How To Plan Nutritious Meals When You’re A Super Busy Mom – In Just One Day!

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How To Plan Nutritious Meals When You're A Super Busy Mom - In Just One Day!

This post will detail awesome tips on how you can plan delicious, healthy and nutritious meals whilst being a super busy Mom! Are you always trying to find original dinner for your family? Would you like your family to eat healthy meals, but you’re on a budget? Need ideas because you’re a beginner meal planner and are looking for meal planning menus, cheap healthy meal plans even weekly printables to just get you started? This post is going to be for you!

Also, don’t forget to check out the PRINTABLE OF THE DAY section at the end of our every post!

How To Plan A Week’s Worth Of Meals In One Day

If you are a total beginner when it comes to preparing super healthy meals and more importantly optimizing your time when you’re doing it, then you’re so going to love this!

When I was a student, I used to consume an unhealthy amount of dehydrated noodles! As appalingly unhealthy I knew they were, I just couldn’t be bothered to get into dicing, chopping, slicing and cooking!

That was until I had an awesome housemate who shuddered everytime I’d put the kettle on and it wasn’t for tea!

He taught me, that cooking for one didn’t have to be a chore, and that I could actually prepare a whole week’s worth of healthy, budget-friendly food – and all that in a day! I know right?! It sounded completely unrealistic to me, but I indulged him! By the end of my second year of university, I was whipping up wholesome, healthy, nutritious meals, that would’ve made my Mom super proud!

And all this thanks to meal planning and preparing, the smart way.

So, if you are short on time and still want to make nutritious food for your family, I’m giving you awesome tips on how you can finally get to spend quality time with your family, instead of slaving and stressing over what is for dinner!

Your meal planning and preparing will involve getting ingredients and meals ready to cook for each day, minimizing how much needs to be done when it’s time to prepare dinner.

Here are some things to know about meal planning and what is involved.

Meal Planning 101:

1. Marinate Your Meat Beforehand

One great way to start planning and prepping your meals for the next week is to by your meat in bulk, then marinate it ahead of time. Marinating does take quite a bit of time, so it helps if you can start cooking right after returning home from work or after picking up your kids from school.

Choose different types of marinades for different meats, based on what meals you want to use them for. Some meats that work great as marinating ahead of time include flank steak, pork chops, lamb chops, ribs, and chicken breasts.

My go-to and foolproof marinade recipe for poultry and pork can be downloaded in the PRINTABLES OF THE DAY section at the end of this post.

2. Be Detailed With Your Meal Plan

When you are planning your meals for the week, try to be as detailed as possible.

The best tip I was given as a university sophomore (yes, after all my noodle-eating!) and that I still use to this day is to make an inventory of all the food items (fresh produce, pantry items and frozen foods) I actually have in the house. This tip is gold! 

Get out a pen and paper and start by writing down what you already have on hand as a way to start your meals. Include any grains, seasonings, condiments, meat, veggies, and other items that you have. 

This will help to put meals together and also reduce how much you need to buy. 

With those ingredients, make a list of meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts.

Use that list to write down ingredients you need for each meal, trying to remember to leave room for leftovers and choose items that can be used for multiple meals.

Use my Inventory Made Easy Printables to help you organize and categorize all the food items you have in your house. It takes a little time when you begin listing all your items, but once it’s done, you can add and remove items depending on your stock.

You can download it in the PRINTABLES OF THE DAY section at the end of our post.

Pro tip: Laminate your printables so you can use a sharpie and then erase what goes in and out, without having to print out your sheets everytime!

3. Prep Components of Your Meals

Instead of cooking entire meals, just take some time on your day off each week to prep components of your meals.

This makes it a lot easier when cooking time comes each day. For example, when you are planning your meals, you can also consider some items that would b easy to prep together.

For instance, plan to have a lot of the same veggies in a single week, that can all be baked together. Roasting veggies together and putting them in the same glass container is a lot easier than trying to have a different veggie every night of the week.

4. Involve Your Kids

If you are stuck on ideas, don’t be afraid to ask your kids for help! They might have some suggestions for their own lunches that are not only healthy, but help you put a varied list together for the following weeks’ meals.

Instead of just doing all the meal prep and cooking on your own, consider involving your children in the process. They can help with everything from chopping vegetables to actually cooking parts of the meals. This also reduces how much you have to do on your own.

I remember as a young child, when my Mom was home and was in the kitchen, she would always involve us somehow. Whether it was from washing the produce, to grabbing the utensils or containers, and as we got older, from chopping to stirring, we always felt like it was a special moment to spend together.

Have Your Kids Help With Prepping Meals With You

So, depending on your children’s ages and abilities, their involvement  can be anything from chopping vegetables, mixing ingredients, or actually doing some of the cooking.

Teaching your kids at a young age to begin helping with dinner is a great lesson for them so that they can become more independent, but also lets them help you a little more around the house.

Also, when your kids start helping with meals, they become more interested in healthy cooking and eating, and will even give you some of their own recommendations.

Let Your Kids Choose Their Healthy Food Choices

Another way to get more help from your kids when meal time arrives is by having them choose some of their own healthy food choices. This gets them more involved and interested, but can also take some of the meal planning work out of what you need to do yourself. When you are getting ready to work on meal planning, ask your kids what they would like in their lunches for the week. Choose the healthiest options from their choices, and use that to guide your meal planning list in the right direction.

Make Cooking a Family Event

You can also turn cooking dinner into a complete family event. Gather everyone together each evening to put together your meal, with one kid chopping veggies, the younger kids mixing ingredients or setting the table, and the older kids or teenagers helping with the cooking. This is another thing that gets you some help in the kitchen, while also teaching your kids a valuable tool they can use in their life.

Some of my best childhood memories are definitely in the kitchen! Licking the cookie batter off the wooden spoon, or burning the tip of my tongue, tasting the sauces and even turning on the gas stove for the first time, and nearly singeing my eyebrows!!

Try New Things Together

When you have your kids help more with meals and meal planning, you can also get their input on trying new things. Perhaps your middle schooler has a friend who often has a certain type of meal each week and talks about it at school, and they want to try it out.

Go ahead and take these suggestions to heart and really think about how you can turn them into new family meals to try out.

You can also sit down as a family and discuss new recipes you want to try, looking through sites like Pinterest together to find delicious and fun meals.

5. Keep Your Pantry Stocked With the Essentials

A good way to motivate you to cook more healthy meals at home is by keeping your kitchen stocked with the essentials. That way, you always have ingredients at home to make a home-cooked meal and avoid having to order pizza or drive through a local fast food restaurant. Here are some of the essential pantry items to be sure you have on hand.

Oil & Dressing

The first types of ingredients you should always have on hand include a combination of oil, dressing, and condiments.

By having these in your kitchen already, you can prepare a lot of meals with other ingredients you have and not have to worry about picking up extra items every time you go to the grocery store.

Have a variety of oil based on your needs, including vegetable, olive, canola, sesame, and peanut oil. Also have some non-stick oil spray for the pans.

Have different types of vinegar, such as red wine and rice vinegar, and sauces like soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and hot sauce. Don’t forget basic condiments like mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, honey, and any others your family enjoys.

Rice, Pasta and Grains

In your pantry, make sure you have plenty of rice, pasta, and grains. These items can be made with nothing more than boiling water and some basic ingredients.

You should have a combination of different beans and grains, such as kidney beans, chili beans, garbanzo beans, black beans, along with quinoa and couscous.

For rice, choose your favorites, but also have a variety, such as wild rice, jasmine rice, white rice, and brown rice.

Have different forms of pasta, including bowtie, spaghetti noodles, and lasagna noodles. This will cover a lot of your basic meal options.

Buying these when they’re on special is a great way to save money (d’uh!), but also have a variety of items, so that you’re not always eating the same sort of things!

Seasonings and Herbs

Include a wide range of seasonings and herbs in your pantry, both fresh and dried herbs. Choose the basics like rosemary, basil, oregano, and mint. These herbs combined with seasonings like salt, pepper, and garlic salt will take you far in your different meals. Also consider things like all-spice and multiple seasoning bottles, such as a bottle of Italian seasoning to make the cooking process even easier.

Other Dry Goods

baking staples

In addition to these items, you should have some other staples in the pantry. This includes items that help you bake things from scratch, such as bread, biscuits, and muffins. Have plenty of salt, sugar, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and other items that help you prepare your different baked items or treats.

To ensure I always have the basic items on hand is by using my Master Grocery List Template. 
You can find it in the PRINTABLES OF THE DAY section at the end of our post and download it for free!

This list is always on my fridge and inside my pantry, to keep my stock up to date! This little trick avoids surplus, which leads to waste and inevitably money flying out faster than you can cook up a weekly menu!! 

The Takeaway

As you read, there are so many advantages to actually having a strategic game plan when it comes to planning and prepping nutritious, healthy meals for your family, even if you are a super busy mom!

There is no doubt that being able to, not only, provide yummy meals for your family, but also spending that precious time with your kids, is beneficial for all involved!

Your kids discover how to move around the kitchen, prepare super healthy meals, but also they get to spend some mega quality time with you.

Can’t go wrong there, can you?! And, personally, I am all for spending as little as time meal prepping for the week! If I can manage to get all of it done in 1 day, I am one happy Mom!

I hope these easy to follow tips have encouraged you to get started with your meal planning, and have helped you see that meal planning and prepping oughtn’t be so overwhelming or difficult to do, even when you are mega busy and feel you’re not doing enough to provide great, affordable and healthy meals for your loved ones!

Printables of the Day:

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