Fit a Dinner Party in Your Menu Plan

By Kathy Hester

When you’re rushing around to the store last minute every night there is never enough time to entertain. If you are already doing a menu plan and shopping once a week, you are way ahead of the game. So, go ahead and wash your up best dinnerware and send out an evite to your friends. It’s time for a dinner party!

The menu can be as simple as you want. You can make a lasagna with seasonal veggies like Swiss chard and mushrooms at the beginning of the week and heat it up on the day of the party. Another option is make it in the slow cooker and when you come home from work all you have to do is throw together a salad.

You can also plan way ahead for a party and freeze your pre-made dish in an oven safe Pyrex dish. I always have a few of these stored in the freezer just in case I feel like having people over. Make sure to defrost in the fridge overnight or add extra cooking time.

Not into lasagna? A warm weather dinner can be a chilled soup that you make the day before. I like gazpacho, yogurt dill, or a cold borscht for a refreshing summer treat. Pair it with a salad made of mixed greens from the farmers market and topped with julienned veggies that you’ve marinated overnight in a balsamic vinaigrette.

If you have a sweet tooth like I do, you’ll want to serve a dessert. It can be as simple as a store bought vanilla greek yogurt topped with in season berries. Serve it in a martini glass placed on a square dinnerware salad plate and drizzle some melted chocolate over the top.

Make sure to start the party with an empty dishwasher and your clean up will be a breeze too.

Meal Planning Tips

Meal planning can save you a lot of time throughout the week and month, as well as money.  If you are not used to sitting down at the beginning of the week and planning your meals, it can be a frustrating process.  Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Ask For Suggestions: Simply figuring out what to make for dinner can be harder than the cooking and cleaning up.  It isn’t easy trying to think of something that everyone will like, and that you haven’t already ate three times in the last month.  If you run out of ideas for what to cook, ask your family for suggestions.  Getting them involved decreases your stress level and you are more likely to have food created that your family will also eat.

• Watch Cooking Shows: Watching the shows on the Food Network can be a great way to learn new cooking methods and techniques, inspire ideas for new recipes, and can simply be quite relaxing.  If you haven’t already got a favorite cooking program or “TV chef,” tune in and see what new tips you can learn.  My family and I watch a lot of the Food Network.  From extravagant gourmet shows to quick, low ingredient one’s.  There are tips and menu ideas we pick up from each of them.

• Experiment And Have Fun: Preparing your family’s meals doesn’t have to be a chore; it can actually be quite fun.  As you plan your meals, experiment with new foods, flavors, and textures.  If you normally have sandwiches for lunch, try wraps instead.  If your family’s routine was stuck in a rut of hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza and spaghetti, break out of that routine in a big way and try Pasta Primavera or a Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry. You’ll never know what your family will and will not like until you try it.

• Get Everyone Involved: One of the best benefits to meal planning is that you will have more family time.  Studies show that families who eat meals together are happier and more connected.  Get your family involved in the process, whether it is helping you cross items off the list at the grocery store, chopping vegetables, setting the table or washing the dishes.  Everyone should be doing their part!

• Have Theme Nights: Since you are planning your meals and know what you will be having for dinner from one day to the next, you can get creative and have “Theme Nights”.  If you are going to have a Chinese-inspired entrée, create a fun environment by setting out chopsticks and hanging paper lanterns.  Having a Mexican dinner? You can find a piñata at a party supply store and fill it with a few small treats and let your kids have fun whacking it open.

It may take a few weeks, but sooner or later you will get into a rhythm of meal planning.  You will find ways to add your family’s personality into the process, and that can add up to a lot of fun, family dinners.

Menu Planning Tips for Busy Moms

Dinner is the last meal of the day and a time when families can get together and discuss their day. It is also a hectic meal for busy moms who are just getting off of work or who have been busy with other activities all day. If you are a busy mom or you know a busy mom, here are some menu planning tips to help make dinner meals easy and even fun.

1. Schedule your meals a week in advance. This is one of the most important planning tips for meals. Knowing what you are going to eat throughout the week means less chance that you will stop off at the closest fast food joint for a convenient, but unhealthy meal. Decide on the last day of the previous week (let’s say Saturday for the sake of argument) what the menu will be for the following week. Create your shopping list from the list of ingredients to avoid buying what you don’t need at the grocery store.

2. Look for bargains. Clip coupons, read advertising circulars and the like to decide where the best grocery to shop is for your menu items. If one ingredient is a common denominator in many meals, consider buying in bulk to save money. Common staples like milk, eggs, bread and sugar can be bought in bulk as well. Some stores will have double or triple coupon days when you can save even more.

3. Search online. After a while your family will get tired of chicken and rice every Thursday. You can get into a menu rut sometimes. Use the Internet to search for new and exciting recipes. Learn to put a twist on old recipes for a new taste. This is a great idea to look into menu plan memberships to liven your taste buds.

4. Have a leftover night. After preparing meals for five or six days, there is bound to be some food left over. Designate one night to be leftover night and let everyone mix and match for dinner. It saves mom from having to throw away any food.

5. Cook your meals in advance. After deciding on a menu plan for the week, go ahead and fix as many meals as you can. Choose a day when the entire family can help like Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon. Each person can take one meal and fix it for the following week. Once everything has cooled, store it in sealed containers or casserole dishes to be frozen until the night it is needed.

6. Do prep work in advance. You may not be able to cook all your meals ahead and some foods just taste better freshly prepared. For them, do as much prep work in advance as you can. Enlist your kids to help chop (give them the kitchen shears instead) vegetables, dice cooked meat and mix together dry ingredients. The night of the meal, all that is needed is to add the wet ingredients and bake.

Meal time doesn’t have to be all on mom. The entire family can help with dinner so it is a relaxing meal for everyone.

Meal Planning Is More Healthy

What is the easiest thing to do when you have had a long day and do not have any ideas about what you are having for dinner? Grab fast food or take-out. Not the healthiest option but you have no desire or energy to make anything.  You may not have the proper ingredients or cannot agree with the family on what to make. Now if you had your week planned out with all the meals this could have been avoided.

It’s reason number three that meal planning is something that you should do, it’s healthier. You can make recipes that are low fat, low carb, low sodium or anything else that is important to you and your family.  This can eliminate the quick fix, unhealthy meals.  You can also make bigger portions of the meals that you like and have leftovers during the week. When you are working late or busy doing errands late in the day you can still have something ready to heat up quick at home and not have to reach for the old standby of burgers, pizza or tacos.

If you like the food that you get at your favorite restaurant or burger place then look up copy cat recipes or healthier versions that you can remake at home. You can still get your fast food craving in, but with a healthy twist. You can add fresh fruits and veggies or salads instead of the fries and onion rings to off set the calories and fat.  There are plenty of recipes on the internet that have taken old favorites and made them over by lowering the fat and calories.  With a little planning you can have your burgers, fettuccini alfredo and even dessert. Your family will not miss the fast food and your children will learn how to make healthier food choices and that can only help them later in life.

Meal Planning Saves Time

We would all like our day to go a little more smoothly right? One way to make that happen is meal planning!

There are three main ways it can help any busy family out. Save you time, save you money and make you eat healthier. I think that everyone can appreciate all of those reasons.

We all want to save time right? Whether it’s spending time with your family, doing crafts you love, reading a book from your favorite author or just sitting and sipping some tea. Doing things you enjoy instead of being tied to the kitchen each night would be a huge win.

With meal planning you will never be wondering at 4pm what to make for dinner. The frantic “What can I make with what I have thawed” will be a thing of the past. You will print a plan for a week, 2 weeks or whatever is the best time frame for you and your family. Write the meals on a paper and stick it to the fridge so you know what you have in the freezer to serve each day. It will help to see what you are making that day and to map out what you need to have ready.

You take the shopping list for one trip to get everything you need to make the meals in the weeks menu plan. This cuts down on multiple shopping trips for ingredients that you did not know you needed and saves time. Knowing what you are having for dinner will save you in time searching for a last minute recipe in a book or online.  It saves you from having to scour the pantry and try to thaw frozen meat at the last minute and ruining the texture of the meat.

Just knowing what you need to do helps so you can plan your day around what needs to be done to get the meal on the table at dinnertime, or in many cases, you can ignore it completely as you know the meal will only take minutes to prepare