MEALS PLAN MADE EASY - 15 TIPS

Eating plan? Plan what I'll eat next week? What if I have a taste for the dish on that day? The ingredients not there?

I thought so before. Today, for me, the benefits of a food plan are the most important. With a good plan, I save myself a lot of stress. In the past, I often went home from the university/work home, then went to the supermarket and bought with a growling stomach a pile of things only to find home that XYZ is missing to prepare a particular dish , Then I had to either go shopping or there was - again - spaghetti, with tomato sauce from the glass. A meal plan helps to make meals more varied.Time, money, garbage, all this can be reduced with a good plan.

I began to plan our main meal about three years ago, and during this time we learned a lot from trial and error. For this month, I have set myself to eat healthier again - in my world is simply more fruits and vegetables - and have returned to my old planning and shopping rhythms. Today I would like to share with you how I can manage this.

Get inspired

1. Stir on cookbooks or cookbooks. Take the time to find new ideas. Find new ideas, or remember (similar) recipes that you have not done for a long time. If you like Pinterest, you can be inspired there.
2. Look what you got in the fridge, freezer, kitchens. What would / want you to use, do you spontaneously find a dish that you want to make from these ingredients?
3. Create a recipe index, a collection of your favourite recipes. Collect recipes that you / your family like to eat in one place. Evernote is a way to work offline folders or card features. It was important for me to choose a system - in my case, it was card types. The creation is somewhat more elaborate, but I like to scroll through the cards and take a single recipe into the kitchen. Recipes, which fall into the category "try times", I also store times in Evernote, but the combination of a hot stove, laptop and climbing toddler I save for special occasions.
4. Do a meal diary: In a notebook/calendar, note what you have eaten. This helps me to avoid repetitions, but also to remind me of the dishes I have not done for a long time. I used to keep loose food plans, but it quickly became chaotic. I use a small pocket calendar, but online also works wonderfully.
5. Check the season calendar. What vegetables do you like? Seasonally cooked allows me to buy more directly from the producer at the farm market and less in the supermarket/health food store. This tastes better in the trend and is cheaper.
6. Question Other. Question family or roommate, on which dish they like. A girlfriend of mine has a kind of "food poetry album", a little booklet, which she shares with friends and acquaintances so that they share their favourite recipes with her - so she always gets new suggestions.

Organization is everything

1. Write down what dishes you want to make when. Templates for food plans are plentiful on the net. I use a notebook in which I also collect ideas from the inspirational phase and shopping lists. Digital is again offering Evernote or Google Calendar. Consider your plans for the week when planning - more elaborate or new dishes, for example, on the weekend, not after a long day at the office.
2. Have them engage: For us, there are for example Tuesdays pasta and Fridays soup.This saves me a thought step.
3. Make a list of the ingredients you need. Check your kitchen and storage room, the ingredients you already have, and if necessary, remove them from your shopping list
4. Keep ground foods always ready. Also, check whether basic food is running out soon. How basic food looks is for everyone else - simply those that you often used / which occur in many recipes. Among us, olive oil, butter, and dosage tomatoes, with you perhaps ketchup, nut butter and potatoes.
5. Have a fixed shopping day. Go shopping on a fixed weekday, and never without your shopping list. This compels you to think well about what you need. For me, there is an additional visit to the farms on the market.

Finally: The execution

1. Weaving: Pack food immediately after shopping. If necessary, refill them into glass jars and ensure that you store fresh vegetables and fruit properly. Some people are beginning to snap, weigh and pack into containers at this time; I'm always worried about the vitamins, but that may be complete nonsense.
2. Have a look at your menu plan every evening: Can or should you prepare something?Dried beans soak, remove meat from the freezer compartment, maybe snap something (especially helpful if you have small children). For a relaxed start to the day prepared on this occasion, the breakfast resembles.
3. Cook large portions: Prepare more than you can eat, so you have something to it the next day at noon/evening. Many dishes or elements of the dishes can be frozen; I often cook a larger quantity of pods and freeze them in portions. Additional tip: I fill the portions to the freezing / the next day before the meal. Otherwise, we eat fast too much and have the next day, not a whole portion more there.
4. Prepare yourself for the emergency: exhaustion after a long day in the office, an attached child, or when shopping is forgotten and slept, the plan flies out the window. If pre-cooking / freezing is not your thing, have a few "emergency recipes" in sleeves, which can be conjured up in just a few minutes from basic foods - macaroni and peas, simple vegetable soup etc.

Last but not least: 
Stay calm! Spaghetti with tomato sauce still with us still from time to time, although I never plan. If what's going on, we'll come home late, I or Miss Bee do not feel like cooking or or-or. On occasion, I pick up food from the Aunt-Emma-Shop around the corner. This is life.
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