Meal Planning Obstacles

Why is it that meal planning seems to be the bane of so many adults' existence? Seriously. I've read articles and approaches, tried services, attempted things I haven't read about, and yet I'm still sitting here pulling my hair out. Women, parents, people have planned and executed their eating for ages and yet so many of us still seem to have major issues with the process. Or we skip it and have a whole different set of problems. I mean, eating isn't some new necessity for humans.

All photos are from a beautifully catered event at our house in summer 2019.

I don't have a solution. I am 100% in the thick of figuring out something, anything that works for my family and doesn't exponentially increase the number of knots in my neck and shoulders.

I've tried winging it. 5:00 hits and panic ensues. We choose take out.

I've tried browsing recipes from favorite blogs and cookbooks to put together a fresh, one-week plan. It turns out that I don't really love browsing recipes when I have to turn them into a meal plan. I love reading recipes and cookbooks, but there's something about turning them into a diverse enough plan for the week that throws me off. Pinterest boards fall into this category too.

I've tried a minimalist meal plan in which the same seven meals are repeated week after week. This approach meant I had a consistent grocery list, and I knew when and how I would make dinner each day. It was great during the 2-3 months we did it, and it was the least overwhelmed I've felt about feeding a family. Then we got suddenly, extremely bored.

I've tried making a master list of meals we enjoy. Each week I'd plot out a specific plan from that list, grocery shop, and then execute. That was ok, but then we did Whole30 and now we eat differently than that list reflects, and it gave me a feeling similar to browsing recipes in general.

I've tried meal services where the pre-portioned ingredients are delivered to your door and you just have to whip it together. I was underwhelmed by the particular service I tried, and I honestly didn't think it reduced the dinnertime cooking process. Sure, the menu and shopping were done for me, but come 5:00 I was deciphering a new recipe.

I've tried meal planning services where they send you a weekly menu, grocery list, and prep instructions. That's been hit or miss. Sometimes we're excited about the recipes, other times definitely not. The grocery list portion often felt like more trouble than it was worth, as I had to eliminate a bunch of things I already have, reduce quantities in order to feed fewer people, and add kitchen basics that we use up weekly.

I've tried make-ahead freezer meal workshops. However, I often forget to defrost things in advance and I don't usually love how things taste after they've been hanging out in the freezer for a while.

I’ve tried merging the master list of meals and the minimalist meal plan to create a 3-week minimalist meal plan from favorite recipes. I worked in a few new recipes, made the plan to accommodate our Whole30 preferences, and organized it to produce adequate leftovers for lunch. This worked pretty well for a while, but we sort of tapered off following it, and much like the one week minimalist meal plan we started to get bored.

At the moment, in the weird world of COVID-19 lockdown, we're planning one week at a time, making a special point to use everything we buy. We’ve defaulted to this week-at-a-time method for many months now, it just never seems to click and it almost always feels like a heavy task.

I want cooking and eating to be a joyful, pleasure-filled part of our family life in which a variety of delicious things land on the table and the occasional failure provides a memory to laugh about in the years to come. I want my kids’ experience of food to be low-pressure, low-stress, satisfying and varied. If I could settle on a starting point that inspires, I have no reservation about trying new things or spending the time in the kitchen to make them appear on the table. Perhaps our next approach will be to pick one chef/home cook/cookbook author and work through a wide variety of his/her dishes, trying many things without regard for what we think we’ll like.

So tell me, how do you handle meal planning and dinnertime efficiently and with low stress?