5 Delicious Days of Simple Meal Planning Busy Moms Can Use
If it’s meal planning busy moms need, then you can’t be making a new recipe every meal!
Meal Planning Busy Moms
We have over complicated cooking. Every meal is lots of dishes and lots of time, and the food industry has tricked us into thinking it is too much work! I once had a spreadsheet that had specific recipes for each week of the year based on seasonal produce and a rotation of proteins, so I get it. But you know what? Complicated recipes make eating good food just that: complicated.
Good food doesn’t have to be complicated! When I realized that my detailed, “perfect” spreadsheet wasn’t working, I simplified dozens of recipes into one template, but I realized that I could simplify even more than that. All I wanted was delicious nutrition. I got nutrition by removing pretty much all processed foods from my house and focusing on getting protein, produce, whole grains, and healthy fat-based sauces. After that, I realized that butter, salt, and pepper was all I needed to make most things taste good! My food tasted better and my body felt better.
I know the idea sounds great, but there are so many ideas that just don’t work the way they should (ex. my perfect meal plan sheet!). This post was not planned when I started taking pictures (I was just trying to build up a log for content). In fact, this particular week was part of a challenge I was doing to see how long I could go without grocery shopping, and I was on week six! Despite these limitations though, this post will show you how well we ate using this system, and show you a glimpse of what it looks like in action. Hopefully, it will convince you to simplify as well!
This post is will show you the the simple approach to meal planning busy moms need.
Steps for Meal Planning Busy Moms
The idea is simple. Each meal needs four things to be nutritious and filling: protein, produce, grain, and sauce. (If you want to learn more about the core elements of a meal, check out THIS POST 🙂 You don’t need to come up with a long list though! Just a few of these recombine these elements can be combined in different ways to make a variety of meals. The plan looks like this:
- Make a list of three to four proteins, produce items, grains, and sauces that you have in the house. (I use the chart below)
- Choose one for each category for each meal.
- Every night, make choose one thing to make from scratch. It could be as simple as rice, or as complicated as bolognese!
| Protein | Produce | Grain | Sauce |
{Related Post: How to Quickly Make a Nutritious Dinner}
Example Week for Meal Planning Busy Moms
Let me show you how it looks in action! Each day has a chart of the foods on hand. To make it as obvious as possible for you, the highlighted foods are the ones used for dinner and the crossed out foods are the ones that were used up.
{Related Post: How to Use the 8 Elements of a Meal to Create Delicious Everyday Meals}
Day 1: Monday
Lunch: charcuterie Board
Apples, cheese sticks, crackers
The week started with a crazy morning, so lunch was charcuterie style! I have a 5 yr old, so we do this a lot more often then we probably will when I have teenagers!
Dinner: Fancy Mac’n Cheese
Pasta, beef, peas, cheese sauce
I feel like the best way to quickly elevate a meal is with a good sauce, so I have been working on my bechamel-based sauces. Bechamel sounds fancy, but it is pretty much milk that has been thickened by flour toasted in melted butter. It’s a great base because you can flavor it a variety of ways to make different dishes! Today, we melted some grated cheddar in it to make a cheese sauce.
We heated up the beef in a pan (does anyone else think that microwaved meat gets a weird texture?) and heated the peas and pasta in the microwave while making the sauce in a little sauce pot.
| Protein | Produce | Grain | Sauce |
| Frozen Peas | CHEESE SAUCE | ||
| Canned Refried Beans | (Growing Sprouts) | Rice | Jarred Salsa |
| Shredded Cheddar | Sauerkraut | Masa Harina | Plain Yogurt |
| Eggs | Canned Green Beans |
Day 2: Tuesday
Lunch: Grain Bowl
rice, fried egg, sauerkraut, sesame oil/seeds
This is one of of my go-to comfort foods. The egg fries while I reheat the rice and add some homemade sauerkraut, then I top it with the egg, drizzle it with a little sesame oil and sesame seeds, and cut into the runny yolk to coat the rice in it’s yummy sauce.
Dinner: Quesadillas
Tortillas, Refried Beans, Cheese, Sprouts, Salsa, YogurT
This particular day, I cooked my tortillas on a big skillet we usually use for pancakes. When the tortilla was done, I would spread refried beans on it, sprinkle it with cheese, top it with a second tortilla, and put it back on the pan to crisp. To serve, I like to load on the toppings and sauces, which means I have to eat it with a fork, but it is worth it 🙂
I love sprouts because they are an easy way to get fresh food without going to the grocery store! We are moving soon and need to use up our food, so had I skipped my monthly grocery run. As you can imagine, we were pretty much down to carrots, apples, and frozen/canned foods for produce, and I was craving something more fresh. Lentil sprouts usually take me about three days and just need to be rinsed in the morning and evening, so it’s a lot faster than a lettuce garden!
Masa harina is also great to keep on hand for fresh tortillas! We used to get the common flour tortillas at the grocery store, then we got the uncooked ones, and now we make them ourselves. They are naturally more nutrient-dense than the store tortillas, and masa harina just needs to be mixed with warm water before being rolled into balls that are squished flat and cooked in about one minute. It can get a little tedious doing them one by one, but, once you’ve gotten used to fresh tortillas, it’s hard to go back!
| Protein | Produce | Grain | Sauce |
| Uncooked Ground Beef | Frozen Peas | Flour | |
| Sprouts | Rice | Jarred Salsa | |
| Shredded Cheddar | TORTILLAS | Plain Yogurt | |
| Eggs | Canned Green Beans |
Day 3: Wednesday
Lunch: Loaded Sweet Potatoes
sweeet potatoes, refried beans, cheese Sauce
Frozen sweet potatoes are underrated! Microwaved for four minutes, and done. I then just dumped them in a bowl and topped them with leftover refried beans and some cheese sauce. The sweet potatoes were so warm that I let them heat up the beans and sauce instead of microwaving it again.
Dinner: Grain Bowl
rice, ground beef, sprouts, cheese Sauce, dried tortillas
The cheese sauce had gotten pretty thick in the fridge, and I was in the mood for nacho-vibes, so I mixed in a little water and warmed it up in the microwave while I browned the beef with some salt and pepper in a big pan.
My “dried” tortillas were more forgotten-and-got-stale tortillas, so the texture wasn’t perfect, but I still chopped them up to add to my bowl. I still appreciated the crunch!
| Protein | Produce | Grain | Sauce |
| GROUND BEEF | Frozen Peas | Flour | |
| Sprouts | Rice | Jarred Salsa | |
| Shredded Cheddar | Jarred Bell Peppers | Plain Yogurt | |
| Eggs | Canned Green Beans | Defrosting Hummus |
Day 4: THursday
Lunch: Taco Bowl
rice, ground beef, canned peppers, salsa, yogurt
This was a quick meal, where I microwaved the rice and beef, and just topped it with salsa, plain greek yogurt, and part of a can of peppers and onions I had gotten from the farmer’s market.
(I am not a fan of having more dairy products in the fridge than necessary since most of them go bad so quickly, so our family usually gets its tang from plain greek yogurt instead of sour cream.)
Dinner: Sausage Gravy Bowl
rice, sausage gravy, canned green beans, slivered almonds
As I mentioned for Monday, I have been working on my bechamel-based sauces, and today, we used some sausage I had defrosted instead of butter in the roux to make a sausage gravy!
While that was thickening, I heated up some canned green beans with butter, salt, and pepper, and then I added the rice in with them to warm up. Was it in pretty layers? No. Did it still taste delicious? Yes!
Note: Big pans are better for reheating because the food can spread out more, so it heats up quicker!
| Protein | Produce | Grain | Sauce |
| Frozen Peas | Flour | SAUSAGE GRAVY | |
| Canned Tuna | Sprouts | Jarred Salsa | |
| Shredded Cheddar | Jarred Bell Peppers | Masa Harina | Plain Yogurt |
| Eggs | Canned Green Beans | Hummus |
Day 5: Friday
Lunch: Hummus Board
Carrots, hummus, crackers
I like a lot of hummus with each bite, so I make big batches and freeze them. This day I used a jar I had taken from the freezer a few days before and squeezed on some extra lemon. Especially since we use dried chickpeas, this makes hummus super cheap!
Dinner: Biscuits and gravy
biscuits, sausage gravy, peas
For the biscuits, we mixed the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) together, grated in frozen butter, tossed it together, mixed in the milk, and just rolled it out and folded it again a few times before cutting them in squares and baking them.
While those were cooking, the sausage gravy was warmed up in a small pot with a little extra milk, and we microwaved the peas in a bowl covered with water (I just use a fork to stop the peas from falling out while draining them).
I definitely added more gravy after taking this picture, but it was one of my favorite meals this week!
| Protein | Produce | Grain | Sauce |
| Defrosting Mexican Pork | Frozen Peas | BISCUITS | Sausage gravy |
| Canned Tuna | Sprouts | Rice | Jarred Salsa |
| Shredded Cheddar | Jarred Bell Peppers | Masa Harina | Plain Yogurt |
| Eggs | Canned Green Beans | Hummus |
Day 6: Saturday
I know, I only promised 5 days of meals! That’s because I only really cook from scratch five days a week. One day a week, we usually go out to eat for a late lunch and just have a snack in the evening. Most places we go have entrees that last two meals, such as Chipotle or Panda Express, or have bottomless appetizers that we fill up on so we can eat the entree later at home, like Texas Roadhouse or Olive Garden.
Day 7: Sunday
Sundays are usually reset days! The way timing usually works out with church, we end up doing brunch and then a charcuterie style “lunner” (lunch/dinner) that features a lot of leftovers, including produce and dips.
