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The best Time to Meal Plan

The best time to meal plan is now.  It doesn't really matter when "now" is, it's always a great time to meal plan. 

Right now is good because pantries are empty of the treats and snack foods used for Easter. It should be tidy and organised, especially if you did an inventory last week as a part of the Stone Age Challenge. If you need to, do one now, because knowing what you have makes meal planning so much easier, and so much cheaper! 

The aim of a meal plan isn't only to get dinner on the table, but to get dinner on the table within your grocery budget.  

Once you know what ingredients you have in the pantry, ready and waiting to be used, you can start to list the meals you like that use those ingredients. Planning meals that use what you already have, rather than ingredients you need to buy, is going to:
1. save you money
2. save you time
3. cut down on waste.
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Oh, and plan meals you actually like and will eat - I know, commonsense, but often when a meal plan fails it's because:
1. it uses ingredients you don't have
2. it is made up of meals you haven't tried or don't really like. 

So use what you have to make what you like!
Some of our favourite meals are simple, but tasty, and these are the meals that feature on my meal plan (you can download my monthly meal plans all the way back to 2006). They include:
1. Spag bol
2. Lasagne
3. Tuna pasta bake
4. Pasta carbonara
5. Pasta Alfredo
6. Saturday Night Sour Cream Pasta Bake
7. Ricotta Gnocchi
8. Gnocchi in Pumpkin sauce
9. Beef burgers
10. Rissoles
11. Swedish Meatballs
12. Mexican Meatballs
13. Tacos
14. Haystacks
15. Beef pies
16. Cottage (or Shepherd's) Pie
17. French Shepherd's Pie
18. Meat Fritters
19. Sausages in onion gravy
20. Curried Sausages
21. Curried Beef
22. Honey & Ginger Stir-fry Beef
23. Roast beef
24. Hot roast beef sandwiches
25. Vegetable Soup
26. Minestrone Soup
27. Chicken Soup
28. Chicken Burgers
29. Sweet n Sour Chicken
30. Curried chicken
31. Crumbed chicken
32. Roast chicken
33. Stuffed drumsticks
34. Plum chicken skewers
35. Quiche - Vegetable, Tomato & Onion, Salmon
36. Impossible Pie
37. Mexican Impossible Pie
38. Mexican Lasagne
39. Corn fritters
40. Gluten Steaks in Tomato Gravy
41. Sausage rolls
42. Hot Dogs
43. Cream Cheese Patties
44. Tuna Surprise
45. Fish cakes
46. Fish & wedges (or chips or potato gems)
47. Singapore Noodles
48. Toasted Sandwiches
49. Pizza
50. Chicken Parmas
51. Chicken & gravy rolls
52. Aunty Mary's Beef Casserole
53. Quick Rice Patties
54. Lamb (or beef) Kebabs
55. Ribs
56. Chicken Pot Pie
57. Pot Roast
58. Roast Lamb
59. Meatloaf
60. Swiss Steak
61. Tandoori Lamb Chops
62. Tandoori Chicken
63. Lamb Biryani
64. Chilli
65. Corned Beef
66. Corned Beef Pie
67. Beef Stroganoff
68. Nachos
69. Hawaiian Haystacks
70. Sweet & Sour Meatballs
71. Chicken & Dumplings
72. Butter Chicken
73. Curried Chicken
74. Chicken Tetrazzini
75. Apricot Chicken
76. Lemon Chicken
77. BBQ Chicken Quesadillas
78. Honey Mustard Chicken
79. Spanish Rice
80. Zucchini Slice
81. Bubble and Squeak
82. MOO KFC
83. Vego Pasta Bake
84. Grilled Chicken Pesto Pasta
85. Creamy Chicken Sundried Tomato Pasta
86. Fish Pie
87. Salmon Impossible Pie
88. Curried Tuna Slice
89. Chicken Teriyaki
90. Macaroni Cheese
That's 90 of our favourite meals. Three months of dinners, no repeats, so no getting bored with preparing or eating. And they all use basic pantry ingredients, nothing special or extravagant. And they are all quick and easy, some of them are even make ahead meals. All of them could be double-up meals, and that means you cook once for 90 days and get a 90 day break. Meal planning at it's convenient and budget friendly best! (You'll find most of the recipes for these meals in the Recipe Files; any meals that don't have a recipe, like Roast Lamb, don't really need one, the name says it all).


Now you can make your list using meal ideas off mine, or all your own, or a mix of both. Just remember to list meals you like and that will get eaten.


Once you've created your list of meals, you can make your shopping list. Hopefully it won't have too much on it, because you've shopped your pantry first, using the inventory you've done to make sure you really need what's on the list. Before you add something to your shopping list, double check that you don't already have another ingredient that could substitute for what you need. There's no point in doubling up on ingredients that do the same thing.


Lastly, if you are new to meal planning, or have tried it in the past and given up, start off small. Plan a week's worth of dinners. Just dinners - list seven meals and then choose one to make each night. Easy! And if you're smart, you'll double the recipe each night and put a meal in the freezer so you can have a week off cooking (and meal planning!).


Having a meal plan really helps you stick to your grocery budget - try it for a week or two and see for yourself. And then plan for a month, three months and if you're brave, after a while you can plan out a whole year just like I do!