Please welcome my guest today, Rachel from KitchenCourses.com.
So many of us menu plan in one way or another. Either on a big board in the kitchen, using some sort of online tool, or good old fashioned pen and paper. We write down the meals we’d like to feed our families for the week, then create our shopping list to guide us through the store.
When you stop to think about it, you’ll realize that we’re often doing quite a bit of backwards thinking. What do I want to eat? And what ingredients do I need to create that meal?
Instead of thinking about our meals in a backwards fashion (working from the final product to the beginning) maybe we should work forward every once in a while. This method makes menu planning simpler by controlling how many ingredients are on your shopping list, and by keeping track of how many of those ingredients are on sale. This can also help to keep food costs quite low.
Here are the exact steps I take when forward-thinking my menu plan:
1. Determine the ingredients you want to include for the week
You can use as many or as few as you’d like. Look through the weekly store ads and see if anything enticing is on sale. Or consult your pantry and figure out the ingredients you already have on hand that need to be used up. Create a list of ingredients you want to use this week.
2. Get creative with the listed ingredients
Start thinking of ways you can use each ingredient as the star of a meal or consider ways you can use them in their simplest form, without a lot of added energy or effort on your part. Have some broccoli, eggs, beans, chicken, whole-wheat pasta, and parmesan cheese on your list? Make a soup out of the broccoli, the eggs into a frittata, and the beans can be the key ingredient in a stew. Do your best to keep to your original list and get creative with it.
3. Create your plan
Start filling in your menu plan with the meals you have just thought of. From this list of six ingredients, I can easily come up with a whole slew of meal ideas, a few of which are: broccoli & pasta frittata with parmesan cheese, bean & broccoli soup, baked chicken with broccoli & beans, and parmesan-crusted chicken over white bean mash or whole-wheat noodles.
By forcing ourselves to think in a forward way, we can challenge not only the way we approach menu planning, but also we can start to boost our creativity when it comes to thinking about ingredients and meals. There are so many meals that you can create from a minimal amount of ingredients once you start to reframe your mindset on how you approach menu planning. I hope that you’ll take this method and try it out for yourself to see just how simple it can be.
Note from Laura: many of the recipe sites listed on my resources page have a recipe search feature where you can enter in the ingredients you have on hand and they will provide a list of matching recipe links.
Rachael is the blogger behind KitchenCourses.com and is the author of How to Cook For Yourself: A Complete Beginner’s Guide. She writes about her passion for food, eating well while saving money, and inspires people to get familiar with their kitchens and cook for themselves.
Damsel says
One of the best benefits to meal-planning by “forward thinking” is that you’ll be using the freshest, in-season produce. Since moving to Italy, I’ve had to learn how to do this, since it’s how the Italians shop at their street markets. There are no circulars or ads for what’s on sale! I’ve learned to really enjoy walking through the produce and fish markets, seeing what’s fresh off the farm or out of the ocean, and then making recipes from all of it when I get home.
Additionally, I find myself being able to use up what I already have in the pantry/freezer when I plan this way.
On the whole, I think it’s much more frugal and beneficial to plan ahead like this, and it gets easier over time!
Rachael from KitchenCourses.com says
Wow, I’m jealous, Damsel! I would love to meal plan perusing markets! 🙂
I definitely agree with you that it gets easier over time. When first starting, it can seem difficult to think of different ways to use up an ingredient. But the more you start thinking about ingredients in different forms, say as a component of a main dish, or standing a lone as a side dish, you can really discover the many ways you can use just one item from your pantry or refrigerator.
Damsel says
It’s definitely an adventure, but can be frustrating, too. We’ve only been here a few months… and I truly don’t know what to expect when I go to the market. Maybe they’ll have those wonderful things I bought last week! And maybe they won’t! It has really boosted my confidence in the kitchen, as well as my flexibility.
The same thing can be accomplished with a CSA box – my sister has been getting one each week in Minnesota this year for the first time, and it’s fun to talk with her about what’s in season there and what she’s making, vs what’s in season here and what I’m making.
Rachael from KitchenCourses.com says
I haven’t yet taken the plunge in getting involved with a CSA, although it’s definitely something that I’ve been thinking about for the past year or so. That’s a great idea for keeping home cooks on their toes though for sure! Maybe I’ll add that to my Christmas list instead of clothes or other things I don’t need- haha! 😉
Living the Balanced Life says
My daughter and her 6 kids (who she likes to involve in the kitchen) loved this summer getting their CSA box and seeing what they could make out of it. It was an adventure to them!
Bernice
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Write On, Jana! says
I’ve never been able to stick to a formal meal plan because our tastes, schedules and needs change on a daily basis. But, after reading this post, I recognized some key “planning” tools I use instinctively. I always have meat, cooked beans separated in baggies and veggies in the freezer and whole grains in the cupboard. From there, I determine how to best use the fresh produce we have available. We do get creative at times, but we never waste food!
Rachael from KitchenCourses.com says
That’s great that you’ve been able to figure out a way that meal planning can work for your schedule! This is actually a really good way to think about meal planning in my opinion – setting an intention to make meals at home, buying the food, then making sure you eat well and don’t waste anything purchased. And I love that you’re willing to improvise your meals even if you don’t have a plan – awesome!
Jen says
Great post! Menu planning can make life so much easier, no matter how you do it. In our house, we also have frequent changes to our schedule but I still needed to find a way to do meal planning to bring some sort of order to our evenings. What works for us is a list of every meal we can make from ingredients we currently have on hand, either from sale items that week or from our well-stocked pantry. There is always a good mix of simple meals, crockpot meals, made-ahead frozen dinners, as well as more traditional dinners for nights when we are all home and I have the time to spend cooking. We try to use up the meals that have fresh ingredients first whenever possible and frequently freeze what we don’t get to.
Erin @ Small and Simple Things says
I learned menu planning this way – thinking about what was on sale and what was already in the house to put together meals. It’s really helpful especially when trying to follow a tight budget.
junebug69 says
Thank you for this post! I feel vindicated and much less guilty. I have tried the “typical” meal planning by choosing the meal and then buying the ingredients but I somehow always failed. I remember my folks (who both cooked) never planned ahead. They bought ingredients and then created a meal from them. This way just feels more natural to me!
Rachael from KitchenCourses.com says
I’m glad you liked it! I think meal planning is just like anything else.. when you have it “down,” it seems really easy, but it’s also easy to get stuck in a rut. This is just another way to think about getting good meals on the table without having to be formal about it. Sometimes it’s nice to change things up a bit too, whether it seems to be second nature or not. Good luck!