How Do You Simplify Meals?!

This method takes a lot of preparation work, but then it’s easy to implement.

Step 1 – Go through your recipe cards and books and find 14 DINNER recipes for each season (a total of 56 for summer, fall, winter, and spring). Try to make sure the ingredients are seasonal, and therefore easy to get and less expensive. Also, make sure your family really likes them, since you’ll be eating them a lot. If you don’t have enough recipes, you may have to experiment for a few weeks.

Step 2 – Group the recipes in 7s, trying to keep recipes with similar ingredients together. This cuts down on the variety of ingredients you have to buy each week.

Step 3 – Assign each recipe in each group of 7 to a day of the week. You’ll have 8 Mondays, 8 Tuesdays, etc.

Step 4 – Put together a shopping list for each week’s-worth of dinners based on your selected recipe cards. You can take these with your other lists, altering them based on what you still have plenty of, etc.

For each season, you will use the 14 assigned recipes in rotation. Either you can use them every other week, or for two weeks at a time before alternating. Since only 2 recipes are assigned to each day of the week per season, this gives you a little variety without the pressure of being creative. And by the time you’re getting sick of those 14, the seasons will change and so will the recipes in rotation. (I think of a season as 3 months, so it’s by the calendar rather than the weather, as a general rule.)

To make allowances for influxes of certain varieties of foods, leave lunches a little open-ended. In summer, you may get a big pile of zucchinis from a neighbor. Or maybe you’ll get a couple of loaves of pumpkin bread from a friend in the Fall. If those food items aren’t included in your dinner recipes, you can use them for lunches or breakfasts.

I generally only have 3 or 4 things I’ll make for breakfast or lunch unless, like I mentioned, we get a windfall of something. Right now I have a ton of broccoli, milk, and eggs from my animals and neighbors, so we eat a lot of those for breakfast – frittatas and such.

If you have a lot of recipes you still want to use, assign different ones for next year. You can also use them for special occasions like guests, holidays, birthdays, etc. Besides, it’s nice to keep some special recipes special. 🙂

The recipe book ‘Saving Dinner’ by Leanne Ely has helped me. It is written by seasons, so the recipes have the produce you would expect to be in season. Then it is broken down into weeks, 8 per season. Each week has 6 dinner recipes, and one is a crock-pot recipe. Each recipe is for 6 servings, so you can easily double if you need to, or want to freeze a meal. Nutritional information is included. Best of all, there is a shopping list for each week!! I quickly go through the list and put a small pencil check by what I already have on hand.

Another way I simplify meal plans is to repeat versatile meals weekly. For example: pasta night – different pasta, sauces, meats, and cheeses = lots of options. We also enjoy homemade pizza weekly, topped with whatever we have on hand.