Meal planning is a must if your goal is to provide healthy
meals to your family. Everyone knows that healthy meal
planning should be incorporated into every meal, but the
reality is that we often don't have the time to organize
and prepare the recipe plan.
The last thing you want to do is go grocery shopping with
the healthy eating pyramid in mind and then prepare two or
more menus for the same meal simply to accommodate the
likes and dislikes of family members.
Also, serving unpopular, healthy meals is usually
counterproductive because family members will later eat
sweets, chips, soda, ice cream with topping and other junk
food in order to satisfy their craving for sugary treats.
The answer is to know the dislikes of your individual
family members and if possible omit those from your menu
planning. If that is not possible, compromise a little and
serve a low-fat, low sugar treats with the meal, like a
sugar free yogurt or applesauce.
Menu planning is a time consuming process that you might
not be able to fit into a busy schedule. If that's the
case, think about a menu planning service to customize a
four week menu plan that your whole family can enjoy.
To get started on your menu planning, let's look at 3 areas
that make the creative dinner planning process a little
easier.
Strategy #1 - Grouping the Days
Grouping the days is first deciding which evening meal is
going to be partial or total leftovers from the preceding
three evening meals. For example, if you choose Saturday
evening meal, plan Friday, Thursday and Wednesday with
appropriate healthy meals.
The easiest way to do that planning is simply figure how
much of the leftovers are going to be how much of the
Saturday meal. Very easy, for example if you want 3 pork
chops available on Saturday, Thursday cook the usual meal
amount plus 3.
Strategy #2 - Meal Pattern Rotation
Menu rotation is a proven creative menu planning technique.
The idea is to plan a good number of healthy meals for the
family, for example: 14 days of meals and then repeat the
meal plan cycle. You can add the number of days as your
time permits.
Now think of yourself as the coach of a sports team. You
have your basic plays and then you have new plays you want
to add. You may have to put some new players on the field
and take some players off the field. Here is the key: the
coach does not get rid of the player taken off the field
and you do not want to get rid of a meal removed from the
rotation.
Two reasons, one is the main dish probably was liked by the
family at some level, so it may just need to be tuned a
little, and secondly, when you have accumulated a number of
rotated items, you have at the least a set of weekly dinner
menus. One option is to reshuffle all the menu ideas and
prepare a new and expanded meal planner.
Strategy #3 - Appliance Timing Devices
Timed appliances are meal planning resources available to
you and can open new options for dinner planning.
For instance, the microwave oven is not only for heating
water, popping popcorn, and cooking frozen food. Fresh
vegetables such as a casserole or a combo dish of sweet
potatoes, apple slices all topped with cinnamon are two
possibilities that cook quickly in a microwave.
A timed oven is perfect to cook a roast while you are away
doing something entirely different than cooking. Likewise,
a timed rotisserie is perfect for chicken, ribs or a small
turkey.
A timed Crockpot can provide an option on meals such as pot
roast, stews, soups and the like.
The fun of menu planning is that there is no right way or
wrong way, as long as you provide your families with all
the required daily nutrients.
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Save time and money and be creative with healthy meals. Get
more tips on how you can create one-of-a-kind yummy healthy
meals your whole family will enjoy! Get more tips at
http://www.MenuPlanningCenter.com
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