The New Year is a time of Fresh Starts. Most goals, resolutions, and/or fresh starts involve what and how we eat in some way or another. Planning makes the day-to-day easier. You can move on autopilot with a meal plan. You can spend more time connecting with your spouse when you aren’t trying to figure out what’s for dinner?
Do you plan for your everyday meals with as much care as you do the special occasions?
Among any family, there are dishes that are “musts” and others that are expected though nobody remembers who likes them. The food we eat and the shared time overlap in memories. Even our daily meals can be a source of memory making. Are we eating just to fuel our bodies or are memories made? Connections strengthened?
All good plans begin with taking stock of what you have.
Take an inventory of what food and ingredients you have on hand. Look at your pantry/cupboards as well as refrigerator(s) and freezer(s). Note not only that you have a lot of green beans, but whether these are frozen or canned. When you replace these, what will you replace them with? Frozen? Home-grown, self- canned? Note this so you can plan to keep on hand the things your family loves and uses the most.
The Next Step is Matching Recipes to the Ingredients
Come up with meals utilizing these ingredients. You will likely find some that can be made ahead or are quick to prepare. Plan these for evenings you short on time due to activities. Others that take more time should be planned for weekends or other days when more time is available. We have a rotating three-week menu plan. Our shopping list each week looks similar because we cook with similar ingredients from week to week. This makes it easy to have needed things on hand. We switch up the meals on the rotation with the seasons. This keeps us from getting bored and saves money as we eat what is in season.
Organize to utilize
Only you can decide what means of organizing is going to work best for your family and your home. Will your children have a night they cook? You may want to organize so that all the ingredients for that meal are together in one bin that brings it all to the kitchen. Complete with the printed recipe for reference.
Maybe you prefer to keep ingredients that serve similar purposes together. This means your herbs/seasonings are kept together. Shelf-stable protein options are kept together. Making it easy to get what you need for the upcoming meal you are preparing.
Keeping ingredients organized logically for use, labeled clearly, and stored in clear containers lets you keep track of how much you have. This lets you see at a glance when it is time to re-stock.
If you want your everyday meals to be remembered fondly, you must plan well. This doesn’t mean elaborate dinners or expensive ingredients. Make things easy on the cook and the pocketbook. Planning and being organized will accomplish this.
Keeping your pantry organized is a lifesaver when it comes to implementing that carefully curated meal plan. That busy-night dinner plan falls apart when you have to pull everything out of the pantry to find the key ingredient. Take some time to put things in order now so that the coming weeks are easier in terms of getting dinner on the table.