Meal Planning

I love the seasonal wax and wane of meal planning. Summer always seems to arrive right when my regular weekly meal plan hits a rut. Meal planning is really regimented for my family during the school year, but as summer roll in, we get to plan things faster and looser. This makes meal planning more fun — as does all the fresh produce and grilling — but it certainly creates some other challenges too.

A night for pizza and a night for leftovers are always on my meal plan, but there’s one other night that I always include in my meal plan. Sometimes I plan it for a specific night, or other times it is just in my back pocket as Plan B. Every meal plan needs at least one no-brainer meal that can be made quickly with basic ingredients. Mine is breakfast for dinner or, as I like to call it, “BFD.

There are two types of ingredients that bring your meal plan to life: those that are specific to each recipe, and pantry ingredients you find yourself using over and over again. So if you’re ready to make meal planning a bit easier, the answer lies in strategically stocking your pantry. The items you always keep on hand are meal plan power players. They’re the versatile basics that can be worked into a wide range of different meals, and will appear in recipe after recipe.