Working Mom Meal Planning Routine

It's definitely taken some time to figure out a meal planning routine that works for our family, but I *think* we've arrived at the optimal routine so I thought I'd share it with all of  you in case some of you are looking for ideas on how to improve meal planning.

I think meal planning is challenging no matter what your household looks like, but it's extra challenging, in my opinion, for moms who work outside of the home. I'm gone about 50 hours a week between work and commuting, so I really need to make it as easy as possible to make dinner on week nights. I do 99% of the cooking in our house as it's just not Phil's thing (he grills and will do some basic things but it mostly falls on me). But we've made some adjustments since having Paul to make meal prep more equitable.

Here's what meal planning looks like in our house.

Step one: what's for dinner??

On Wednesday or Thursday night, we look at the weekly grocery ad from our local store to see what's on sale and then I page through my binder of recipes. Together we come up with 3-4 meals to make for the coming week. 3-4 meals is enough to get our family through the week as Paul doesn't each much of what we make and we usually have 2-3 servings of a meal left over to eat later in the week.

Pre-Paul, I pretty much always picked out the meals but since having Paul, I have asked Phil to help come up with meal ideas. The mental fatigue of coming up with meal ideas without someone's input was just too much for me! I've talked about this before, but I have a binder full of recipes, organized by course. I only put recipes in there that we tried and liked. The recipes are in plastic protectors so they don't get dirty. I love this approach to meal planning. I am such a tactile person when it comes to meal planning - using something electronic, like a google doc, would not work for me. But I know it works for others!

For this coming week, we decided to make Turkey Meatloaf, Cheesy Ham and Broccoli Rice Skillet, and Smoky Lentil and Potato Soup in the instant pot. The meatloaf and soup are tried and true recipes; the ham and broccoli skillet was a new recipe I got from Iowa Girl Eats One Pan Recipe post. We are trying several recipes from this post this fall as I'm all about easy one-pan recipes! The soup recipe yields a TON so that will be my lunches for most of the week. I usually bring lunch 4 days and let myself eat out one day/week.

Step two: grocery list and grocery shopping

Next I use the recipes to finish up our grocery shopping list, which we save in a shared iPhone note so that Phil and I can both add to it. Then Phil goes grocery shopping, usually on Saturday morning while we are at swimming lessons. Pre-Paul, I did the grocery shopping but now Phil has taken over this task which I LOVE.

Step three: prep-work planning

For the next step, I use the "Prep Dish" approach to meal planning. If you aren't familiar with pre-dish, it's a meal planning service. They send you the recipes, a grocery list and a 'task list' for the recipes. Having as much of the prep work done ahead of time makes it so much easier to get dinner on the table at a reasonable time. Pre-Paul I would do all the chopping the night I made a recipe but that just doesn't work anymore. So these days, I figure out what all needs to be chopped ahead of time. It's probably hard to read my writing, but I basically cut up all the vegetables/meat ahead of time.

Step four: do the work

Next up, I get to work chopping everything. I try not to do this during nap time as I would prefer to relax and do something I enjoy during nap time, like read. Phil is usually home when I do my prep work so he can help out with Paul but Paul tends to like to hang with me in the kitchen. When I did my prep work on Sunday, he took his kitchen toys (3 plastic containers and a wooden spoon) and took them out/put them back into the cupboard over and over and over again. He must have done it 50+ times! But hey - whatever entertains the toddler works for me!

I didn't keep track of how long I worked but it was probably less than an hour. During that time, I cut up the veggies and sausage for the soup (the lentil soup is vegetarian but we add sausage), chopped the broccoli and ham for the rice skillet, and cup the onions and chex cereal for the meatloaf in a small food processor (I use chex cereal in place of bread crumbs to make it GF). Later that day when the meat had thawed out, I mixed up the meatloaf and put it in a glass bowl. That way I just have to put it on a baking sheet, top it with the sauce, and put it in the oven.

It's so satisfying to see my glass containers full of chopped veggies/meat. My future self is very glad that my past self did all that prep work!

Step five: make dinner!

On Sunday night I made one of the 3 recipes - cheesy broccoli and ham skillet. I joked that this was a totally 90s mom kind of meal. But hey - it was easy and relatively healthy.

I started dinner at 5:20 and we all sat down to eat around 5:50. So it was truly a 30 minute meal. And the toddler actually ate some of this. Probably only 3 spoonfuls but I'll take what I can get. Next time I'll cut up the broccoli smaller so it's less detectable. He spit out the ham (Paul is not a fan of meat in general) and any large pieces of broccoli. But he did say 'yum' when he ate it so I guess it was somewhat successful!

How do you handle meal planning in your house? Do you fly by the seat of your pants or plan things out in detail like we do? Some day I won't have to plan things with such a level of detail but I think we are years away from that!!