Pick a day to meal plan
It's tough to please everyone's individual likes and dislikes, so why not get them involved in the meal planning? Even young children can get in on the fun!
We all need more face time with our family members. Everyone is off in their own little electronic world, so use meal planning as a reason to get together and do a family activity. Even the young members of the family are able to get in on the action!
Bring out your recipes, magazines and cookbooks gathering dust on your shelves and assign one to each family member. If they are too young to read and write, them help them out. Everything has pictures with it so the younger ones can make selections from looking at the pictures. If you don't have a kid's cookbook, you might look for a good one at the book store, to make it easier to them to contribute to the meal planning activity.
Give everyone a day of the week they are responsible for doing the meal planning. Have your schedule ready, if you have a lot of activities going on, so you can take that into consideration. There may be some days when you just have to grab take out. Have each family member right down recipes they are interested in, noting where they found it and what page number it was on. Then it's up to you if you want to take a vote between everyone on what recipes are picked, or just let the chosen recipes be accepted and tried. Be flexible and allow a hot dogs and mac 'n cheese day occasionally!
Once the recipes are chosen, have family members write down the recipe with the directions, so you can make a master list of the groceries you will need to purchase. Then call me, of course!!!
Remember you can skip a couple of days during the week, so you don't have too many leftovers. If you have ravenous teenagers in the household, then this is not a consideration.
When it is a family member's turn for their recipe to be made, invite them to help you. This is a good opportunity to teach the kids how to cook - a valuable life skill.
You can have a vote at meal's end to see how the recipe rated. Make any notes and use one of my organization tips for keeping winning recipes organized and close at hand.
Enjoy!
