Solving Menu Plan Challenges

I am pleased to present a wonderful guest post from Tricia of Once a Month Mom. Tricia was a recent guest on our Blog Talk Radio Show- all about meal planning! If you missed it, you are welcome to catch the archive anytime here.

I recently had the privilege to be on Keeping it Centsible with Alyssa and Denise when they were talking about Meal Planning. It was a great show and I enjoyed getting to talk about meal planning and how we approach it one month at a time.

Prior to the show, Alyssa posed the question on Twitter “What are your biggest meal planning challenges?”. Many of you wrote in with challenges you experience on a daily basis. I thought it would be good to take a look at these from a Once A Month Mom point of view. Hopefully we can help you tackle some of your meal planning challenges!

1. My biggest challenge is actually sticking to the meal plan.
Sticking to a plan can be difficult; however, why you don’t stick to the meal plan is even more important. Is it because you run out of time, don’t know what to fix, or just don’t want to cook that evening? Whatever your reason, that can be the key to reaching success with your meal planning. For me, some of my biggest challenges for meal planning were having time after work to prepare the meal I desired, having the right ingredients on hand when I was ready to cook, and having the energy to fix the meal once dinner time arrived! These are all of the reasons that I moved to once-a-month cooking (also known as bulk cooking, freezer cooking, and power cooking).

2. My biggest challenge is I usually have to make 3 (sometimes 4) different meals. When can I just make 1 and you eat it or not?
True, making multiple meals for different family members can be time consuming and difficult. One of the ways that once-a-month cooking can help with this is that you have a variety of meals from which to choose. When you prepare the meals you could prepare them in smaller containers or pans and that way you could easily make several different dishes on the same evening, without all the extra preparation.

For example, on April’s menu is a No Fuss Chicken Cordon Bleu, simply make it in 2 loaf pans instead of an 8×8 pan. This way you can fix smaller portions. Kids won’t eat Cordon Bleu? That’s okay, you have chicken fingers in the freezer too. All members of the family now have something to eat and you didn’t spend several hours in the kitchen that evening preparing your meal.

3. My biggest challenge is finding something that all of us (5 soon to be 6) will eat . . .we all have different tastes.
There is a lot of variety in our once a month cooking menu. We develop the recipes with families and kids in mind. If you don’t like a particular dish or there is an ingredient in it that your child won’t eat, you can omit it. If you have different ideas about what should be for dinner, see challenge #1.

4. I can’t THINK of what to cook, I find great recipes & forget about them.
At Once A Month Mom we do all the thinking for you! We provide you with a monthly meal plan, grocery list, and instructions for making the meals on your cooking day. Need a meal for dinner tonight? Just go to the freezer and pick one from the 20-30 meals that you made! Do you have some great recipes you think we should do? Feel free to suggest them! We love trying out new things!

5. Changing the menu because I’m not in the mood for what I had planned and then I have to scour to find what I want.
I have to say this is one of my FAVORITE parts of once-a-month cooking! I can have lasagna on our menu for tonight’s dinner; if I don’t feel like lasagna? I just go to the freezer and pick from the other 7 types of meals that I have available. I LOVE it! There is almost always SOMETHING that I am in the mood to eat. I would also say that sometimes I am in the mood to eat a meal but not to cook it. The great part of this type of cooking is that I have already done all the cooking. All I need to do is warm up the dish that I need for the evening and dinner is served. No running to the grocery store.

6. Time to shop and cook if you’re a working mom. Also, buying too much and having waste, I hate when food goes bad before I can cook it!
Very recently I was a working woman too. I would plan my meals for the week, go grocery shopping and then proceed. Inevitably, I would end up with a day or two I was just too tired to cook. Or something would come up and we would have dinner with friends and I wouldn’t fix that meal. If there was produce or dairy involved they might go to waste which was SUPER frustrating. With once-a-month cooking, I rarely have that problem. I buy the produce and products that I need, I cook them all at once according to the menu recipes, and then I pull the meal out of the freezer when I need it. If we don’t end up eating at home? No problem, I just leave the meal in the freezer and have it another week. If it is already defrosted I save it for the next evening. There is A LOT less waste!

7. Just taking the time to sit down and do it. I sometimes run out of ideas – in a rut.
This one is easy if you follow Once A Month Mom because we do it for you! There are also a variety of meals planned to keep you out of that rut. For example, February’s menu focused on poultry (chicken and turkey), March’s on seafood (because of the Lenten season), and April’s ham (because of Easter). In addition to the highlighted meat there are also a variety of other menu options on each months menu. We give you the menu plan, you just shop and cook. That simple. No more ruts.

8. The menu, and just being tired after work. Too often it’s just too easy to go out.
Again, when I was working this was very much the case in our lives, except when I was doing monthly cooking. When I was tired after work or had a late meeting I would just call my husband and tell him to pull “X” meal out of the freezer and put it in the oven. By the time I got home the meal was ready and we didn’t have to eat an unhealthy meal or spend more money by going out to eat. It was a win-win situation for us!

9. Following through with my plan!
Believe it or not, Once A Month Mom can help you with this too! You HAVE to stick to your plan otherwise you have too much food left at the end of the month and no room to make the next month’s menu! I really have found that we stick to our meal plan more often because there is a need to reduce the food in the freezer for the next month’s menu. And I can’t, not make the meals for the next month! Not only because I am Once A Month Mom, but because I am anxious to try out the new recipes! It has helped us to make the decision not to eat out when we can stay at home and have a nice meal for a fraction of the cost.

But ultimately, sticking to your meal plan is up to you! Hopefully, if you have a variety of things to choose from, sticking to your plan will be much easier.

Whether you do Once A Month Mom menu cooking or simply are working to develop a weekly menu plan, I urge you to do it and stick with it! There will always be challenges; the key is to know what hurdles you might run into and develop solutions for avoiding them. I wish you luck with your personal menu planning and hope that you will give Once A Month Mom a trial run (it never hurts to try out new solutions)!

Bio: Tricia recently had her first child and is getting used to her new career as a stay-at-home mom in Ohio, where her family resides. She and her co-author, Cortney, are trying to show others how to be good stewards of their time and their money while still providing wholesome and nutritious meal options to their families. Her website, http://www.onceamonthmom.com, is dedicated to “making daily chores monthly memories” by providing monthly meal plans, grocery lists, instructions, recipes and more for families curious about once-a-month cooking or baby food.