The Secret to 5-Minute Meal Planning: Your Dinner Pick List & Retro-Planning
Less stress and more rest for mealtime.
Summertime.
Do you crave the breezy schedule?
The whimsy of more time?
Even summer meals have the aura of easy.
But do you find that somehow the familiar suppertime dilemma still sneaks up on you?
‘What’s for dinner?’ torments you as the clock ticks closer to 5pm?
May I help you prevent the stress of deciding what’s for dinner, from finding its way to your table?
Claim rest instead with a game plan.
Sometimes you need straight-up practical to bring more Peace to your table.
The Short Game: Your Dinner Pick List
A go-to Pick List of meals you already cook makes planning dinner much easier.
Rather than picking from the air what to make for dinner, or digging in the freezer for what lump of frozen you can get to the table on time, create a reliable list of familiar meals to pick from.
Sound silly, making a list of meal ideas you already cook?
It’s your starting point. But what a place of rest vs. stress to have a list to peruse and choose from.
Your list builds over time, and eliminates having to drum up a dinner idea on the spot.
And watch as a sense of order, rhythm, and structure naturally slips into your kitchen.
You do not need another detailed meal plan.
Dictating three meals a day with foods you do not usually eat
with no flexibility,
that requires a run to the grocery store for an ingredient or six,
and makes you feel like a failure after quitting the meal marathon four days later.
Please no.
Having all your decisions made for you sounds fantastic at the onset, but ‘they’ don’t know your family, your commitments, or your preferences.
You do.
Start where you are with a low-tech Dinner Pick List to set you up to plan your meals in 5 minutes a week.
How to Make Your Dinner Pick List
Take 3 minutes now to list your go-to dinners. Aim for at least five meals.
What are your family’s favorites?
What meals do you always have the ingredients for?
What supper do you default to when the turnaround time is tight?
What do you make when you have more time?
What is your usual potluck dish? Or a reliable meal for company?
If you have five meals listed, you have enough to fill dinners for this week!
2-Minute Meal Planning
Add these meals to your calendar for the next week, taking into consideration what you have going on each day.
Match the time you have with the time the meals take to prepare.
Done.
Like dinner.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Fill in the gaps with:
leftovers (night off from cooking - whoop!)
A grocery-store-grab-meal like, bagged salad, rotisserie chicken, and bread.
A planned purchased meal.
Odd, isn’t it that if you plan on buying it, not ‘give in’ to buy it, rest displaces guilt? Not that you should have guilt.
Double-batch part of one meal to start another, like in Planned-over Tasty Taco Casserole.
The Long Game: the Retro-Planner
Does meal planning still sound overwhelming to you?
Try retro-planning instead.
Remembering what you had for dinner last night is hard enough, let alone what you usually eat.
How to Use Retro-Planning to Make Future Planning Easier
In a non-judgmental way, start recording what you ate for dinner. Do this for a few weeks.
Transfer these meal ideas to your self-customized Dinner Pick List. You will be surprised by how many different meals you make!
Jump into 2-Minute Meal Planning above.
And you, my friend, have just freed up mind space for summer dreaming.
We all eat a meal and wonder why we haven’t had it in a while. We forget about it! Normal to do so.
Use your past meals to build future meal picks, to bring the rest back to your table.
Dinner Pick List and Retro-Planning Templates
There are endless templates and apps to help you with meal planning, but they can add to digital overwhelm. Start super simple.
Use your phone’s calendar or notes, paper agenda, whiteboard, bulletin board, or a list on your fridge. Wherever it is hard to miss.
And if you only make one of the meals you planned. Stand up and cheer! That is one more than last week.
Give yourself grace, especially if this is new for you. Like anything else, it takes many practices to master. You are finding your meal rhythm.
I’ve designed some simple templates for you:
My Dinner Pick List and My Retro-Planner. They are not more effective than your own calendar.
But they are pretty.
If you are a paid subscriber, look for your PDF in your exclusive email as a sideways hug of thanks.
What are your tips for planning dinner?
Please share! We are all listening.
We all eat, and all of us have to come up with an idea of what’s for dinner.
And if you find planning meals makes life a little more restful, please click a heart below in agreement.
A gentle reminder as you sit down to plan, God wants you to know,
He sees you, He hears you, He loves you.
Jane