Monday 30 September 2013

31 days to a menu plan that works: Why should I bother with meal planning?


"Why should I even bother with meal planning? I mean really, it's just another step. Planning to do a thing is always an extra step. Just start doing the thing!"

Ok... but let's say making dinner is like building a deck.

You would never start building the deck without figuring out where to put it, or what materials you want to use, or whether you want a roof on it, or maybe a fancy outdoor fireplace, or that you don't know how to hammer a nail, or own a saw. You would never just go to the store and buy whatever looked pretty and like it could possibly be used in the making of a deck. That would be dumb, and wasteful and expensive!

So let's not do the same thing in our kitchen, deal?

But... you can also easily get stuck in a planning mode. Spending all summer on meticulous architectural drawings of a beautiful deck, but never actually going to pick up the wood or doing any building means.... that you will have missed your opportunity. And still not have a deck.

So we're going to make this menu plan take as little time as possible, ok?

But... what if half way through the building you realize that you have to work all summer and only have about 15 minutes to build the deck each night? Or that you forgot to talk to you family members and they think decks are stupid and like lush green lawns? Or that you forgot your deck would need railings and never planned for those? Or that you might want to invite friends over to enjoy your deck... but you only made it strong enough to hold 2 people?

Yeah.... sometimes we forget to include non-dinner foods in our plan, or allow for guests to have meals with us, or that everyone we are cooking for has specific likes and dislikes. And also that we have limited time and energy for making dinner.

We're going to work on dealing with all of these issues, so that our menu plan will actually help save our sanity.

This menu planning thing has to be helpful. It has to really work for us. And we are going to tame this beast, together, so that it can! Ready?

Are you ready to level up your meal planning? What kind of meal planning do you already do?