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Meal planning. It’s supposed to be the solution to all your home cooking woes. And I totally get how it works for some people.
I’m very aware that it’s taboo to admit it out loud but here it is.
I don’t meal plan.
I mean sure, if I have someone coming over I might come up with a tentative idea for what I’d like to have, but on a regular basis? No.
I typically decide what I want for dinner an hour or so before dinner time. And yet, I (almost) never end up running to the grocery store last minute to get ingredients.
I’ll be honest, I truly hate the whole ordeal of meal planning! Hate it.
I know everyone in the world is on a meal planning kick. It has been huge for the last several years but I seriously can’t stand it.
I gave it a good(ish) try. Honestly. Well, ok in reality I made it about a week and I was over it. What if my meal plan says I’m supposed to have fish tacos, but I’m just not in the mood for fish?
Or I was supposed to put something in the crock pot but I forgot and now I’m in a bind?
Nope, not a fan. I even got this super cute menu board so that I could display my meal plan on recipe cards! Still hated meal planning.
But wait, if I hate meal planning how on earth do I manage to feed my family a home cooked meal every single day? I have a couple of things that I use, religiously, to make sure that I’m actually able to make meals at home.
Stock your pantry
First, I keep a well-stocked pantry with everything that I need to cook for my family. Basically, I have a list of ingredients that I know I use all the time that I always keep on hand.
These are all my shelf or freezer stable ingredients. So, things like flour, beans, spices, canned and frozen vegetables, and meats.
These are the ingredients that form the core of my meals. They’re also things that I can usually buy in bulk when they’re on sale because they have such a long shelf life.
I used a super simple method to stock up my pantry without blowing my budget, you can read more about that here.
At this point though, all I have to do is restock when I notice that I’m starting to get low on an item or if it’s on an incredible sale. It makes it super easy to grocery shop.
I try to restock well before I completely run out of an item too. This gives me the flexibility to be able to actually take advantage of big sales. Also, because I never let myself run out of the ingredients I can easily skip restocking for a week or more if money is tight.
Supplement with Fresh Produce
The second piece that allows me to easily cook for my family without meal planning or running to the grocery store last minute is to have some fresh produce on hand. Things like tomatoes, onions, limes, carrots, salad mix, and apples.
Now, I don’t keep the same produce on hand all the time, I shop whatever is on sale and I also take into account what everyone is in the mood for.
For example, my husband might request the ingredients for Pico de Gallo, which is a fresh salsa. So I get the tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and lime.
Then I’ll usually end up making a meal that will take advantage of the fact that I have Pico de Gallo in the fridge. This could be enchiladas, fish tacos, beef or pork tacos, or chicken quesadillas.
Or I might chop some of the extra tomato and marinate it in balsamic vinegar with some basil and make Italian food. The biggest tip here is to buy what is on sale and then use it in your meals.
Also, I do try to keep some produce on hand for healthy snacks. Some produce is inexpensive enough to keep on hand almost all the time, for my family I usually have limes, bananas, tomatoes, salad, and apples. Others I buy as treats when they’re on great sales, strawberries are a good example.
Have a Core Recipe Collection
The final thing that I do is I have a core group of recipes that I can easily make from my pantry. These are meals that my family loves and that require no or very little supplementing from the grocery store.
For example one of my core dinner meals is baked chicken, with peas and herbed rice. I can cook the entire meal from my pantry, it takes less than an hour, and it’s delicious!
It’s also one of my go to recipes if someone is coming to dinner that I want to impress (cough, cough, my in-laws, ahem). It’s a crazy inexpensive meal, well under $5 to feed five people, but it doesn’t seem cheap. It seems like a really nice meal, because it is. It just doesn’t cost a lot.
There’s this crazy idea that when you’re eating on a budget, you have to eat cheap tasting food. Beans and rice, rice and beans, everybody’s heard it before. The thing is though, just because you didn’t spend a lot, doesn’t mean your food has to taste cheap or be bland. You can have good meals that are inexpensive and never feel deprived.
Sure rice is cheap, and if you just do plain white rice, it’s boring and you’ll feel like you’re being deprived. But if you take that plain white rice and spice it up or use it as an ingredient it can be absolutely magical!
Spanish rice, herbed rice, fried rice, rice in casseroles or added to soups or make it into a desert and have rice pudding! Yeah, it’s all rice but there’s a huge variety and you’ll never get tired of rice if you use it this way.
The same thing goes for any inexpensive ingredient. Look around and find amazing ways to prepare it and you’ll never eat “cheap food” again.
I find it to be much simpler and easier to cook from my pantry than to sit down and meal plan every week. By maintaining a well-stocked pantry, supplementing with on sale produce, and using a group of core meals I can easily cook yummy dinners at home. Plus I never have to do a lot of advance planning or and I never have to run to the grocery store before starting to cook to pick up specialty ingredients.
Will you try cooking from your pantry and ditch the meal plan? Or are you a die-hard meal planner? Let me know in the comments!
