Categories: Parenting

Finally A Foolproof Meal Planning System for Busy Parents

“Jenny, get the cheese. Joey, find the pizza sauce. Let’s go!” Elena’s head pounded as she attempted to get dinner on the table.

Dad used all the sauce Monday night when you worked late,” Joey revealed. Jenny was already lining up slices of American cheese on three split English muffins.

Boot camp for kids? No, this is a typical Wednesday for Elena and her kids, 10-year-old Joey and his sister, Jenny, 8. It will end the same way most Wednesdays at their house do with a trip to the drive-thru for fast food.

Whether you call it dinner or supper, 37-year-old Elena is in a big bind. She’s been home just long enough to throw her coat on a chair and wonder what on earth to feed her kids. She has exactly 23 minutes to get a meal on the table and get them back into the car for Jenny’s piano lesson. Hubby Steve, the pizza sauce culprit, will be at work for another hour.

Sound familiar? You don’t have to hold a job outside the home to experience migraine-level frustration at meal planning. In an era of fast food mania, the failure to plan a family’s meals has become an epidemic.

According to the National Restaurant Association, more than 47 percent of the money Americans spent on food in 2005 went for fast food. That’s $476 billion of burgers and fries.

Not so many years ago, I was a single mom, working two jobs. When my daughter and I hit a fast food restaurant for the third time in one week, I had finally had enough. A friend who loved to cook told me about her meal planning system. One of her relatives had mentioned it to her some years earlier. I t sounded so simple, I thought it was ridiculous. She claimed it was Ethel Kennedy’s way of managing meals with a gaggle of relatives traipsing in and out of her home each night. It takes only 15 to 20 minutes as week. And it works.

All you need is a set of 3″ x 5″ index cards, a pen, and a sense of what you want to serve your family. For some, this will be a full-course meal with a salad, entrée, and perhaps even dessert. For others, it will be sloppy joes and a glass of milk.

The Plan, as we came to call it, is pretty straightforward. It’s based on a rotating set of meals. For most families, it’s easiest to start with a 14-day rotation, dinners only. Why? Evening meals seem to create the greatest frustration as we rush out to our respective obligations. Stay-at-home parents with other family members in the house might eventually want to make a plan for lunches and breakfasts as well. However, I recommend trying just a two-week rotation for the first month.

Start by using each index card to list the main item of the meal. If, for example, your family likes spaghetti, merely write Spaghetti on the card. You don’t need to list every ingredient-you already know them. If you like to serve fish periodically, put Fish on the card. Obviously, cards will vary from one family to the next, depending on the age of your children, whether any of them has a dish he or she likes to cook, and your own culinary skill. You might list Salad, while your next-door neighbor writes Chicken Marsala. If you can’t come up with 14 meals at one sitting, don’t despair. J ust put the cards aside until all 14 are done.

Why not write Salmon instead of Fish? Why not fill in the vegetable, potato, or any dessert? Unless you only serve salmon, you might want to buy whichever fish is on sale the week you shop, maybe even fish sticks. The same is true of side dishes-maybe there’s a great deal on green beans but not on corn.

If your family eats fast food or take-out so often that you can’t come up with any at-home meals for your cards, don’t get frustrated. Here are some easy starters: French toast, sandwich smorgasbord, frozen pot pieces, baked potatoes with various toppings, chili, and shepherd’s pie.

Once you’ve completed all 14 cards, place them in a logical order. Does your family prefer like Spanish rice on Wednesdays? Then place the cards in the order you intend to eat the meals, making sure Spanish rice hits on a Wednesday. Either secure them on the refrigerator door with a magnetic clip or tuck them into a kitchen drawer where you can easily locate them.

When it’s time to go to the grocery, your list is already about two-thirds done. Let’s say you listed Roast for a Sunday. If you discover beef but not pork roasts are on sale, you can buy beef if you want to save money. If you don’t want to be surprised at the store by what’s on sale, look at the weekly specials in your local newspaper. And at least 82 percent of the coupons issued each year-a potential $261 billion savings-appear in Sunday newspapers.

After a month, you might sense you’re ready to expand the rotation to three or even four weeks. Two or three appears to work best for most families. Does this mean you can never change you mind and go out for pizza? NO! Simply move that night’s card out of the rotation-it will pop up again next time. Likewise, as you see new recipes you’d like to try or your family tires of a particular meal, you can make new cards to periodically replace the old ones. One enterprising mom actually has two sets of menus. Every three months, she puts away the first set and brings out the other.

It’s virtually impossible to flunk this system. Even if you plan just one menu in two weeks, you’ll be doing better than you used to. Your budget will love you, too. Skip $15.00 in fast food a week and you’ll save a tidy $780.00 a year.