Meal Planning Made Easy: Ideas And Tips To Help You Develop A Weekly Family Meals Plan

Becoming that little bit organised by executing a weekly Family Meals plan will potentially save you money, time and effort. A meal plan can offer your family a different variety of meals for the week and it will allow you to decide what you need at the shops before you go. This will mean that you can avoid those unnecessary and sometimes unhealthy impulse buys once you're there.

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Grocery shopping turns into a piece of cake as you confidently stride down those aisles locating and ticking all the items on your shopping list. The short period of time it takes you to plan out your family meal times is really well worth it because it takes the standard "what am I going to cook tonight?" pressure off since you will have a pre-planned weekly menu at the ready as well as the ingredients you need to be able to cook everything on your plan.

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Ideas to set up a household meals weekly plan:

1. Once a week on a day you prefer, take a moment and write some ideas regarding possible dinner ideas that you could prepare that week

- Try and incorporate several family favorite dinners that you know the family members will love

- Pick out several new dishes to try; Do this by reading through your own personal cookbook collection (if you have one) or perhaps start looking online at cooking websites or even ask your friends and family to show you a few of their own family favorite recipes

- Try and vary the dish varieties through the course of the week i.e. incorporate a pasta recipe, a chicken dish, a red meat dish, a grain recipe etc to ensure a well balanced and wholesome meal plan

- Try and double the recipe for at least one of the recipes to enable you to enjoy one dish across 2 evenings and/or freeze the meal for another day

- Add in one freezer meal throughout the week that you can simply remove from the freezer and set straight inside the oven

- Allow yourself a night or two off from cooking where you can either leave the house for an evening meal out or simply get takeout

2. Use a Meal Planner template to write out your program for the week

Once you have chosen several different meal ideas, look through your family's weekly activity schedules and start allocating the meals for each of the evenings using the template. If you know there are a busy few days then keep the double up recipe and also the freezer dinner for those times. When you have a little more time on other days, those can be great times to experiment with your new recipes

3. Use a Shopping List template to write-up a food checklist of those things you require from the supermarket.

Depending on how often you like to visit the supermarket throughout the week (not that much I bet!), be sure to stock up on the necessary groceries for your planned recipes in advance. Many people like to do a single main shop every week as well as 1 or 2 smaller sized shops in order to stock up on perishables such as milk, bread, fruits and vegetables. Regardless of how you prefer to go shopping, always take a look at your weekly meals plan at least two days beforehand to ensure that you have on hand the ingredients that are required for the upcoming days. In the instance that you need to pick up anything from the grocery store then this provides you with more time to obtain the item compared to it being a rush at the last-minute

4. Keep the plan adaptable.

Understand that unexpected things do come up at the eleventh-hour and sometimes your weekly plan will need to change so be sure to remain flexible with it.

In summary, the minimal investment in time that it's going to take you to complete a weekly meal plan is well worth it. A plan means that you can incorporate a mix of tried and tested meals in conjunction with a number of completely new recipes. This allows you to continue to enhance your cookery repertoire not to mention keep your household content at evening meal times.

Meal Planning Made Easy: Ideas And Tips To Help You Develop A Weekly Family Meals Plan

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Use Publix Weekly Sales Ad to Creatively Save For Your Family

Publix weekly sales ad is a great place to start creating your menu for the week and is available online for easy use. Instead of scrolling through an endless list of items on sale, Publix had their flyer set up to browse like you would if it was in print. As an additional service, you can transfer items from the sales flyer to the printable grocery list in just a click or two of the mouse.

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Grocery flyers like Publix help many families save money on their grocery bill. When families plan out what to eat ahead of time using what is on sale as a basis, they can cut the grocery budget by a quarter or more. That is money that is put back in the family's pocket and can be used to pay a bill, saved for college, or even a fun activity.

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To use your Publix weekly sales ad to its fullest potential, sit down with the flyer and your coupons and start making your list with the items that are on sale and you have a coupon for. Then add in sales items, since they tend to have more savings than what a coupon offers, then add in coupon items if need be. If you do not use all your coupons, it is OK; they can be used at another time, and are more effective if you can wait until those items are in your Publix weekly sales ad.

Another way to save money with your Publix weekly sales ad is to plan out multiple meals from the same starter dish. Let's say that Public weekly says that beef roasts are on sale, so you buy one that is larger than what your family can eat in one meal. Then take the leftovers and slice them thin for sandwiches with the bread that is on sale as well, or shred the beef up and add gravy, potatoes, and carrots and other vegetables and make a stew. Now you have just made your savings do double duty.

By following your Publix weekly sales ad, adding in a few coupons and thinking creatively about what you can do with certain items to create two meals or more out of one, and you can shave your grocery bill down to a much more manageable size. Put your brain to a great use and save your family money.

Use Publix Weekly Sales Ad to Creatively Save For Your Family

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Weekly Dinner Menus With Total Family Flexibility

Weekly dinner menus are such a serious time saving device in a family's life it's hard to imagine the downside of using this simple tool.

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For some of us, however, the perceived lack of flexibility trips us up.

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Here are some ideas to vaporize that unhelpful thought.

-- Busy schedules

This is where menu planning really shines. Got soccer two nights a week? Those are the nights for freezer meals, leftovers or even take out. Don't straitjacket yourself. Use your weekly dinner menu to give you choices of meals and feel free to move them around like pieces on a chessboard.

-- Using leftovers

So you follow your menu-planning chart for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, you look in the fridge and see it is bursting forth with leftovers. Don't panic! Simply move Wednesday's meal to the following week and get a jumpstart on next week's menu plan. Or, if the ingredients won't wait that long, move your perishable meal to the following evening and move *that* meal into next week.

You're flexible, remember?

-- Company

What to do when unexpected company shows up? This happens frequently this year in our home, with a daughter in a local college and many new friends who don't have family in town. No problem. Take a look at your weekly menu. Is there a side dish you can pull from another night that perhaps had a dish too many? Can you simply add another portion of meat and veggies to your planned menu? Are there leftovers that can be added to the meal? Perhaps you can switch meals with another night that has larger portions? Flexible, pre-planned and stress-free.

-- Change of moods

Well, I know I've done this one! That Mexican dish looked really tasty when I put it on the menu last weekend, but now I'm simply not in the mood for that type of food. Switch meals. No one knows but you. That's the beauty of being the chef!

Remember, using weekly dinner menus is all about adding to the flexibility of your busy life, not detracting from it. The bottom line is that when you menu plan, you're always ready to put a yummy meal on the table with a minimum of time, money and stress.

Sounds like something we all can use.

Weekly Dinner Menus With Total Family Flexibility

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