The DINNER LIST: Your key to effortless meal planning

Creating and maintaining your own DINNER LIST is going to make meal planning, grocery shopping and meal preparation effortless!

What is a DINNER LIST? This is a curated list of 10-30 of your family’s favorite dinner recipes. Depending on how much you enjoy food/cooking and how much variety you desire from day to day/week to week will inform how many recipes you want on THE LIST. 10 is usually the minimum and I find it unusual that a family cooks more than 30 different meals on a regular basis.

1. Create your criteria: I suggest you create some criteria for this list that reflects your priorities and constraints. For example my constraints are:

1. Healthy. This is going to mean different things to different people but for me it means a balance of macronutrients and a large dose of micronutrients (usually in the form of vegetables)

2. Be prepared in less than 30 minutes

3. Ingredients that are readily available at my regular grocery store

4. Ingredients that fit in line with my family’s food budget

5. Enjoyed (in some form) by all members of my family

6. Works as leftovers

Only you can decide what your priorities and constraints are. Your criteria will probably differ from mine. Some common criteria include:

1. Simplicity (less than X ingredients)

2. Time (can be made in under X minutes)

3. Dietary constraints (can easily be adapted to be dairy free, gluten free, vegan, etc.)

Once you have decided on your criteria you can generate your list. Start with recipes that you have made many times and that you know your family enjoys. After this you may have enough recipes but if you feel like you would like more recipes to choose from (or you want to add more recipes from a certain cuisine), here are some ideas:

1. Ask your friends and family for their top 3 recipes. I also recommend including some of your most important criteria in your request. For example “Hi, I’m looking to try out some new dinner recipes and was wondering if you’d be willing to share a link or picture of your favorite recipe that is gluten free and can be made in under 30 minutes?”

2. Did you get a lot of recipes from your LIST from a specific cookbook or website? If so, chances are you will like other things in said cookbook or on said website. Puruse them for more recipes.

If you are looking to add more recipes, I encourage you to work with THE LIST you have now and wait to add any new recipes on the list until you have made them at least three times. You want to be sure these are keepers.

2. Create a physical recipe card for each recipe. It could be a lamiated sheet, a printed out copy in a page protector or a simple recipe written on a notecard. Doesn’t have to be fancy. Now that you have your list and have created a recipe card for each recipe you are well equipped when the time comes to meal plan.

3. Decide how far in advance you want to meal plan. Are you meal planning for the next few days, the next week or the next month?

4. Decide how many meals you want each recipe to provide. I personally calibrate each of my meals to last 3 meals. Do they always last 3 meals? No, but that is what I plan for. Sometimes we are really hungry at dinner time. Or other times we had unexpected (but welcome!) guests for dinner. It’s okay though, since I have the system in place and some really easy go to recipes when I’m short on time, its no big deal to do a meal on the fly. You will also have to consider your families tolerance for leftovers. I personally love having leftovers because most of the heavy lifting for dinner preparation is done. Oftentimes I will chop veggies or throw together a salad but that is much easier, both physically and mentally, than deciding what to make and preparing a meal from scratch each night.

Typically I plan to make 2 recipes per week that will each last 3 meals. To fill out the week we will either go out, do something really easy for dinner (breakfast for dinner, ramen noodles, order out pizza), or we may have dinnner plans with another family. A week may look like:

Sunday: Recipe 1

Monday: Recipe 2

Tuesday: Recipe 1 leftovers

Wednesday: Recipe 2 leftovers

Thursday: Recipe 1 leftovers

Friday: Recipe 2 leftovers

Saturday: something super easy, going out or dinner with friends at their place

5. Decide on your meals and generate your grocery list. When you sit down to meal plan, take out your recipe cards and physically flip through them. Select what you’d like to prepare. With your recipe card in hand, create your grocery list. I have a shared grocery list with my husband in Apple Notes. We also add things to this list as we run out (such as eggs, butter, etc) so it is mostly ready to go at a moments notice (we do a last minute peruse through the fridge to see if we need to replenish anything else we use on a regular basis).

6. Execute. Prepare your meals. Store your leftovers. I should say I have never had a meal go bad in the 5 days it may be stored in the fridge, but if you are concerned about this you can freeze the portions that will freeze well to extend its life. Just be sure to put it in the refridgerator the day before so it will have time to defrost.

That’s it! My proven method to make meal planning effortless.

One other side note is that this method makes it very easy to meal plan with a spouse, roommate or partner. Typically I will pick one of the meals for the week and my husband will pick the other. I just hand him the stack of recipes cards from THE LIST after I’ve picked my recipe out for the week or vice versa. It always takes us less than 10 minutes to meal plan and add items to our grocery list.

Also, don’t feel restricted by your constraints, they are meant to be guidelines, not rules (and besides, rules are made to be broken :). I have one recipe that uses a few ingredients that we can only get at our local asian market (or online) but since I love it so much (or since my husband loves it so much) he’s willing to make a special trip to that store once in a while to replenish our stock (these are shelf stable ingredients, if it’s an unusual produce item that makes it a little trickier).

Finally, there will be some maintenance with your LIST. That is normal. As time goes on, as the seasons change, so will your tastes (and probably your constraints and priorities, too). Some recipes will drop off and you will want to add fresh, new recipes. But now you are equipped with a proven meal planning system that can easily be adapted to serve anyone.

One more thing: THE DINNER LIST is your families regular dinner recipes. It does not need to include special dinner recipes made for special occassions, such as holidays. And just because a recipe is not on THE DINNER LIST doesn’t mean you can’t make it. These guidelines are meant to serve you so make it work for you.

Happy meal planning!

P.S. I’m so curious what your family’s top three dinner recipes are! Would you be willing to comment with your favorite dinner recipes and a link to the recipe? Can’t wait to see these!