Meal planning 101: 6 steps to save time, effort and find your food flow

Fourteen years ago, I gave birth to my first child. At the time, I was vegan and for years been preparing most meals at home, paying close attention to nutrients, even before I understood them. I was also on a budget, having been “let go” for being pregnant, I was focused on graduate school prerequisites while pursing my second yoga teacher training. I never thought conceptually about meal planning. Simply, I cooked when I was hungry, went to the store when I needed ingredients and ate out sometimes with my then-husband and friends.

When my baby was ready for solid foods and my own nutrient needs had changed, I needed a plan, one that included meals for a rapidly growing baby and a post-partem mama with foods that were safe and nourishing for both of us. I was busy, tired and overwhelmed, and the internet offered little guidance.

I was given a couple of cookbooks as baby shower gifts. One was an incredibly detailed food-for-babies-bible—it was helpful, yet lacked nutrition knowledge and was too OCD for sleep-deprived me. The other, written by a nutrition professor, suggestions purees for 6-, 9- and 12-month-old babies using ingredients from adult recipes—but purees didn’t feel right, either.

Besides craving practical meal planning advice, I was also struggling emotionally—not with post-partem depression, but with grief. My older sister had just passed away from a rare and aggressive ovarian cancer. Alive and well, I vowed to do everything possible to ensure my son’s optimal vitality—and my own—to the best of my ability. Even before grad school, I knew our contaminated, modern world was a problem for our endocrine systems—our hormones. So, for me, meal planning started with both motherhood and a mission to ensure we were nourished with uncontaminated foods raised as naturally as possible.

Intentionally feeding whole, seasonal foods to my son, I prepared beets and winter squash with homemade veggie stock; sweet potatoes and red lentils whipped with breastmilk; spiced applesauce and plum preserves; pureed cauliflower with yogurt; poached salmon with goat cheese; avocado with minced herbs spices. These mini meals took time, so I thought ahead and batch cooked, chopping veggies for multiple days of meals and making big batches with ample leftovers. I embellished the meals for my nutrient needs, but mostly we ate the same foods.

Over time, meal planning became as natural as breastfeeding and washing diapers. To me, food is sacred, so preparing high-quality, well-balanced meals for my family became sacramental. The very act of preparing food felt holy. I finally understood the meaning of “holistic.”

I do not preach meal planning with such benediction. Rather, over the years and after giving birth to a second child and becoming even busier, I’ve converted to practicality, while maintaining (most of) my vows regarding food quality.

Currently, with a teenager almost as tall as me and an equally blossoming tween sister, I’ve got meal planning down to a science. Naturally—because thirteen and a half years is a long time to experiment with systems until they work! In my home, our meals still are made from scratch for the same reasons: I’m on a tight budget, organically grown ingredients are more affordable than eating out and consuming reduced quality food, and I can ensure no unnecessary additives or contaminants—again, to the best of my ability.

I do not, however, expect my clients to do the same, though similar meal planning principles apply to everyone—we all eat!

Whether you enjoy cooking or have never cooked a meal from scratch, prefer to eat out or have little time to make food at home, meal planning will save you much frustration, time, money and stress. Like all worthy endeavors, meal planning has a learning curve and takes practice. Unless your parents taught you well, it’s likely not a skill learned in schools. As you embark on this journey of your own, I’ll offer a few words of wisdom – but don’t take these suggestions as gospel! I’m simply your meal planning messenger.

Start with what you know. Recipes. Your schedule, kitchen skills, cookware, finances. Your own dietary needs (don’t neglect them) and your family’s dietary needs, too. You love/loathe cooking. You like leftovers for lunch, but kids don’t. Breakfasts must be quick. Kids eat certain lunches at school. As the week progresses, there is less time to make and eat meals together.

Identify what’s already working. You eat out twice a week for meetings and prioritize date-nights. Take-out dinners are easy on nights when sports go late. Saturdays you clean out the fridge. One-pot and one-pan meals are great for batch cooking. Pizza nights, weekend pancakes and Sunday brunch are still a hit.

Note factors that challenge meals. Someone is a vegetarian, eats Paleo, is fasting, has allergies, has a strict diet for medical reasons, is an athlete with increased needs. Toddler is becoming particular about tastes, texture. Teenagers are never home and always hungry. Mom gets home late on weekdays.

Keep it simple. Make the same types of meals often. Taco Tuesday. Indian food. Noodle night. Buddha bowls. Soups. Salads. Frittata using leftovers. Overnight oats. Identify meals by cuisine or culture, day of the week, and based on what you know what’s working, and what’s tough.

Create a meal template. Choose 4-7 breakfasts, 4-7 lunches and 4-7 dinners to eat on repeat (depending on your leftover preferences). Choose 4-7 well-balanced, easy, go-to snacks, ideally minimally processed. Plug the meals into the days of the week.

Change ingredients with the seasons. Using the meals from your template, mix up the ingredients based on the season, holiday and other occasions. Then, tacos range from ground beef and peppers; black beans and sweet potato; fish and avocado; tofu and cabbage. With morning yogurt, swap granola for nut butter or nuts/seeds, fresh strawberries for cherry compote.

Be flexible and creative. Change taco night to elk steak fajitas or chicken posole tortilla soup. With more time, create bigger batch laborious meals like enchiladas, with ingredients made ahead of time so assembly is easy. Freeze leftovers to thaw for camping or busy work weeks.

Originally written for and published by 5BGazette.com