Tips for Meal Planning for a Family
Busy parents know that meal planning for a family can be a daunting task, so let's share the tips and hacks that work well for us to make this chore a little less painful.
We all have different methods for turning kid-friendly meal ideas into an actual plan. Do you get help from your kids or partner in planning family meals? Do you plan a week of meals at a time or go day by day? Is there a meal planning app or calendar hack that you love?
Chime in below to share your meal planning advice, parents!
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We have a binder of "greatest hits" recipes that we use almost exclusively for our family dinner rotation. My weekly meal planning involves picking recipes from the binder each weekend to meal plan for the week ahead, and I go to the grocery store once. I just have too many new recipe failures to bother wasting my time with trial and error on our busy weeknights. I'd rather cook something tried and true, and my kids would much rather eat something they already know they love. On the rare occasion that I cook something new and the family loves it, it gets printed out and added to the binder.
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My husband and I try to plan 3-4 meals for the coming week before the weekend is out, so we can make a plan for grocery shopping and actually cooking. We often invite the kids to each pick one meal for the week as well - they tend to eat it better when they've been involved in the planning in some way!
