Nothing drives me crazier than Tom’s morning question “What are we taking out of the freezer for dinner tonight?” Alas, it’s not as nerve wracking as having to defrost a pound of chicken at the last minute and to not have dinner on the table until 7:30. That always pushes bathtime back and the kids don’t end up in bed until 9:00. Yikes.
So… How have I started to get my dinnertime game together without spending four hours on Sunday meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking? I’ve attempted that, and it just isn’t the right solution for me.
Over the past three months I’ve been testing a 20 minute meal prep approach that’s collaborative and transparent. The best solution for my family satisfies the following requirements:
- Either Tom or I can make the dinner
- No deciding what to eat the day-of
- A dinner that everyone will eat (always tricky)
This approach involves sitting down with all household members and running through a quick series of questions. I like to do this on Friday night so that I can place my grocery order on Saturday and do any *light* prep or cooking on Sunday.
Step One is a quick look back at the prior week.This may sound cheesy, but remember we’re trying to design a weekly meal plan that can be executed by more than just one person. Nobody should be a single point of failure! In order to do this, spend 5 minutes running through and taking notes on the following questions:
- What worked well this past week?
- What didn’t work well?
- What do we want to carry forward?
After you’ve gone through this exercise, take another 5 minutes and think about what you guys would be excited to cook next week. What food is in the refrigerator that has to be used before it goes to waste? Also, what are the “big rocks” in your calendar this upcoming week? It makes no sense to roast a chicken if there’s a 5:30pm baseball game, but it is a great night to heat up everyone’s favorite frozen chicken pot pie.
Lastly, WRITE it out! Stick it on the refrigerator where EVERYONE can see it! That way, you can head off the question “What are we taking out of the freezer for tonight?”
You can find a lot of good meal prep templates Pinterest and on Etsy. Any of them will do. I made my own here. The top portion is the schedule for the week. The bottom segment of the template is for notes on whatever you want to take notes for. I like to refer back to notes when we meet to discuss meal prep. You may want to track ingredients you need to buy in order to complete the meal, any prep you need to do earlier in that day, a link to a recipe on the web, or notes on how well the meal worked out in reality. The whole point here is to be intentional about the weekly meal plan, talk it out with others in your family, and keep the plan posted where everyone can access it.