Meal Plan Helpers: Simplify Your Meal Plan

Back in December I developed my first meal planning workshop. Over the course of two weekends, I hosted about 20 people who wanted to learn how to get consistent with meal planning. You can learn the basics here by grabbing my FREE Meal Planning Guide. My Meal Plan Helpers are a large part of what I teach and today I’m going to break them down for you.

What are Meal Helpers?

Meal Helpers are the four meals I add to my meal plan so I’m not in the kitchen for two hours every night. Yes, I love to cook. Personally I find making dinner cathartic 4 nights out of 7. Dinner is my time to be creative and show my family love though food. Corny? Yes. 100% truthful? YES!

However, I get stressed out and overwhelmed by dinner time too. Cooking every night of the week just isn’t realistic for my schedule so I utilize these four meal helpers to keep my weeks manageable.

Meal Plan Helpers

• ▪ Planned Take-Out
• ▪ Freezer Section Freezer Meals
• ▪ Breakfast for Dinner
• ▪ Rotisserie Chicken

Planned Take-Out

This truly is as it sounds, take-out that we planned. My family loves eating out once a week (or at least we try to stick to one dinner and one lunch per week) but I don’t like to use it as an emergency thing. Personally, I like to make my meal plan and pick which night we will have take-out ahead of time, This keeps my meal plan realistic and also saves money and food waste.

When I write my meal plan, I usually put take-out on Friday or Saturday night because it’s a fun way to end the week and something to look forward to. Now because we planned it, we didn’t buy groceries for a meal on Friday. So I’m not left with extra food that might go bad before we can use it. Instead, I bought groceries for six dinners and knew I would be using our restaurant budget for take-out one night. This is the system I recommend to my students and I urge you to give it a try.

If you’re trying to cut back and save money, you definitely don’t have to include a take-out night on your meal plan. However, I have found that lots of local restaurants near me offer really affordable deals that we can take advantage of when we’re trying to cut back.

Take-Out on a Budget Ideas

It just might require some reworking of the plan. Lots of restaurants near us offer “Kids Eat Free” on slower nights, usually Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday. That’s a great way to save $10-15 from your restaurant tab. Another thing we’ve seen a lot of is meal deals on slower nights. Our local pizza place does $10 large one-topping pizzas and it will definitely feed my family of four. So look around your area for those deals and see if you can eat out once a week on a budget.

Freezer Section Freezer Meals

Okay so if you’ve been a long time reader or viewer, you know that I love my FSFMs. Here are a list of my top 3 freezer section freezer meals to give you an idea of which ones we add to our meal plan weekly. Basically they can be as simple as a frozen pizza and bagged salad or as complex as burrito bowls using a lot of premade toppings. This is a great way to feed your family with little effort an time in the kitchen.

There are healthy options as well! My favorite being the Frontera Grill Skillets bags. They currently have five varieties that can be made in 10 minutes and turned into burrito bowls. Grab one of them, a bag of frozen cauliflower rice, container of fresh salsa and guacamole and Southwest bagged salad kit and you have yourself a very healthy meal! Don’t think you can’t eat healthy if you are taking some help from the store.

Breakfast for Dinner

The original meal helper, Brinner! Breakfast for dinner is such a classic but it bears repeating! Scrambling some eggs, toasting some bread and chopping up some fruit is a totally acceptable and nutritious dinner option. Plus, most kids love it! You can certainly make it a but more complex by making french toast, waffles or a breakfast casserole (Though that casserole is seriously super easy.) but you don’t have to!

I find that even serving scrambled eggs with bagels is enough to fancy it up for dinner. If you’re struggling to be consistent with meal planning, I urge you to add this meal helper to your plan. It’s simple, affordable and can be made in less than 15 minutes. Win win win!

Great Breakfast for Dinner Options:

• ▪ Scrambled eggs, toast and fruit
• ▪ French toast, bacon and fruit
• ▪ Pancakes, sausage and fruit
• ▪ Breakfast Casserole
• ▪ Breakfast Tacos

Rotisserie Chicken

Rotisserie chickens are the modern moms lifesaver. Delicious, nutritious and already cooked. What more could we ask for? I like rotisserie chickens because they fit into most people’s eating plans. They are Whole30 compliant, Keto-friendly, Paleo, Weight Watchers and general clean eating approved! The only people in my workshops who can’t use them are my vegans and vegetarians. Everyone else is good to go and it’s actually healthy.

You can certainly turn your chicken into something else like my BBQ Chicken Wraps or White Chicken Enchiladas but I like to keep it as is for the easiest dinner possible. I carve it up and serve it with mashed potatoes (homemade because I personally think they are easy to make) and a salad or steamed veggie. Easy peasy! Rotisserie chickens are a great dinner for grocery shopping day because you can grab one at the store, or have it delivered, and then keep it warm in your crockpot. (Just place in a crockpot with a 1/2 cup of water and turn on WARM until ready to serve.)

Keep it Simple

Meal plan helpers are here to keep your meal plan simple which keeps it doable. Over ambition kills meal planning! Use these meal plan helpers to keep your eye on the prize- consistent meal planning. Saving time and money by meal planning on a monthly or weekly basis.

If you need more in depth help with meal planning, check out my hot to meal plan post where I walk you through the entire process. If you’d like more personal help or you need more accountability to stay consistent, email me at taran at undomesticmom dot com with Meal Plan Help in the subject line and I can get you more information with how to work with me one-on-one.

Don;t forget to grab my FREE Meal Planning Guide no matter where you are in your meal planning journey because it’s chock full of great info and printables to keep you consistent!