Meal planning can be extremely difficult for many moms, because it involves a high level of decision-making, prioritization, and time management. Over the years, I have found a meal planning groove that allows me to focus on specific meal-planning values that work well for me and my family.
STEP ONE: Ask yourself: Am I making a piano? A common phrase among carpenters when they make a mistake is, “It ain’t a grand piano” (Emmett). Or put more simply, sometimes the grandest, most perfect destination for our efforts is not really the best goal. I didn’t realize it at first, but when I first started meal planning, I would easily fall into grand-piano-meal mode. It was not because I wanted to impress other people. It was because I would get distracted and confused. I didn’t know what my top priorities were, so I would fall into pursuing all of the good priorities I could think of all at once. But I found out that it’s impossible for a novice cook to make completely homemade, gourmet, healthy meals that cost less than five dollars and take less than 30 minutes. Who knew?
For me, the first step to consistent cooking success was to come to terms with the fact that I do not need my meals to be piano quality. Creating a gourmet dish is not my top priority. In fact, when I succeed in making meals that are forgettable and routine, it is now something to celebrate. Piano-quality meals are expensive, and they simply aren’t the priority for me and my family right now.
STEP TWO: Ask yourself: Since you are not building a piano, what are you building? I love Stephen Covey’s concept that you should “begin with the end in mind.” At the end of this week, what kind of meal experience do you most want to have built for your family? Every mother brings a unique set of values, circumstances, challenges, and talents to her cooking.
Given the unique circumstances of my family and my cooking talents, I have decided that my end goal of each week for the foreseeable future is to consistently have food on the table at home that is less expensive, healthier, more varied, and more homemade than fast-food, which is often what we end up eating when dinner does not get done. When I get confused and distracted over meal planning, this end goal of “better than fast food” is the shining star that helps me make the decisions and take the actions needed to actually have food on the table without spending inordinate amounts of time doing it.
Let’s say I decide to make a side of green beans with my meal. First of all, bravo to me! No matter how I prepare the green beans they will likely be healthier and cheaper than the french fries that my family would be eating at McDonald’s. My options range from the lowest time investment of opening a can of green beans and heating it in the microwave to the grand-piano investment of growing the green beans in the organic garden in my backyard. My top values for my family at this point are consistency, cost, low time-investment, and nutrition. With these four values in mind, I typically choose to buy fresh green beans from the non-organic produce section at the grocery store, which I then stir fry at home.
Now it’s time to get started:
- Reorder the following values from most important to you to least important to you: cost, time investment, nutrition, and consistency
- Ask yourself what skills, interests, and strengths you have that can help you focus on the areas that you value the most.
- Think about what challenges, weaknesses, or inexperience you might have to overcome in order to honor the three areas that you value the most.
Here’s an example: If your highest meal-planning value is to keep the cost low, what money saving methods are you naturally good at? Start by consistently practicing the money saving strategies you are naturally good at and put the rest to the side.
- Are you good at finding bargains?
- Are you good at collecting and remembering to use coupons?
- Are you good at buying off-brand ingredients?
- Are you good at using ingredients you already have?
- Are you good at not going out to eat?
- Are you good at eating inexpensive foods? (beans, rice, potatoes)
- Are you good at cooking and eating in bulk?
Last but not least, remember that learning to meal plan and cook is a process of gaining new skills one at a time. The more skills you obtain, the more able you will be to honor several values at once. The key is to allow yourself to slowly increase how many values you honor with your cooking while not getting distracted by the ideal. Several meals that honor a few core values are way better than the perfect, imaginary grand-piano meal that never makes it out of your head and onto the table.
QUESTION: What are your favorite meal-planning methods and how do they help you achieve your highest priority meal-planning values?
CHALLENGE: Use your top meal-planning value from the article and list a few ways to refocus your meal-planning efforts for the coming week.
Edited by: Katie Carter and Amanda Lewis.
Image from Shutterstock with graphics by Julie Finlayson.
April Perry says
Such GREAT thoughts here, Ellen! I love how you’ve approached this in such a deliberate way. Totally takes the stress away. 🙂
Thank you!!
Ellen Peeples says
Thank you April!
Stacy46 says
ELLEN,
Thank you for this post I love how you Honor Your strengths and work with them I;ve been looking into http://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/flying-lessons/control-journal/step-8/
next months Habit is Meal Planning so it’s coming up soon! This is perfect timing and I was also listening to Jordan Page(www.funcheaporfree.com) her M.E.C.C.A on Atly with Liz Edmonds who is amazing and really got me going on 1 canned veg 1 raw veg and one fresh cooked/steamed veg with dinner and Bread at every meal she makes 2 french loafs in 45 min like they do in Italy!
I like to use my CSA and My local Farmers market for organic and inexpensive fruits and veggies. I am learning more about couponing and price matching from Jordan Page.
This is such great FOOD for THOUGHT …now just set my timer for 15 mins to reflect and plan!!!
Thank you
warmly
Stacy Harris and the rest of the Harris6family
Somewhere over the rainbow is Right Here Right NOW!
Ellen Peeples says
Stacy, I’m so glad my post was helpful to you. Are you talking about Liz…like the Food Nanny….Liz? If yes, I love her stuff too! I received a signed Food Nanny cookbook as a wedding gift. Her sweet optimism has definitely helped me stay positive through some tough cooking days. Thank you for those other support resources. Even at this very moment, I am working to prioritize which would serve me the best, because they all sound so great! 🙂 Ellen
Lindsay says
YESSSS. A million high fives and a giant yes. Seriously. This is my life. Trying and failing to meal plan. I love these ideas in this post. It has already helped me so much and given me so much clarity. Everyday, for every meal, I have felt like I have to make a homemade, healthy meal that costs $2 per person. I LOVE the idea of ordering my food values to determine what is important to me. I always thought I had to do it all!! I am finally understanding what my husband has said for so long….whenever I would make dinner, I would apologize about this and that of the meal, when his words were, “You made dinner. It’s awesome.” Love love love these posts!! Thank you!!
Ellen Peeples says
Yay! Thank you so much for sharing! It truly warms my soul to read your comment. All the best to you in your continued efforts to do the awesome work of getting those meals on the table!
emilypondricks says
Love this! And thanks for the validation of why meal planning is difficult–because it involves so much decision-making and prioritizing! It is one of my most difficult (read: dreaded) weekly chores because there are so many possible priorities to have and they are all in competition with each other. I have found some success in planning by the day of the week, and having different priorities for each day, based on our schedule. Thursdays, when I teach music after school, my priority is that the meal is something I can make ahead of time and then get on the table in 5 minutes. On Tuesdays it has to be something with minimal clean up since we have activities in lots of directions that start at 7. Sundays, the priority is for the meal to be delicious and suitable for nice dishes and polite conversation around the table. Plugging the meals into each day of the week, based on the criteria for that day, helps me not to swim so much in all of the competing priorities at stake.
At the end of the day, I’m going to remember: It’s better than fast food, as long as I get something on the table!! Love it!
Ellen Peeples says
What a great idea to notice the patterns in how priorities shift from day to day and to plan meals accordingly. I’ve definitely used that technique in the past without realizing it. Thanks for describing this strategy so clearly. I will definitely be using it more intentionally in the future. For example, on Friday nights my husband and I almost always have an especially difficult time not eating out, because we are craving a dinner that is fun and feels like the weekend (I know…1st world problem). I think it’s about time I embraced this pattern when meal planning by making “fun food” (homemade pizza, grilled meats, etc.) more of a priority for Friday evenings. Thanks again!
Jamieb says
I liked this post a lot. I’ve struggled with trying to make meal plans in advance, but this week I did it for the first time! (Successfully). I want to budget better on food and my grocery store had a list of “savings for next week”, so I picked one up and I’m going to do next week’s meal based on what deals they will have. Another goal I’ve made, is to make one big crockpot meal a week and freeze the leftovers in smaller portions. I do the prep work during my son’s nap, and I’m saving home made freezer meals for quicker meals instead of buying either junk food or just more expensive meals that are ready to go. But I really liked this post in reminding myself to prioritize and figure out how to use my strengths.
Ellen Peeples says
Congratulations Jamie with your successful meal plan! I hope things went well with your freezer meal goal. I like to think of a freezer meal as a gift from my past self to my future self. It can be pretty awesome!
Lindsey says
So true and incredibly well-put!
Ellen Peeples says
Thank you! 🙂
danielle says
Thank you this was very timely for me and I appreciate the reminder about the overall point of feeding our family. 🙂 I get distracted by so many options as well and sometimes it is exhausting and frustrating but this reminds me that it doesn’t have to be. I also loved the reminder to find our strengths and use those to help us. Sometimes I hear others great ideas and think they have to happen in my home, but this was a good lesson to me that I can appreciate how/what others do, but ultimately I need to make things work for me and my family. 🙂 Thank you again!
Ellen Peeples says
I love your point about sincerely appreciating what others do without having to make it happen in your home. It’s so positive and liberating to keep that perspective.
Megan says
Terrific article! Such great tips for all of us. I love this new perspective on meal planning and will definitely be evaluating my top meal-planning values when I do our plan this week. Thank you! I love the way this article gives me more opportunities to celebrate my dinner successes rather than dwelling on the previously-perceived failures.
Ellen Peeples says
Thanks Megan! I’m so glad it was helpful for you!