Meal Planning Tips to Make Life Easier

"Not another planning lesson!" we hear you say. 

"Because we're professional planners," we say.

Planning isn't just done for businesses; it's done for 'real life' things too! Meal planning is just one of the areas many of us struggle with and I just laughed when I read this: "Planning what's for dinner is yet another thing about being a grown up I don't like."  That's why we've put together a short collection of tips on meal planning.

8 Handy Meal Planning Tips

We need to eat, so planning what to eat should be easy. Hopefully these eight meal planning tips make it easier for you:

1. Write your meals down once a week - it's really easy to do something else if you haven't planned for the thing you wanted to do. The same goes for meals. If you don't write down what you are going to eat, chances are you'll find something far easier (and less healthy) to eat instead.
2. Choose your recipes carefully - what do you have time to cook? Will everyone in the family eat it? Do you have all of the necessary ingredients?
3. Spend time prepping for the week on Sunday - chop and dice veges, portion ingredients and other cooking related activities now to save time later in the week.
4. Spend time looking for new recipes - eating the same things gets boring. Spend time looking for new recipes every week.
5. Keep a meal journal - write down details about each meal you cook and your opinions about it. This can help you with meal inspirations in the future.
6. Think about theme nights - do you want fish every Friday and pasta on Tuesday? Theme nights are easy to remember and more likely will keep you sticking with the plan. 
7. Write a shopping list as you meal plan - make things easier on yourself - take a list with you to the supermarket.
8. Cook double - we've all got days when the best plans fly out the window. Cook double quantities and freeze the extras for instant ready heat meals.

What you plan your meals on is your choice. You could use The Kiwi Planner to record down your planned meals for the week, or a piece of paper stuck to the fridge. The key message is though, plan - plan - plan!