Get into the habit of healthy meal planning with these simple tips for organising family meals.
Do you ever sit down to plan a week's meals for your family - and find yourself without a single idea in your head?
Healthy meal planning isn't really that difficult, and it's well worth getting the habit.
You'll save yourself time, effort and money, if you work out in advance what to cook, and shop ahead so you have everything you need.
You'll also be less likely to resort to using processed, fast foods because there's nothing else in the house. Follow my simple meal planner tips - they'll help make the job of healthy meal planning that much easier.
HEALTHY MEAL PLANNING: GETTING ORGANIZED
You'll find that planning five or six meals will be enough for most weeks. Make sure one meal is a dish that can be served on two days, with different accompaniments. On another night, you'll probably find yourself eating away from home, or using up leftovers.
Dishes that work well across several days include: - meat/tomato bolognaise-style sauce to serve with pasta or rice, or in shepherd's pie, lasagne
- ratatouille or similar vegetable stew, made from Mediterranean veg like aubergine, zucchini (courgette) and onion cooked in tomato. Good with grilled chicken, baked fish or served on its own with rice, topped with a poached egg
- make a batch of fish-pie filling, using cubed white and smoked fish to taste, simmered in a sauce made with milk or fish stock. Add seafood as well if you wish, also mushrooms or sweetcorn. Serve as a pie with a mashed potato topping, or else it makes a great pasta sauce.
- a roast chicken is a versatile dish, eaten hot one day and with the cold leftovers served with salad and baked potatoes, or made into other dishes like curries, spicy stews or pancake filling.
- a boiled gammon joint gives you delicious stock to use in ham and bean soup. Serve the hot bacon with parsley sauce and mashed potatoes, and use again over the following days in cold slices or diced for omelette fillings or pasta sauces.
It's useful to make your meal plan at the same stage of the week. Before you start, look through the fridge and see what's left in there from the previous week. You'll often find enough ingredients to make a pasta sauce or casserole, using food that otherwise would be wasted.
Make your family meal planner work for you. Try keeping a record of every meal you prepare for a week or two. You can use this list as a basis for future meal plans.
Organize your lists into types, so that you can see all your pasta or fish dishes at a glance. Try using a 3-ring binder, with dividers. When you discover a new dish that your family love, add it to your lists - otherwise, it's bound to be forgotten.
Sometimes, meals thrown together in a hurry from a few simple ingredients can be a great success. When that happens, write down what you made, and repeat the dish in future.
Collect recipes. Get them from friends, from the Internet (why not start here, with my easy healthy recipes), from books and magazines. If you try just one new recipe a week, you'll have added 50 to your repertoire by the end of the year.
Shop and cook with the freezer in mind. Yes, it's great to cook fresh food from scratch every night, but real life doesn't always allow you to do that. When you do have a bit of time, make a large quantity and freeze two or three servings for another time.
Build up your store cupboard and refrigerator stock of healthy standbys.
Canned pulses, rice, pasta, tomato passata, olives, frozen vegetables, dried herbs, spices, tuna and other fish - all of these can make the basis of a quick, simple meal to fit into your weekly meal planner.
Simple meal planning helps add variety to your diet. If you wait until it's nearly time to eat before you think about what to have, you're not likely to start experimenting. Plan ahead a little, and you can try a new recipe, a different vegetable, an unusual way of cooking chicken - and your diet will improve.
Include packed lunches in your plans - add a list of sandwich fillings to your menu planning lists, and try to ensure that lunches and evening meals use different foods.
HEALTHY MEAL PLANNING: WHAT TO COOK
Overall, you're looking for balance. In a typical week of healthy meal planning, include two vegetarian meals, two using fish, one meal with poultry, and one with red meat.
Serve plenty of vegetables at every meal. Cut down on servings of meat or fatty foods, and add bulk with another portion of vegetables. Make a side salad a regular part of your meals. There's no need to stick to lettuce and cucumber - add fruit segements, vegetable sticks and nuts for variety and good nutrition.
Aim for variety. Buy a wide range of fruits and vegetables in different colours.
For carbohydrates, serve potatoes one night, then pasta, pizza or bread, rice, cous cous or other grains on other nights.
Plan meals that use healthy cooking methods. Stir-frying, steaming, stewing or braising, oven baking are all good ways to cook food healthily.
You can include one 'indulgence' meal each week if you wish. This could be a meal out, or a take away meal like fish and chips or curry.
Once healthy meal planning is established as part of your routine, you'll find it becomes second nature. Gradually, you'll build up a whole range of home-made meals that you can cook quickly and easily, and which are much better for your health than ready-made supermarket meals.
