(If you don’t believe me, you can watch me do it here! :))
A lot of people really liked the concept and decided to try it out… but as I was talking with one of my subscribers, she mentioned that it was not going quite as well as she had hoped.
I realized that there are a couple of additional tips that could help, not only her but other people who are trying to implement a meal plan into their life as well.
So in this post, I’m going to go over some ideas for how to make your meal plan easier and how you can make it work for your situation!
But for everyone who is ready to get started troubleshooting their meal plan, let’s get to it!
What To Do If Your Meal Plan Isn’t Working
If you prefer to watch the video, you can check it out here:
1) Customize Your Theme Night
The first thing you want to do is make sure your theme nights are customized to your life.
It can be really easy to read a post by someone on the internet and just think, “well this is working for them, I’ll just do exactly what they are doing.”
But that doesn’t always work because my meal plan is customized for my life… and everyone else on the internet’s meal plan is customized for their life.
So you can take the overall principles that I am sharing, but you want to make sure that the theme nights you are using are working for your current schedule and for how busy you are.
If for example, you had used the exact same theme nights that I did in my meal plan, you would realize that Tuesday and Thursday nights for us are easy nights. And that is because, Pre-Covid, those were our busiest nights of the week.
But your family may be busy on Monday and Wednesday so having easier meals on those nights would make more sense for you.
So if something like this is your problem, all you need to do is rearrange around your theme nights!
2) Simplify Your Theme Nights
Now, if you’ve tried moving around your theme nights and your meal plan still isn’t working for you, it’s also possible that you have too many difficult theme nights.
As I talk about in this video and this post, there is a *wide range* of theme nights for you to choose from.
There is everything from eating the same exact same dish every Tuesday night (one of our theme nights), to eating a brand new meal every Wednesday (another one of our theme nights).
And there are a *whole bunch* of theme nights in between those two!!
When I was first creating my meal plan, I was really excited to try 6 different complex theme nights (because of course we still had our leftover day :)!
But then I realized that it just didn’t work well for my life. I also realized that I didn’t enjoy cooking that much, and I didn’t want to be cooking time-intensive meals every night of the week.
So if this sounds like where you may have gone wrong in your meal plan, go back to the theme night ideas post and choose some easier theme nights for your family.
PRO TIP: When you are starting out with meal planning and learning how to stick with it, it is better to go too easy with your theme nights than to have them be too complicated.
When you go easy you can always make it more complicated later if you are enjoying it and want to cook more…
But if you start out with things too complicated, you can easily get discouraged and give up on the meal plan.
So make sure that your theme nights fit your schedule, your life, your busyness, and even how much you like to cook.
If you don’t like to cook, there is no reason to spend a lot of time cooking every single night!
3) Create a Rotation
Another thing you can do is create a meal plan rotation.
But basically, you create a set of meals and rotate them at a regular interval.
So the easiest way to do this is to create a one-week rotation.
For a one-week rotation, you choose 6 meals (plus one leftover day) and you will repeat the same meals in the same order every single week.
A lot of minimalists out there suggest creating a very simple rotation because the truth is… this is the simplest way to plan your meals.
It takes very little time to plan, it takes very little time to implement, and it takes very little time to cook when you are planning your meals this way.
The reason that I don’t meal plan this way is because we all enjoy a wide variety of food and we wouldn’t like to eat the same meals over and over again.
If you would like to simplify your meal plan but think you might get bored eating the same thing every single week, you could also create a two-week rotation.
In that case, you would decide on 12 meals (plus one leftover day each week). Then you would go through the rotation twice a month.
You could also create a four-week rotation and repeat the meals once a month, every month of the year.
4) Have a Meal Prep Day
Now, if you would like to make your meal plan easier, but eating the same meal every week doesn’t sound fun, you can have a Meal Prep Day once a week.
Now I personally don’t do this because our weekends are busy. But if you have mellow weekends, this could be the solution to all of your meal planning problems!
When you have a prep day, you simply do all of your chopping ahead of time.
Then, each night of the week, all you have to do is the actual cooking of each meal.
This could work well for you if you are anything like me, and chopping takes you forever.
The bulk of my cooking time is spent chopping the vegetables for my meals. *Especially* if I am cooking something with onions in it… which is everything.
Onions make me cry, which means I can’t see what I am chopping, which means I have to stop chopping so that I can stop crying, then I have to start chopping again, which means I start crying again… it’s a whole thing.
But the point it, if you can do all of your chopping work ahead of time, it will save you a lot of time each week in the kitchen.
*PRO TIP* If you are chopping onions ahead of time, make sure you aren’t just putting them in a plastic bag. Your entire refrigerator will smell like onions. Don’t ask me how I know. Instead, put any prepped onions into a sealed glass container. You’re welcome. 😉
5) Create a Double Meals Rotation
The last trick that you can try if your meal plan isn’t working for you, is you can double your meals and use them in the future.
Now I know this doesn’t sound like we are making life easier… but stick with me, I’ve got a plan!
The first week that you do this, you are going to choose 4 meals that store well or freeze well, and you are going to double them.
Then the next week, you are going to eat those 4 meals.
On the other three nights, you are going to cook 3 meals and double them. And the following week you will eat the doubles, while only having to cook 4 meals… and so on.
So each week, you will be eating your doubles from the previous week, and only needing to cook on half of the nights.
Even though it is a little bit more work to do this the first week, it gets significantly easier as you go.
Again, this isn’t what we do at our house because I already double everything and we eat leftovers for lunches every day. But if your family prefers to eat sandwiches, or soups, or anything that you need to cook for lunch, this is a great option that will save you a lot of time in the dinner prep department.
So what do you think? Will any of these ideas work well for your family? Which ones do you want to try?
Are You Ready to Stop Feeling Stressed About Meal Planning?
In Set-it-and-Forget-it Meal Planning, you will learn how to plan your meals without feeling overwhelmed, spend less time in the kitchen, and feed your family healthy meals (while still having time for yourself!)
Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning walks you through my unique method for setting up your meal plan so you will never have to start from square one again!
Plus you will receive a Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning Template and email support from me anytime you have questions.
I’m super excited about this post because I am *finally* going to show you the crazy way that I meal plan my entire year out in less than 3 hours.
Really.
Now when most people find out that I plan out my entire year of meals in advance… they have a lot of questions.
So the first thing I’m going to do is answer some of the questions I commonly get when I tell people I do this. And I’ll let you be the judge of if I should see someone for my insanity or not. 😉
Then, I will walk you through what you need if you want to try meal planning this way yourself.
And lastly, I’m going to show you how it’s done.
As an added bonus, I’m going to time the meal planning this year so you an see how long it takes!
Feel free to skip down to the meat of the post if you don’t care about why I put the time into this project.
And If you are more of a watcher than a reader, check out the video where I show you the entire process!
Why I Only Meal Plan Once a year
Alright let’s dig into the reasons that I put myself through this.
The first question people usually have when they find out that I meal plan my whole year is:
The Whole Year, Really?
And the answer is: yes!
If you don’t believe me, watch the video above, you will see that when I am done, every dinner menu spot is filled in on the calendar for the entire year.
It’s been about 4 years now that I have planned out my meals in advance, and I will never go back to doing it any other way.
The second question that I get a lot is:
Why Would You Do This?
I have a couple answers to this one;
The first is, I don’t really like meal planning.
So if I can batch this chore and do it once, I am a happy mom.
The second reason I plan out my whole year in advance is that I find it much more efficient.
I find if I can sit down and get it done once instead of coming back to it every single week, or every single month, it takes much less time.
I have tried meal planning just about every other way, and this is the only way that I have been able to stick with Meal Planning for the entire year.
Another question I get a lot is:
Why Is This Any Better Than Planning a Week or a Month At a Time.
Like I said in the last answer, I think that it is much faster to do it all at once.
I’ll let you know at the end of the post how long it takes me to do the entire process, but if you think about it, it just makes sense that it would take less time.
If you sit down to meal plan every single week, you are starting over every time you meal plan.
You have to get out all your books, your calendar, and you have to make decisions. And at minimum, this will take you between 15 and 30 minutes… every. single. time.
When you do it all at once, you can cut down your time considerably.
(Watch the video or read to the bottom of the post if you want to find out exactly how long it takes me!)
Making the decision is the hardest part of meal planning in my opinion because we moms have so many decisions we are making every single day.
And if you meal plan weekly, that is 7 more decisions you have to make each week.
Getting those decisions out of the way will save you time, energy and stress.
The next question people have is:
What If I Want Something Different Than What is on the Menu?
So… I don’t really know how to break this to you…
But writing something down with a pen and paper is not the same thing as writing in stone.
All you do if you want something different, is cross it off and write something else down.
No harm, no foul.
It’s easy, trust me!
But even if you have to make a little change here and there, you are still saving yourself tons of time throughout the year.
And the last question I get all the time is:
What happens when you have company?
And depending on the situation and who the company is, I may do several different things:
I might just stick with my meal plan. I have a whole post and video showing you how to meal plan for the holidays while using your theme nights if you want to check that out.
I might just skip a meal. If I know someone is coming and a meal on my plan isn’t their favorite, I will just cross it out and put something completely different on there. (See the last question 🙂
I might bump a meal into the following week. If I was really looking forward to making something and I find out that my company isn’t a fan of it, I’ll just bump that meal into the following week and move the following week’s meal into this week.
Or I might even make a crazy meal planning Tetris game and move things all over the place with really cool arrows. (Pens are great for this!)
Since it usually takes me less than 5 minutes to figure out how to adjust my meals if company is coming, it is still way less time-consuming to plan things out ahead of time than it is to wait and do it one week at a time.
My Meal Planning Tools
Alright, now I’m going to show you exactly what I use to plan my meals for the year in case you want to try it as well!
I would suggest using the small planner if you want to be very detailed in your meal plan and you have a lot of things to write on each day. I would use the Big Grid Organizer if you don’t have as many things that you need to write down each day.
2) Fun Pens
The next thing that I always have is a pen that writes well in a color that I like (for me, the purpler, the better!)
It’s just a little more fun to write a whole bunch of things down when you are using a pen that you like and that you enjoy seeing over and over and over again.
3) Cookbooks
I always have my cookbooks out and handy when I am meal planning.
And of course, I have our childhood favorites in a binder.
I’m slightly obsessed with the Revive Café Cookbooks because they have a picture for each recipe, the recipes are simple to replicate, and they use ingredients that most normal people would know what they are and know where to find them (which is surprisingly not true of a lot of plant-based cookbooks).
The only drawback to the Revive cookbooks is that he doesn’t quite season his recipes as much as I would like… so I just start off cooking by doubling the spices that he suggests and ramping it up from there (I like me some flavorful food!).
Vegan Yum, Yum also has delicious recipes, but the recipes are a bit more complex and can require more unique ingredients.
4) Spreadsheet
Ya, I know, I’m a little strange… but having a spreadsheet for meal planning makes my life easier each time I map out my year.
I keep track of which meals we like, which ones we have tried but didn’t like, and how easy/difficult the recipes are. I also track which season we want to eat each meal in and how expensive they are to make… I get geeked out about organization :D.
How to Meal Plan Your Entire Year
Now that we have everything we need, let’s get started!
1) Assign Theme Nights
The first thing you want to do if you are meal planning for your whole year is assign a theme to each night of the week.
Head over to this video or this post about how to do this if you want all the deets and plus over 50 theme night ideas.
But Basically, you just assign some sort of theme to every day of the week…
So Sunday will have a theme, Monday will have a theme, Tuesday will have a them… and so on.
I like to use a combination of simple and complex theme nights, that way we don’t get bored with eating the same things all the time, but the meal plan also doesn’t become so complicated that we give up on the meal plan.
Once your theme nights are done, your meal planning will become infinitely easier whether you are planning for a day, week, month, season, year, or even just a camping weekend or a road trip. (Is meal planning for a day even a thing? Well if it is, I’m sure it will still be easier with theme nights.)
2) Thursday Night
Now that you have your theme nights set you, you can start putting things on your calendar.
I always start by writing in my Thursday nights because Thursday at our house is Leftover night!
So at this point, I go through my calendar write down “leftovers” on every single Thursday.
And yes, I technically wouldn’t have to write it in since it isn’t the same every week, BUT I like everything filled in on my calendar. It makes me happy. So I write in the leftovers. 🙂
3) Tuesday Night
The next day that I typically fill in is Tuesday night, which is Vegan Macaroni and Cheese night.
Tuesday is another easy night for us because pre-covid we had swimming lessons on Tuesday and Thursday nights and I wanted to make dinner as easy as possible on those evenings.
So… I think I’m going to stick with the same theme nights this year, and hopefully, we will be back to swimming lessons before too long!
If for some reason we are still without swimming lessons at the end of 2021, I might adjust my theme nights.
So now I will write down Macaroni and Cheese on every Tuesday night.
4) Friday Nights
Now Friday is a different type of theme night than Tuesday and Thursday.
Tuesday and Thursday are what I call Specific Meal Theme Nights because I use the same meal each week.
But on Friday, I use a category theme night (which I talk about in this post and this video).
Our theme for Friday is Build-It Meals, which is any meal where each person puts together their own plate of food.
And instead of thinking up new Build-It Meals every year, I keep a list of all of ours in my meal planning spreadsheet. Our build it meals include:
Falafels
Tacos
Gado Gado
Burgers
Portabello Fajitas
Baked Potatoes
Don Buri
Burritos
Patatas Bravas
Malasian Laksa
Yum Bowls
Hot Dogs
And I will just start on the first Friday with Falafels and rotate through the list until the end of the year!
5) Saturday
Next, I will fill in my Saturdays.
Now, Saturday is a very different day for us because… again, pre-covid… we used to go to church on Saturday.
And because of this, we would usually eat a late lunch and just have a light supper.
So all of our lunch/dinners on Saturdays will be haystacks (which is like a taco salad).
And I will also put into the calendar my rotation of light suppers, just like I did for the Build-It Meals in the last step.
6) Sunday
My Theme for my Sunday is Time-Consuming Family Favorites.
Since Sunday is a slower day at our house and Ross is not working, this is where we break out all of those meals that are delicious to eat, and difficult to make (I’m looking at you hand-made pasta.)
I keep a page on my spreadsheet with a list of all of our favorites where I can easily see which favorites take more time to make, which ones are best in which season, and how often we want to eat each favorite. (Hi, I’m Kassy, and I’m addicted to spreadsheets.)
So for example, one of our time-consuming family favorites is Pot Pie.
It take a lot of time to make, everyone would like to eat it every other month (or maybe I just don’t want to make it more often then that, Ross would probably eat it every day if I made it every day).. BUT it is a very hot meal to cook and to eat.
So when I am going through my calendar, I will only put it down on every other month in the fall, winter, and spring.
7) Monday
Monday this year is going to be Simple Family Favorites.
So I will look back at my spreadsheet and put in all those family favorites that are nice and easy and work well for a weekday.
8) Wednesday
Now if you are keeping track, I’ve moved from writing in my easiest theme nights to writing in my most time-consuming one.
Why is Wednesday time-Consuming? Because Wednesday night at our house is New Meal Night.
That means that I have to find 52 new meals… every year!
So yes, it takes me a little bit more time to write in my Wednesday night… and I put it off until last!
To help me find the recipes faster, I keep a Pinterest board with recipes that I want to try in the coming year, and I go through my cookbooks to see if I want to make anything new out of them!
So How Long Did it Take???
This year, creating my meal plan for my entire year took me…
drumroll, please…
2 hours, 45 minutes, and 45 seconds.
Now, keep in mind that I’ve been doing this for several years now and it took me a bit longer the first time around. So keep at it and I promise that this will make your life easier!
Are You Ready to Stop Feeling Stressed About Meal Planning?
In Set-it-and-Forget-it Meal Planning, you will learn how to plan your meals without feeling overwhelmed, spend less time in the kitchen, and feed your family healthy meals (while still having time for yourself!)
Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning walks you through my unique method for setting up your meal plan so you will never have to start from square one again!
Plus you will receive a Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning Template and email support from me anytime you have questions.
But Meal Planning during the holidays can be downright stressful!
Not only are there usually more people that you are cooking for, but you are often hosting for multiple days at a time.
So how do you set up a killer meal plan that your family will love, without making yourself go crazy with all the extra work?
It’s not as hard as you think!
Here’s how it’s done:
1) Stick With The Routine
Breakfasts
If you typically use a simple weekday breakfast every day of the week, like I recommend in this post, then continue doing that!
You don’t have to prepare fancy breakfasts every day just because you have a company.
If you like to do more elaborate breakfasts on the weekend as I talk about in this post, go ahead and do that if you’d like, but don’t make things too complicated!
Since you will be doing a lot more cooking than usual during the holidays, I recommend doing easy breakfasts every day (aside from maybe a special brunch on Christmas Day.)
Lunches
If you eat leftovers for lunch every weekday as I recommend in this post and this one, you can still continue to do this when you have company there.
Especially since you will be putting in all the work of making delicious food every evening, it doesn’t hurt to get two meals out of each time you cook!
Just have an alternate easy meal ready for lunch each day that you have guests.. just in case you do not have enough leftovers.
Here are some examples of easy lunches that you can have on stand-by if needed:
Sandwiches
Salads
Casseroles
Soups
And any other Meals that are Easy to Make!
If you don’t end up using the easy meal for lunches because you had plenty of leftovers, use the food for dinners the following week after everyone leaves… then you can save yourself a trip to the grocery store and a bunch of extra time in the kitchen after a busy holiday… you’re welcome.
Other than the specific holiday, like Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, keep all of your theme nights the same.
So if I were hosting the Thanksgiving Weekend at our house, it would look like this:
Thanksgiving Day: Special Holiday Family Meal
Friday Night: Build-It-Meal Night
Saturday Night: Dips and Chips/Crackers
Sunday Night: Family Favorites Night
So the only night of the week that changed was the Thanksgiving night meal.
When we have Christmas at our house, I like to do a special dinner on Christmas Eve, but I keep the other meals the same on Christmas Eve.
When we host Christmas Day, I like to have a special brunch in the morning, a light lunch, and a bigger holiday dinner. Or we will have Christmas “Dinner” around lunchtime and have a light supper… it isn’t always the same every year, but it is generally one of those two options!
2) Plan The Holiday Meal(s)
Look at How Many People are Coming
Take into account how many guests you will have for the big holiday meal… Thanksgiving Dinner, Christmas Dinner, Christmas Eve Dinner…etc.
Do a headcount and figure out how many people will be joining you for the meal.
Decide How Elaborate You Want to Be
Just because it is Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever other holiday you are celebrating, doesn’t mean that you have to spend a day, or week, or month preparing for the dinner.
If your family loves pizza, and you want to eat that for your holiday dinner, so be it!
We like to get takeout Thai food or Chinese food on Christmas Eve because I will be cooking a lot the following day. (And because we love Thai and Chinese food… who am I kidding!)
Don’t feel like you have to follow any sort of rules, just do what works well for your family!
Decide on Your Main Dish
If you are having an involved meal (that is something more than takeout or pizza ;)), then you will want to decide on your main dish first.
Unless you adore cooking, I suggest only making one main dish (unless you can outsource as second main dish, see number 3 down below!).
Our main dish for all of our holiday meals is a vegan Special K Loaf. It’s a family favorite at our house and it goes well with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and traditional holiday side dishes.
Think About Your Side Dishes
You may feel like you have to have all the sides, especially if you are planning a traditional holiday meal… but side dishes are optional!
Think about which side dishes are important for you. Then throw out everything that you don’t love to eat or want to make (unless you can outsource it, see number 3 down below!).
Some side dishes that we love to have every holiday meal are:
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Cranberry Sauce
Decide on Dessert
Decide on how many desserts and which desserts you would like to eat at your holiday meal (and throughout the weekend ;).
My must-have holiday dessert is an ah-MA-zing Key Lime Pie that my mom makes (if you aren’t afraid of making complicated healthy desserts, check this cookbook out! Everything we’ve tried out of it is divine.)
Most people like to have a few different options for dessert, but desserts can take a lot of time, energy, and oven space to make.
One easy way to have a lot of variety with your dessert is to have each family that is coming be responsible for providing one dessert in addition to anything else that they are bringing.
This also ensures that every family will have their favorite and no one will complain that you didn’t make their favorite dessert because they could have brought it themselves!
3) Determine Who Is Cooking What
Decide What You Are Making
When you are hosting, you get the first pick of what you want to make (yay!).
Many hosts like to provide the main dish, but it isn’t a must, especially if you know someone else who would enjoy making the main dish and do a great job with it.
After you decide if you are going to make the main dish or not, choose any side dishes that you want to make.
Ask For Help
Since most people don’t enjoy making decisions, instead of asking people what they want to bring, tell them what would be helpful for them to contribute to the meal.
Try to assign dishes to people who would be good at making them.
I always have my mom make the desserts because she does an amazing job and she is able to make desserts that fit with my wacky diet (vegan and sugar-free isn’t easy for most people to navigate!)
If someone coming doesn’t enjoy cooking, ask them to bring a salad or store-bought desserts.
But remember not to overload your guests. They may want to take a break from cooking if they are not hosting!
I find it helpful to list out all of the dishes that you want to have on a piece of paper and write down who will be in charge of each one.
Now send those texts or make phone calls to let people know what you want them to bring!
Decide What You Are Buying
If you aren’t able to make or delegate all of your dishes (or you just want a break from cooking altogether!) you can purchase just about anything that you want for your holiday meal at most grocery stores.
But be sure to order in advance so that you don’t have to worry about things being out of stock on the busiest grocery days of the year.
And that’s all it takes to create your amazing holiday weekend meal plan!
I’d love to hear what you are going to have for your holiday meal! Let me know in the comments below!
Are You Ready to Stop Feeling Stressed About Meal Planning?
In Set-it-and-Forget-it Meal Planning, you will learn how to plan your meals without feeling overwhelmed, spend less time in the kitchen, and feed your family healthy meals (while still having time for yourself!)
Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning walks you through my unique method for setting up your meal plan so you will never have to start from square one again!
Plus you will receive a Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning Template and email support from me anytime you have questions.
I tried everything, but every time I sat down to plan my weekly meals I felt like I had such a huge task ahead of me because it took forever to make the plan.
Every time I would tell myself that I was going to plan the meals quickly this time… but it didn’t work.
I tried looking through my cookbooks. But everything looked good, and I couldn’t decide.
I tried scrolling through Pinterest. But I would find myself still scrolling much later with hardly any progress made.
I would give up on meal planning and try to decide at the grocery store and get food that sounded good, looked good, or for just in case I felt like making it. But we would spend so much more money on food because we never felt like eating the “just in case” food and it would just sit in the back of my pantry.
I tried giving up and just asking Ross what he wanted for dinner. He would always answer “lasagna” AKA my least favorite food to make or to cook…
Then one day I thought of a different plan.
We had been married for 5 years and had a new baby and meal planning hadn’t become any easier for me. But now I had new motivation to figure this out.
I wanted my daughter to grow up remembering special meals that we ate together, instead of me throwing together the most convenient food every night.
I wanted her to remember that we had fun cooking together, instead of me staring into the pantry and fridge for inspiration only to decide on the quickest thing.
And I wanted her to learn to eat new food willingly, instead of being stuck in a food rut because we only ate the same 3 meals all the time.
So I sat down to figure out if there was a way I could meal plan without having to meal plan all the time… and it turned out that there was.
I decided that I was going to plan out my entire year of meals so that I wouldn’t have to think about it again through the year, and all I would have to do is make a grocery list every week.
I know, I’m kind of crazy! Who thinks that if they don’t enjoy doing something that they should do it a whole bunch and see if they like it better? Apparently this girl!
But as I sat down to plan my meals for the next year, I stumbled upon the greatest Meal Planning Hack of all time!
I knew that I needed to organize my meal planning in some way to make this more efficient, so I decided to assign each day a Theme. And to my surprise, it worked!
How it Works
When you meal plan with theme nights, all you do is pick one theme for each night of the week.
Technically you could choose 14 and have a bi-weekly rotation, but if you want to meal plan for a longer-term, I suggest choosing only 7. It’s just easier to keep track of!
Then when you meal plan, all you have to do is choose a meal that corresponds to that theme.
So, for example, if I chose to have a Thai Food Night on Thursday, then every Thursday of the year I would choose a Thai meal for that night.
Why It Works
One of the main reasons that we struggle with meal planning as moms is the decision fatigue that we have from making decisions for ourselves and our families all. day. long.
When you meal plan with theme nights, it reduces the choices you have to make for each night of your meal plan.
Instead of having every meal that has ever been made as an option, you have narrowed down the type of meals that you are searching for.
So if we had that Thai Theme Night on Thursday, we would look through our cookbooks or on Pinterest for Thai Food (or Plant-Based Thai Food in my case). Then for each dish that looked good, we would simply put it on the calendar on any Thursday that we wanted to.
This also solves another common problem with Meal Planning.
Often the reason we can’t decide on a dish is that they all look so good.
When you meal plan with theme nights, it’s ok if you want to make them all!
Just flip to the next week on your calendar and write down a different meal that you want to make.
Now you already have a head start on Meal Planning for next week (or next month if you find a few!)
How to Start
To start meal planning with theme nights, just pick 7 theme nights for your week!
I compiled a list of 50 theme night ideas for you, but if you have any other favorite theme night ideas that I forgot to mention, put it in the comments below! I’d love to hear your ideas!
Be sure to grab the Easy Meal Planning Checklist and check out Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning for a step-by-step guide to completely simplifying your meal plan!
50 Theme Night Ideas for Your Meal Plan
I’ve broken down the theme nights into categories so you can see how much you can do with Theme Nights.
You can choose 7 theme nights from one category, or you can choose one from each category. There is no right or wrong way to do it!
The only suggestion I make is that everyone has a Leftover Night on their calendar every week, or at least some plan for how to incorporate their leftovers, but you can check out this post for more ideas on that!
Specific Meal Theme Nights
This type of theme night is when you choose one specific meal that you make every single week. We use this type of theme night for Tuesday nights in our house.
Every Tuesday, we eat our homemade, vegan macaroni and cheese.
Why do we do the same exact meal every Tuesday night? Because Miss Claire has swimming lessons on Tuesday and Thursday nights. So I know that I need easy meals on those nights.
Having Macaroni and Cheese every Tuesday was an easy choice for our Tuesday night theme because it’s easy, it’s healthy, and our whole family loves it.
Here are some specific meal ideas to get you started:
Macaroni and Cheese
Haystacks
Burgers
Special K Loaf
Green Curry
Daal
Lentil Soup
Variety Meals
In this type of theme night, you use the same base of the meal, but can change anything else about it.
For example, you could have a pasta night. The only thing that stays the same about pasta night from week to week is that it has pasta in the meal.
One way that you can customize a pasta night is by changing the type of pasta that you use. For one pasta night you could use spaghetti, another elbow macaroni, another bow ties, another pinwheels, another pappardelle… you get the idea.
Another way that you can customize a pasta night is by changing the type of sauce that you use. You could have pasta with red sauce, with pesto sauce, with alfredo sauce, with veggies…and so on.
Here are few Variety Meals ideas for you:
Pasta Night
Casserole Night
Sandwich Night
Soup Night
Pizza Night
Salad Night
Potato Night
Rice Night
Taco Night
Curry Night
Cold Cereal Night (Another One of Ross’s favorites!)
Category Theme Nights
For the category theme nights, the genre of the food stays the same, but the base can change.
The example that we talked about in the into, Thai food on Thursday nights, is an example of this type of meal planning.
And within the theme of eating Thai food, on Thursday nights, there can be a log of variety. You could have Pad Thai, Pad See Ewe, Red Curry, Yellow Curry, Green Curry, Pineapple Curry, Pumpkin Curry, Curry Noodles, Thai Basil Stir Fry… you get the idea!
Thai Food Night
Italian Food Night
Asian Food Night
Indian Food Night
American Food Night
Ethnic Food Night
Comfort Food Night
Fried Food Night
Build-It Meals
Breakfast for Dinner
Picnic Food Night
Dips and Crackers/Chips
Different Protein Nights
If we did a specific protein night at our house, it would look like having a tofu, tempeh, or beans night. But you could also do this with meat.
With this type of theme night, the only thing that stays the same is the type of protein you choose to make.
Protein night Ideas:
Tofu Night
Tempeh Night
Beans Night
Chicken Night
Beef Night
Seafood Night
Seasonal Theme Nights
You may want to have 1- 3 nights of the week that change with the seasons (I wouldn’t recommend more than 3 nights for simplicity’s sake).
On these nights, you would choose one type of meals for spring (maybe salads) a different type for summer (like grilling), something different for Autumn (like soups) and something different for winter (possibly casseroles).
Seasonal Theme Night Ideas:
Tailgate Food
Grilling Food
Fair Food
Picnic Food
Soup Night
Salad Night
Sandwich Night
New Meal Night
We are foodies in our family. We enjoy talking about food, eating food, and trying new food.
My two-year-old usually asks me what we are having for supper several times throughout the day.
Because of this, I make a new meal every Wednesday night
But you could further narrow this down if you want to try new meals from your amazing-looking “someday I’ll eat this” Pinterest Board, you could use the cookbooks you already have, you could try new restaurants or just a new meal at your favorite restaurant where you always order the same thing!
New Meal from Pinterest
New Meal from Cookbooks
New Restaurant Night
New Type of Food Night
New Meal at your Favorite Restaurant Night
No-Cooking Nights
Everyone needs a night off! In my house, this is Leftover Night on Thursday nights.
If your family likes to go out to eat, write it on the calendar. It will be easier to cook at home more if you know that you get to go out to eat on a night or two during the week.
If you tend to grab fast food so much that it is hurting your budget, choose a fast food night so you can still enjoy it without doing it all the time.
Leftover Night
Out To Eat Night
Take Out Night
Fast Food Night
Family Choice Nights
There are several ways that you can do a family choice night. You can either have it be a family favorite, or you could assign a night of the week to a specific person.
If I had a “Ross’s Favorite Night” at our house, he would probably choose lasagna a lot mixed in with some Breakfast for Dinner Options and a few Cold Cereal for Dinner Nights. (Sorry, Ross, I’ll try to cook more lasagna!)
But this can be a fun way to get your children involved in the meal planning too! Give each child a night of the week, and every week they get to pick the meal for that night.
Family Favorites
Mom’s Choice Night
Dad’s Choice Night
Kid’s Choice Night
Grandma’s Best Recipes
Snack Food Theme Nights
We do snack food nights on Saturday nights at our house because we usually eat a large, late lunch and aren’t in the mood for a big dinner. And we often play board games together on Saturday nights.
If your family has a game night or a movie night every week, this is a great meal with easy set up and clean up!
Snack Food Night
Chips/Crackers and Dips
Popcorn and Smoothies
Cold Cereal Night
What Theme Nights are you going to use in your meal plan? Leave a comment and let me know!
Don’t forget to grab the meal planning workbook to organize your meal plan!
Are You Ready to Stop Feeling Stressed About Meal Planning?
In Set-it-and-Forget-it Meal Planning, you will learn how to plan your meals without overwhelm, spend less time in the kitchen, and feed your family healthy meals (while still having time for yourself!)
Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning walks you through my unique method for setting up your meal plan so you will never have to start from square one again!
Plus you will receive a Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning Template and email support from me anytime you have questions.
But why is there even so much hubbub about meal planning in the first place?
I mean, is there even a payoff for the time and energy that meal planning requires?
In this post, I am going to take a closer look at the pros and cons of meal planning and see if the benefits of meal planning truly outweigh the effort that it takes.
So here is a super honest look at meal planning, from someone who meal plans. A lot.
Meal Planning Pros
1) Meal Planning Saves Money
Purchasing food can be the sneakiest way for money to leave your bank account without you even knowing it.
It’s like your grocery money became a teenager and decided to go out to eat, even though you told it to stay home instead.
Between last minute trips to the grocery store to buy “one quick item,” and loading the family into the car to go out to eat for the third time this week because you don’t feel like cooking, your grocery budget can get out of control.
Meal Planning, and using your meal plan to prepare a grocery list (see number 2 below!) can save you so much money in the long run.
How much money will you save? That will depend on if you have been going out to eat for the majority of your meals instead of eating at home, or if you’ve been buying more food than you can eat at the grocery store.
We can feed our family of four people with massive appetites on a plant-based diet for between $100-$125 a week. When we go out to eat occasionally, we can easily spend $40-$50 per meal (I told you our kids are crazy big eaters, even our 18-month old needs her own plate now.)
That means, for the same amount of money, we could purchase 2-3 meals going out to eat, or 21 meals that we could eat at home!!
If you would like to see exactly how to set your monthly food budget, check out this post. And if you want to see how to reduce your grocery expenses, read 37 Ways to Save Money on Groceries.
Since we only purchase what we will eat in a week, it saves us money because we actually eat what we purchase.
Plus it prevents food from expiring in the pantry, from going bad in the fridge, or from getting lost at the bottom of the freezer.
The only exception is that we pick and freeze a lot of fresh fruit in the summer. But my rule is that the freezer to be completely empty by the time strawberry season rolls around so that I can fill it back up.
2) It Makes Grocery Shopping is Easier
I don’t know about you, but grocery shopping is my least favorite chore. (When I made My Simple Weekly Cleaning Schedule, I wrote grocery shopping down as one of the chores that I need to accomplish each week… because that’s exactly how I feel about it!)
If you are like my husband, who enjoys going up and down the isles looking for fun new things to try, this point may not seem like much for you. I, on the other hand, would meal plan for this reason alone: grocery shopping becomes infinitely more simple when you go with a plan in place.
The only catch to this one, is that you have to make the list using your meal plan, take the list with you when you leave the house, and use it at the grocery store.
Doing that tiny little bit of work ahead of time will save you time, money, and stress at the grocery store.
You won’t be wandering up and down every isle seeing if there is anything you forgot to write down; you won’t be buying something that you never end up using because you decide to go out to eat again; and you won’t be wondering if you need 3 loaves of bread or 2.
3) Meal Planning Saves You Time
Can I tell you a secret?
I don’t enjoy meal planning.
Phew, thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
But here’s the thing, if I don’t enjoy meal planning, why would I want to spend my precious time every single day deciding what to make before I can cook?
If you don’t plan your meals in advance, you are looking at spending 5-10 minutes before breakfast and lunch deciding what to make. Then you will probably spend another 10-20 minutes figuring out what to cook for dinner. That’s up to 40 minutes a day figuring out what food to eat.
FORTY MINUTES A DAY!!
I don’t know about you, but I can think of at least 12 other things that I would rather do with forty minutes a day.
4) It Can Help You Eat Healthier
Since meal planning will encourage you to eat at home more often, you will most likely be eating healthier.
I don’t think I need to convince you that eating out isn’t generally the healthiest choice. Obviously, this depends on what you eat when you go out, but as a general rule, the healthiest meals are made at home.
If you plan your meals ahead of time, you are setting yourself up for success if you are looking to eat a healthier diet.
5) Meal Planning Reduces Your Stress
If you struggle to choose a balanced meal to cook for your family every evening, it is probably stressful.
You may try to outsource that stress to your spouse, your best friend, the love of your life, by asking a simple question: “What would you like for dinner?”
To which they helpfully answer: “I don’t know.”
You respond with: “I don’t know how to make that,” and the search continues.
As it gets closer to dinner time you feel the pressure mounting. You have to get something together for your tiny humans to eat so that you can send them to bed and have a little downtime. If you don’t start soon, it will be a late supper which will consist of cranky kids and a tired you.
At this point, your significant other tries to be helpful and offers a suggestion: “You know what sounds good? Lasagna ”
Thanks, Sweetheart, that was helpful. I would have needed to start that hours ago.
This was my reality almost every night before I started meal planning. It stressed me out and made me frustrated.
Once, I said “Hello” to meal planning, I said “Goodbye” to a lot of stress.
6) It Can Help You Eat Your Leftovers
Throwing food away is not only frustrating, it wastes our time, money, and resources…yikes!
I think I’d rather hang on to all of those things.
When you meal plan, you willcan waste so much less food.
In our meal plan, we eat leftovers for lunch every day of the week, unless we don’t have any leftovers, then lunch is something simple, like a sandwich. In addition to eating leftovers for lunch every day, we also have leftovers every Thursday night.
And if our fridge is bursting at the seams with leftovers, then we also eat them on Tuesday night.
How do we have so many leftovers at our house? Simple, I double everything! It takes so little extra time and money to double a recipe and it gives your family so much more food!
I think the reason we struggle so much with the question “what’s for dinner?”, is that we have so many decisions to make every single day.
Do we need to get some toilet paper? Awesome, there are 24 varieties to choose from.
Do you like to use toothpaste? Great, another 87 choices for you to whittle down.
You’d like a healthy option for your family for dinner? Well, with the help of the internet, there are only 467,987,872 things that you can make!
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (Which reminds me, we also have too many choices for lettuce!)
Meal planning gives you three less decisions each day because you made them for yourself in advance.
That’s a good enough reason for me to keep menu planning right there!
8) Your Family Will Love It
We are foodies at our house. We generally plan our camping weekends around our meals and will take entire days to make fresh pasta even though we are well aware that you can purchase it at the store for almost nothing.
Often during breakfast, my oldest daughter will ask me what we are having for dinner. When Ross is on his lunch break or driving home from work he calls me and asks what we are having for dinner. And though my younger daughter is still a little young to ask, she shouts suggestions for everyone to hear as soon as she starts getting hungry (“Sloppy Joes,” “Lentil Soup,” “Cake,” etc.,)
The wonderful part about meal planning is that I already know the answer to the questions.
Maybe your family isn’t as into food as mine is, and maybe they won’t be as thrilled when you reveal the menu for the evening, but you can still use this to your advantage.
If anyone complains about what you have planned, just let them know that you’re sorry but it’s already written on the menu and you aren’t at liberty to change it.
9) Having Company Just Got Easier
I used to worry about what to make when company was coming over. I would try to find the perfect thing that my guests would love. And inevitably someone still wouldn’t like it.
Now I just stick with my meal plan. If I have someone coming over on a leftover day, I will just switch the menu with the night before or after.
That was easy!
Cons of Meal Planning:
1) Meal Planning Takes Time
There’s really no way around it. Unless you hire someone else to do this for you, Meal Planning is going to take some time.
I have found that the more meals I plan in one sitting, the less time it takes to decide on each meal.
I think there are a few reasons for this:
1. I don’t have to figure out which food I am in the mood for right now.
If I am deciding between making Burritos, Tacos, Nachos, Quesadillas, Enchiladas, or Fajitas for dinner tonight, I have to decide which one of these things sounds best to me right now.
But If I am planning my weekly dinner menu, I can have Burritos on Monday, Tacos on Tuesday, Nachos on Wednesday, Leftovers on Thursday, Quesadillas on Friday, Enchiladas on Saturday, and Fajitas on Sunday.
I went from deciding on one meal to getting to eat all of the six meals that sound good to me over the course of the week.
(Is anyone else wanting Mexican food right now!?)
2. It is easier for me to decide something for my future self.
I used to have a Pinterest board full of delicious-looking recipes that I hoped to try one day. The only problem was that “one day” never comes.
When I started meal planning, I decided that every Wednesday night was going to be “new recipe night” at our house.
I went through my boards and cookbooks and found everything that I wanted to try *someday* and wrote one down on every Wednesday in my calendar.
When that week would come, I would get the recipe out, write down the ingredients on my shopping list, and make the new recipe on Wednesday.
If I had waited until that day to decide what to make, I probably would have gone for the easiest recipe that featured ingredients that I already had on hand. But since I had made the decision in the past, it was easier for me to follow through on it.
2) Meal Planning Takes Energy
It takes mental energy to sit down and make decisions. And Meal Planning is all about making decisions.
I know, I know, who has time for more decisions?
Here’s the thing: just like buying in bulk can save you money, making decisions in bulk can save energy.
Once you are already in the decision-making mode, it is easier to keep making similar decisions.
So the question is how much energy would you like to use and how often? If you would like to use a little bit of energy for menu planning every day, that’s totally cool if it works for you and you are happy with it.
Or you can use slightly more energy once a week, or month, or 6 weeks…or year if you like to take things to the extreme as I do!
Then you can sit back and kick your feet up instead of scrambling around trying to decide what to make… unless of course, you’re a mom. Then you probably need to go take someone potty or help your children clean up their toys before dinner. But that still sounds way more fun to me than having to decide what to make for dinner!
When I’m making a decision I like to list out the pros and cons together to get a better idea of which list is greater, so here’s a quick recap for you:
In Set-it-and-Forget-it Meal Planning, you will learn how to
Create a Breakfast Rotation
Create a Lunch Rotation
Create a Snack Rotation
Choose Theme Nights
Create Rotations for Each Theme Night
Fill in Your Meal Planning Calendar
Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning walks you through my unique method for setting up your meal plan so you will never have to start from square one again!
Plus you will receive the Set-It-And-Forget-It Meal Planning Workbook and Spreadsheet and email support from me anytime you have questions.
