the point that you can't see what's in it. I can see how this point wouldn't work for someone who lives a long way from the grocery store, but for many people it is pretty easy to stop at the store on a weekly or semi-weekly basis. Bonus: You'll have fresher ingredients! - APK_101
- Keep a well-stocked pantry.
Meals are easier and quicker to prepare if you keep your pantry well-stocked. Don't run out of olive oil at inconvenient moments. Have spices ready to dress up chicken and beans quickly. Keep a lemon and a sheaf of fresh herbs in the fridge at all times.It helps to have a well-stocked pantry. - JANET @ THE TASTE SPACE
The Whole Meal Planning Process, Start to Finish
I especially liked Concrete_Kid's explanation of the whole process:
As a recent convert to meal planning i'm slightly obsessed, I've saved a huge amount since i've started. Here's the way I do it.
The evening before market day is spent reading through recipe books deciding what to cook for every meal. I take a piece of paper and on the left hand side I write the days of the week, next to this I write what I plan to eat, leaving blank meals I'll be eating out. As I right down each meal on the right hand side I start writing the shopping list, this helps me to not miss that vital ingredient.
Once I've done the shopping I cook enough food to last around 3-4 days (this usually includes a few lunches and breakfasts), freezing any extra portions and generally roasting off lots of veg. I also marinade a few different meats which I then cook on the 3rd or 4th or day or freeze if i don't think I'll have time to cook it or it won't last. I also roast another lot of veg.
Doing it this way means I only cook a couple of days a week but always have something lovely to eat, or something that just needs to be thrown in the oven. It's made things so much easier and also means If I want to cook a fancy desert it's not such a drag as dinner is always pretty much sorted.
All right! What did we miss? What keeps you motivated, inspired, and on track with cooking for yourself during the week?
→ See the whole post here: What Are Your Best Meal Planning Tips?
(Images: Leela Cyd Ross; Chris Perez)
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Meal planning seems time intensive but once you make it a habit you'll be amazed at the savings! Not just time savings but money saved also. No more running for take out or settling for junk food and feeling the guilt. Meal planning makes sense and can be a family affair!
I have vegetable chili in the crock pot waiting for me when I get home. Inspired by this site, I had all the pieces and parts prepped during the week. This morning got the beans that I soaked, added the carrots, onions etc that I chopped yesterday after shopping, chopped tomatoes and peppers out of the garden and turned the thing on. Plus, I know I have cornmeal and I can make polenta to go with! I am awesome and my house guest bows to me.
I would add the caveat of "don't overplan" and allow some room for improvisation. Even the most well-stocked of pantries and fridges will inadvertently run out of staples (or discovered past expiry date.)
I've tried countless meal-planning methods that don't seem to work, so now I'm going to try going back to basics and writing the meals we either already know and love or want to try on index cards. It will only include the non-staple ingredients and not the full recipe, and will be sorted by main ingredient.
Love this post. We just launched a meal planning newsletter that delivers a free meal plan to subscribers every Thursday because we really believe it's the best way to get people to cook more and waste less money and food. Our plans concentrate on doable, practical meals that everyone can make after a long day of work / child-rearing / school. The latest one is here for those that want some more help.
Wonderful tips which are so helpful. I like the meal journal idea. Thanks for sharing these meal-planning tips!
What a great list of tips! My husband and I have gotten a lot better at meal planing lately, and I find I really enjoy it (being the planner that I am). I find that we eat better when we have a plan, I have less unexpected trips to the store, and we eat less take out.
For us, the following works (and I think all of these things were mentioned above):
1) I keep track of my meal plan in a sub-calendar in Google Calendar. This way, I can access my meal plan anywhere, and Google Calendar is searchable so I can easily find recipes I've made in the past. In the "Notes" I include the link to the recipe or what cookbook it came from for reference.
2) We have a set time to go to the store -- each Monday evening after work.
3) I usually come up with 3 or 4 of the meals myself and then ask my husband for things he's craving to help pick the remaining meals.
4) I try to pick things that can be eaten as leftovers later, recipes that use items I have left from the previous week, recipes that are varied (e.g. not pasta every night), etc.
5) We use a cool smart phone app called "Out of Milk" to create our grocery list. You can enter your list either on the computer or on your phone and then access it from your phone at the store. You can also share your grocery list with other people, so I share mine with my husband. There are quite a few benefits with that. We can divide and conquer at the store. He can go to the store without me if needed, and he'll still have access to my list. Or he can add things that he needs (a box of granola that he keeps at work or whatever) that I don't always know to add.
This is very helpful. I missed the original post. The only things I would add are:
Look at your calendar and plan around the whole family's schedule. Soups and stews are good for evenings when no-one will be eating at the same time. The crockpot is great for days when you'll be busy and/or out late. I often think I want to do something special and long-cooking on a Sunday, but I also do my shopping on Sunday and like to go for a short hike Sunday afternoons and really like to feel I've had at least a few minutes of lounging around during the day on Sunday so I have to plan meals that work with that.
Second, meal planning can be really fund with a friend. The mother of one of my daughters' friends and I used to plan our week's menus while waiting for them at ballet lessons. We'd bring cookbooks and share ideas and keep each other on track.
Now that we are back into school mode (we have a 7 year old), our menu planning is very consistent from week to week. For example, (yikes, this is going to sound SO geeky) Monday is the day I do major housecleaning, so dinner is something very simple, most likely something that I had made a double/triple batch of previously and put into the freezer. Thursday I run all my errands (including grocery shopping) and pick my daughter up from her after school classes at 6:00, so it's a crock pot meal (or occasionally takeout). On Wednesday I clean out the fridge and plan the next week's menu, so we have whatever random leftovers are in the fridge (our daughter calls this "smorgasBorg"). Friday is usually the night for having friends over and cooking a new recipe or labor-intensive meal. Saturday night is homemade pizza night, and we make one of our TNT (tried and true) recipes that everyone in the family likes the rest of the time.
I also use the Menu Planner app (by Innovadev) on my iPhone to keep track of what we're having when. It's very easy to use it to shift meals around when something unexpected comes up during the week, and it really helps keep me on track.
I keep a meal journal on a google doc, which I share with my husband. We also keep a doc full of links to recipes that I have broken down by category (soups, curries, veggies, meat, etc). I use one color for recipes we've tried and liked, and one for recipes we haven't. If we tried one and didn't like it, I take the recipe off.
Every Friday I put a breakfast, lunch (I make enough breakfast/lunch for each of us to eat for the week ahead), and generally 4-5 dinners on our meal plan doc. My husband looks over them and we talk about if he'd like something different, yada yada. I look through the meals we've decided on and make our list (sometimes my husband does this instead of me. Love him). Then Saturday morning we wake up early and hit the farmers market and Whole Foods. Sunday afternoon I cook and wrap up breakfast/lunches for the week. It has saved us SO much time AND money, plus I love that we've developed relationships with local farmers.
I like to have at least one meal on the list be our "flex" meal, something made with all freezer/pantry ingredients. I plan on it towards the end of the week. That way, if something comes up, I can easily push the meals back a day and not worry about products going bad.
This method has really worked well for us, and we honestly really have come to love the process! Oh, and we eat really well. Haha.
All these ideas are great! As a young person still figuring out a system for cooking and shopping, I find myself pulled in all different directions - there are a ton of good ideas out there. Honestly, though, I doubt I have the attentiveness required for a meal journal or something super-organized like that. I like my ritual with my computer (I don't have a smart phone), recipe books, and a pencil and paper the day before grocery shopping.
I have a friend that has a "favorites" recipe book, which is essentially a collection of all of her favorite recipes that she hopes will eventually become an heirloom of sorts. It has to be special, though, so it feels a bit more personal and absolves her of the responsibility of hand-copying every recipe she discovers. Enough time passes, and you've got an awesome, hand-written recipe "book" that is filled with family recipes.
If anything, that's probably what I will try. :)
At the beginning of the month my boyfriend and I sit down with our extensive cookbook collection. I pick 12 recipe and he picks 12. That gets us through the month with a little flexibility for take-out, going out, etc. It takes about 30 mintues to plan everything. We shop on Sunday for that week's meals.
I love meal planning. I have a OneNote page with my meals for every week listed. I usually come up with 6 meals to allow for takeaway or spontaneity or eating out. Then I choose one or two meals that will require a full set of ingredients (this week Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's new potatoes, halloumi and asparagus roasted together and the Porotos Granados from his Veg book). I choose a soup or stew (this week the porotos granados but usually bean chilli or a lentil and tomato soup I love) to eat on our two busy nights or to eat one night and then freeze. Another meal will be using up leftovers from last week (this week tostadas) and a few others will be 'cupboard meals' like chickpea curry or risotto that I always have all the ingredients for. Because the ingredients for cupboard meals are things I have anyway, we can have freezer leftovers or something different if we feel like it without wasting food.
Now I come to think about it, it's a bit messy. Makes perfect sense to me though! I should add that my boyfriend couldn't care less about food so I have all the responsibility and choice.
Great suggestions--and I'm reminded that women are awesome.
This is a great post, SO many helpful tips! I'm a planner by nature, and have gotten really into meal-planning the last year or two. One thing I've discovered is how important it is to be flexible--esp. since my husband is much more spontaneous than I am, and also has a much more erratic work schedule. For instance, he just now texted to check if it's OK for him to go meet a former colleague for dinner. Which means my cooking plans for tonight's dinner is getting pushed to tomorrow (and I get to make myself something with tofu, or broccoli, or something else husband-un-friendly : ). I'm learning to be more go-with-the flow! Esp. when he comes home and says, "Let's go out to XYZ restaurant tonight!"--I've realized it's more important to have fun together than to get hung up on my "plan."
I browse through recipes online and in books/magazines by season/month to ensure that I'm choosing recipes using produce that's in season. Starting a vegetable and herb garden has also greatly helped in becoming organised in the kitchen. Choosing meals that incorporate what's in abundance in the garden is QUITE satisfying and leaves one feeling deliciously smug.
Menu Planner and Splash Shopper iPhone apps. The former does a shopping list as well as menu plans, but Splash Shopper allows non-shopping lists (eg films, books, etc). (I am not associated with either of these apps.)
I learned by trial and error to plan for fewer meals than I think I'll need. Like Brooklynnina said, you don't want food to rot in your fridge if you get an invitation to go out, or have extra leftovers, or just lose ambition for cooking and want something from the freezer instead. Planning for 3 meals a week is often plenty, the others seem to work out somehow.
Given a choice I would have my meals planned and shopped for a whole week ahead. However, it doesn't always work that way as some fresh food may start to rot before their turn to be used come. As such, I plan two meals ahead instead. This also means I've to go shopping more than once a week which can sometimes be challenging depending on my work schedule.
I love so many of these tips! I'm surprised that there's not more of a focus on starting with seasonal produce, though. My meal planning starts with a trip to the farmers market or digging through my CSA box. Once I have a pile of gorgeous in-season veggies, it's easy to organize them into meals. Chard + dried chiles = enchiladas! Root vegetables + basil = a roasted vegetable pasta with pesto! Etc. Then I shop for the few additional ingredients I need to make those meals happen.
We tend to plan for four dinners that are "fresh" in a given week (i.e. cooked the day they are eaten), and the other nights we tend to eat from the freezer (which is full of homemade soups and stews) and/or a list of standards (pasta and sauce or herbs and chiles, risotto, polenta, etc.). We have a chalkboard in the kitchen (behind the door to the basement) that lists the meals for the week, as well as the standards, just to remember the range of pantry meals we have.
I'd love to be as organized as many of you are, but I'll comment for the woefully unorganized who try to be better. :)
My husband and I suffer from a constant "eat out inertia," which means if it's not in the house or fairly easy, it's not going to happen. To save money and to be healthier, we've really been trying to improve over the past months, and we've done it by coming up with a few staples that we don't mind eating fairly regularly, and eating variations of those. For example, I make a really big pot of spaghetti sauce and freeze it in quart bags. It only takes a bit to thaw, so that works when I can't think of anything else. We always have corn tortillas on hand, so I make a variety of different types of tacos based on whatever protein I have around. I keep homemade pizza dough in the freezer that only takes overnight to thaw (12 min to cook and is two dinners), so the day before I stick it in the fridge and we throw a quick pizza together. I love whole chickens because they work for pretty much everything (had BBQ chicken pizza last night, will probably have tacos with meat tomorrow).
This meal semi-planning may eventually lead into actual planning, but for now it was just our attempt to go from six nights a week out to one or so. Figured I would share it for those who read the comments and thought "Ahhh! I can never do that!"
Kwoodard, your "unorganization" actually sounds very similar to a lot of my "planning"--and I consider myself a pretty organized person! : ) So I think it's all a matter of your standards, and also your lifestyle. We are definitely prone to "eat out inertia" too. But I know, for instance, that as a childless, dual-income couple living in a city with tons of delicious and convenient eat-out and order-in options on our doorstep we have totally different schedule, financial , and other criteria influencing our "meal planning" than, say, a suburban family with kids and possibly one working and one stay-at-home parent. Different strokes and all that. : )
We just decide which 4-5 dishes we'd like to eat next week (counting leftovers) and go from there... then we can decide what we're in the mood for each night without feeling like we're obligated to eat something on a specific night. Having much of our food come from CSAs helps us to think and eat seasonally, too.
One thing I do is write down favorite recipes by season plus one for seasonless. I consult that season's list at the beginning of the season, and refer to it -- and the seasonless one -- often.
This Summer I DIDN'T look at my list, thinking I had it down, and just a few days ago took a look and was so annoyed at myself: I forgot to make okra pickles! and corn fritters!
Of course those listed aren't the only recipes I make, but it's a start, so I make sure to make allmy real favorites each season.
I find tips like these to be super cumbersome! I have a hard time making decisions :(
What works best for me lately is Emeals - they plan the meals, nutrition, and budget - I shop once a week and cook what they tell me to. It works perfect for me, and I'm trying new and delicious recipes every night!
http://bonnieprojects.blogspot.com/2012/09/dinner-crisis.html
My meal planning is rarely "plan out", depends on things in the fridge, the ability to box it for lunch and my mood (15min cooking, 2 hrs cooking...... "ceral today" kinda moods)
If i do crave a particular dish it involves a shooping trip a day in advance.
these tips are invaluable! I'm totally on board with the concept of planning meals, but often become immobilized when it comes down to turning that blank sheet of paper into a real plan that works. meal-planner's block. since I catch myself thinking "what was that thing I made with ________ that I liked so much?" I see that tracking meal successes would help me out a lot.
I'm so into number 6! I see so many recipes that I pin on pinterest or print and hold on to and then I forget about them. Right now I plan for a week in advance, but I love the idea of planning for the month as well!
Seriously? I haven't done this since i was in dining co-ops in college. While I can't do this in my current circumstances, my happiest times cooking dinner were the periods of my life when I could stop off at markets on the way home for whatever was fresh and caught my fancy, and "big" shopping was about (re-)stocking my pantry to support my creative cookery.
A friend recommended the "6 o'clock scramble" to me. We have been doing it for three weeks and I love it. Recipes are 30-45 minutes, protein and vegetable rich. The entire shopping list is included and compiled for you for the week. You can change recipes any time. I hate cooking and shopping but I have to say this makes all the difference.
@Kwoodard - Homemade pizza dough, and remembering to defrost it the night before is super organised in my book!
I am just a little surprised that no one has addressed 2 issues that have immensely helped my meal planning (granted, they overlap for me). 1) Seasonal Buying and 2) Internet help.
Turning to 1) and 2), I use both Fresh Direct and Eat Your Books pretty obsessively. What I will do is see what Fresh Direct has that is either a) on sale b) classified as good and fresh this week. Using those ingredients, I will search for recipes in Eat Your Books. I usually plan for about 3 nights of home cooking a week, assuming the other nights we will eat leftovers or not eat at home, and I try to keep my cooking under 40 minutes a night. This way it's always a bit of an adventure (tonight I learned how to cook fennel) but it is usually doable to get a new and fresh meal on the table, and my food costs are cut down by eating seasonally fresh food.
These tips are great, thank you for sharing!
I know that not everyone has time to do all of this though... I have just recently started a blog where I post a colorful weekly meal plan that includes five meals every Monday. There is a color-coded easy to use printable shopping list as well. It is all free and I hope it can help home cookes who want to feed their family diverse and healthy meals but lack the time to organize it sometimes. Please check it out at rainbowdelicious.com.
I made a tool for you to generate a random week menu.
No need to say more?
Features
- adding new meals
- search by keyword
- search by labels
- generate a random week
- fully modifiable file and script
- free
http://users.telenet.be/bulevardi/?page=exvb8
Just try it !
I think the best way to make meal planning simple and easy is to plan recipes for the week that use the same ingredients. This reduces food waste and your grocery bill because you won't end up with a bunch of random ingredients in the fridge that have gone bad because each one was only used in 1 recipe. So, for things like herbs and veggies, find multiple recipes that require them! Also, it makes it a lot easier if every dinner recipe is doubled to cover the following day's lunch. You'll always have leftovers which means less planning & cooking!
I started a meal planning for service for busy professionals. We make it super simple for people who are always on the go and don't have time to find recipes and plan their meals. We provide a weekly shopping list and daily recipes that cover dinner and lunch. If you are in need of something that saves you a lot of time and money, check it out!
www.mealime.com!