Easy Meal Plans

EASY MEAL PLANS FOR FAMILIES

Easy meal plans that are tried & true family favorite recipes and kid-friendly. Use this menu plan to help jump start you for your own planning or follow it day by day and have it all ready for you.

I don't know about you but I love to menu plan! I am one of those weird people that love to scour the Internet, other food blogs, my own site, to find meals for my menu plan. But I don't always have the time for that, which never seems to stop me from doing it :), and I would imagine lots of people don't menu plan because of the time it takes to do it.

I used to post these weekly menu plans when I first started this food blog of mine, back in 2015. I have since gotten rid of them in order to clean up my site a bit and I never really got feedback on them so I assumed no one used them. But I as wrong! As soon as I deleted the weekly menu plans I got so many emails, comments and messages saying that you want them back. So here they are! New & improved and hopefully more helpful for you.

HELPFUL HINTS FOR EASY MEAL PLANNING

Make a list!
- I go to each recipe I want to make and write down the things from that recipe that I need to buy. My kitchen is pretty well stocked with all the essentials for baking, spices, seasonings, etc. So usually the things on my list are fresh produce, meats, and canned ingredients.
- Once you have written down the ingredients you need either make a grocery pick-up order (my favorite!) OR keep it in list form and take it shopping with you to the store.
Schedule dinner for certain nights
- Depending on what your schedule looks like coordinate dinner plans for how busy that particular night is. We have about 3 nights per week that I know I either need dinner to be really quick or I need to put something in the crockpot so it's ready to eat when we are.
Look ahead!
- There will be some nights that you just have to get take-out or hit the drive-thru. No shame in that! I do it more often than I care to admit. I say this because you don't want to buy all your perishable items too far ahead of time, like meats and vegetables.
Print out the recipes
- This is probably my #1 tip for menu planning. Print the recipes out! It seems so simple but it will save you so much time. Do you ever figure out dinner and then when it comes time to make it you're like where is this from? Pinterest. A blog? And then you can't find it. It happens to me all the time. Print the recipe out at the beginning of the week and leave them in your kitchen or pantry. That way you know exactly what the recipe is and it will be right there for you.