As a busy mom, I’ve meal-planned on and off for years. The tighter my financial situation the more strictly I adhered to my meal plans out of necessity. After my son was born, when I was barely scraping by, meal planning was the secret to keeping me out of debt while still allowing my family to have a healthy diet.
There are a lot of different ways to go about making a meal plan as a busy mom depending on the time commitment you want to make and how much you enjoy researching recipes and planning in general. Here are my top methods and tips for meal planning:
Ways to Meal Plan for a Busy Mom
Weekly or monthly meal themes
One of my favorite ways to meal plan for busy mom is by choosing a weekly or monthly theme or type of food. For example, next week could be Mexican or Mediterranean week.
Benefits
- Planning a weekly or monthly theme is great for using up ingredients you may not otherwise use. For example, pomegranate molasses, while delicious, can be challenging to use an entire bottle worth if you’re not used to incorporating it into your cooking. If you’re doing a month of Mediterranean recipes it’s much easier to accept the cost of this additional ingredient because you can commit to using it up. A lot of spices can also fit into this way of thinking.
- Themed meal planning is also great for those who want to meal prep a lot of cohesive dishes that can be mixed and matched. When you stick with one flavor profile it’s much easier to throw everything into a wrap or salad and have it all balanced together.
Here’s an example of a week of Mediterranean meals that would make an excellent summer meal plan. I would buy groceries and prep on a sunday afternoon to get my family through the week:
Sauces and Sides to Meal Prep
Zhough – I put this spicy fresh sauce on everything. It’s easy to play with ingredient levels to get the right amount of spice for your tastes.
Tahini Sauce or Tzatziki Sauce – Two of my other favorite sauces that balance the spiciness of the zhough well. The three sauces mentioned here could be drizzled on any of the below recipes to enhance their flavor.
Fresh pita or similar flatbread for making wraps
Roasted seasonal veggies with za’atar, chopped dates, and toasted pine nuts.
Main Dishes
Mujadara – This dish is cheap and freezes great! I make this in extra large batches and then freeze in individual portions for lunch during the week. When freezing, I only freeze the rice, lentils, and onion. The sauce I make fresh and keep in the fridge. I always make extra caramelized onions!
Shakshuka – Eggs poached in tomato sauce and drizzled with good olive oil. If you search for shakshuka recipes you will find abundant options. I like to use premade marinara sauce and serve with toast on nights when I’m tired.
Spanish Tortilla – Once you get it down this is relatively easy to make. The first time can be intimidating though. Make sure to read through the directions before starting. This is one of my favorite things to have on hand during hot summer days. It’s delicious served at room temp with a small side salad and can be used for any meal.
Putting it all together
Breakfast
Eggs topped with zhough, tahini sauce and arugula wrapped in pita or similar flatbread.
I like to use breakfast as an opportunity to use up veggies that may be going bad. I’ll add to this wrap any leftover roasted veggies or pre-made salads that need to be eaten. The sauces tie it all together and it’s a healthy way to start the day. My son likes to have it served as a plate so that he can dip his bread in the egg.
Lunch
Mujadara with zhoug, tahini sauce or tzatziki. If you freeze your mujadara it will reheat well in the microwave.
Dinner
If you can’t tell from the recipes below, I like easy weeknight dinners with minimal dishes.
Falafel – can be eaten in a wrap or as a falafel plate served with greek or israeli style salad.
Shakshuka – eaten by itself or with a side of roasted veggies and fresh, crusty bread.
Baked sweet potato topped with falafel and drizzled with sauces.
Sheet pan chicken dinner – try this recipe or this one!
Spanish Tortilla drizzled with sauces and served with side salad.
To pull off this meal plan I would spend Sunday afternoon making all of the sauce and side dishes. Keep any salad dressings on the side and mix in when you’re ready to serve.
- Make the mujadara on Sunday and store individual portions of it to eat throughout the week (keep the sauces separate until you’re going to eat).
- If you’re doing the Spanish Tortilla this would also be a good dish to make ahead. It lasts for 3 – 4 days in the fridge.
- Prep the falafel, bake and then freeze once cooked.
Some of my family’s other favorite meal plan themes are Mexican food and Japanese food. During the colder months my meal plans typically feature heavier dishes, crockpot classics and more baked goods.
Assigning a dish to each day
Another popular method to meal plan for busy moms is to assign a specific dish to each day of the week. The fresh ingredients might change with the seasons but the core dishes stay the same.
Here’s an example of what this looks like:
Monday – Sheet pan dinner
Tuesday – Tacos
Wednesday – Pasta
Thursday – Leftovers night or a crock pot or casserole dish to use up odds and ends.
Friday – Pizza night
Lunch might be leftovers or something simple like sandwiches.
Benefits
- This meal plan is great in its simplicity. You don’t have to put any energy towards researching recipes or planning week after week.
- You can focus on incorporating fresh, seasonal produce to keep things interesting. During the colder months most of these dishes lend themselves well to frozen produce.
- It’s easy to make this meal plan vegetarian, vegan, or omnivore depending on your preference.
- Dinners like pizza night and taco night are great for making sure picky eaters will be satisfied. They can put as much or as few toppings as they like.
To go a step further you could always meal prep breakfast by baking something or prepping some overnight oats.
Top Tips for Frugal Meal Planning
#1 Designating a time for leftovers
An important way to prevent food waste and save money is to use up leftovers and fresh produce before things expire. One of the number one money wasters is the massive amount of food families throw out.
- Designate a specific week night or daily meal that’s for using up leftovers. I typically eat leftovers for lunch.
- Keep a running list or database (see tip #3 below) of your favorite recipes to use up odds and ends. I find it useful to organize by main ingredient.
#2 Planning downtime or nights off
In our home Friday night is family movie night. It’s my son’s favorite night of the week. We cuddle up on the couch to have dinner while watching a movie. He eats an Annie’s Mac n’Cheese from the freezer every single Friday night. He even puts it in the oven himself!
On Friday nights I’ll either make something simple, heat up leftovers, or treat myself to delivery. Having this planned “night off” from cooking gives me something to look forward to. Usually by Friday the fridge is empty anyway since we do our shopping on the weekends.
Another great tradition I’ve heard of families doing is board game night or make your own pizza night. Whatever your family’s traditions, make sure to incorporate them into your meal plan.
#3 Maintain a database of favorite recipes and food blogs
Keeping a Google or Excel workbook as a database with your favorite recipes is a great way to keep organized. I’ve been maintaining my own recipe database for years this way and have refined it over time.
Categories in my workbook include recipe title, main or unusual ingredients, season (especially helpful for produce based recipes), link to the website where the recipe is from, and notes on whether we liked it and any tweaks I like to make.
It’s important to write down important or unusual ingredients in the designated column because it surfaces key words. For example, if you have leftover dill you want to use up, you could use the keyword search tool to look for the word dill in your spreadsheet. Every recipe that has dill listed in the keyword column will be highlighted. This allows you to quickly run through all your recipes that will help you use up that dill!
In addition to the main recipe tab I’ve created additional tabs to write out my meal plans. Over the years I’ve built up a ton of different meal plans that I can come back to again and again. I’ve also got tabs for menus I’ve made for birthday parties, picnics, and camping trips. It’s great to be able to reuse these menus.
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