5 Tips to Avoid the Weeknight Dinner Scramble

Photo by massdistraction

The following is a guest post from Erin of Coupon Cravings:

I never got serious about meal planning until I had my third child. With two kids, it wasn’t so tough to put them in the car and pick up take-out. But having to wrangle three kids was not for me, so meal planning became a necessity in order to hold onto my sanity if nothing else. So if you find yourself without a dinner plan at 5 p.m., take a look at these five tips to get your meal plan in order.

Take Inventory. The first step is to take stock of what you have on hand, focusing on perishable foods, like meats, vegetables and dairy. It’s nice to pick up fresh broccoli and sweet potatoes when they’re on sale, but you’re not saving any money when they spoil and you end up throwing them away. Check out a web site like SuperCook, which suggest recipes based on what you have in the house. I can’t say it serves up ideal recipes every time, but it is a good place to start.

Scour the Ads. When the grocery ads come out, take a look at what’s on sale, then do a quick coupon search to see if you can get any of these items for less. Add these items to your shopping list then search over 100,000 recipes at a site like ZipList that lets you do both in one place. As a bonus, ZipList lets you add ingredients for any recipe to your online shopping list with one click. Plus, the ZipList Recipe Clipper lets you clip and save all your favorites from anywhere across the web in a universal recipe box.

Get Inspiration. I like to search online recipe sites, but then some days I like to get inspired by what other people are cooking. Laura at I’m an Organizing Junkie sponsors Menu Plan Monday each week and bloggers link up their meal plans for the week. I love to see what other moms are cooking, and many times I make the same meals. You can even download a free menu planner.

Freeze a Meal or Two on the Weekends. Try to make and freeze at least one to two meals that you can serve during the week. Just spend a couple of hours on the weekend whipping up a casserole, meatloaf or chili, then freeze them. These are perfect for those weeknights when soccer practice and dance class keep you out of the kitchen at the dinner hour.

Plan for Leftover Meals. Like Beth shared a couple of weeks ago, I love “leftover” meals — and I’m not talking about eating the same exact dinner two nights in a row. One of my favorite cookbooks, Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites, has a section on Double-Duty Meals. These are meals in which you cook enough meat for two days, then prepare it a different way on each day. A family favorite is the Maple Glazed Pork Tenderloin that turns into Pork Fajitas on the second day. Delicious and so easy to make!

Do you have any good meal planning tips and suggestions? I’d love to hear what works for your family.

Erin Gifford is a working mom of four who blogs at Coupon Cravings. She also works for new online shopping list and recipe search service, ZipList, which will be rolling out free tools later this month to enable bloggers to integrate shopping lists into their web sites. She can found on Twitter at @eringifford.