Organized Meal Planning: Recipes, Shopping Lists, and More

This blog post is the fifth in a series of posts designed to teach you how to meal plan during times of crisis and in your every day life (post-coronavirus). If there was ever a time to consider practicing the Art of Organized Meal Planning–it’s now.

We eat every day–many times a day. When we’re not eating, most of us are probably thinking about food. When I dream about food, those dreams usually consist of mouth-watering meals and decadent desserts that I have not shopped for, prepared, or cleaned up after. When I need to think about food, it’s more like what I’ll be cooking every night for a week, what produce is on sale at my local market, and what recipe can successfully use up the leftovers in my fridge.

If I chose to keep all that cooking, recipe, and shopping list knowledge in my head, my brain would probably explode!

As I mentioned in my first post in this Organized Meal Planning series, it’s important that you use your brain for generating ideas–not as a storage device. Planning out your meals on paper or a digital device takes the everyday decision making out of your brain and places it outside of your head. This ‘write-it-down’ system is especially helpful if you’re in charge of feeding a family or you have food-related needs to consider such as food allergies, diabetes, or a low-sodium diet. Even if you’re only in charge of feeding yourself, it’s still a worthy idea to write down the food-related knowledge you need to reference on a daily or weekly basis.

For the purpose of meal planning, I’d like to discuss three types of meal planning knowledge to be organized:

Shopping Knowledge
Recipe Knowledge
Planning Knowledge

Shopping Knowledge

A lot has to happen before walking into a supermarket. We need to think about what foods we like to eat and when we want to eat them. We need to see if those foods are in our pantry and take a close look at what foods are languishing in the back of our fridge. How can we keep all of this information from turning into a food knowledge jumble?

Lists, lists, and more lists!

Lists

Why do people use lists?

Lists:
• help us to remember things
• declutter our brains
• reduce anxiety
• bring order and organization to our efforts (including meal planning)

What are some types of lists that would help take Shopping Knowledge out of your head?

• What I’ll Be Cooking this Week list (7 days of dinners or whatever # of days works for you)
• What I Need to Buy Next Time I Go to Trader Joe’s list
• What’s on Sale at Whole Foods this Week list

And the Big Daddy list: The Everything-I-Need-to-Buy-for-the-Week-at-the-Supermarket Shopping List

I would advise against trying to remember everything you need to buy when you head to the supermarket–even if it’s just a few items. Write them down on paper or in your phone–your preference. This is not the time to be testing your memory. Creating lists will keep you organized and ready to shop. The fewer trips you need to take to a supermarket, the better–virus or no virus!

Recipe Knowledge

I have been cooking for many years and have collected more than my share of recipes. No matter how often I’ve cooked certain meals, I still haven’t completely memorized any of them. I always refer to a recipe when I cook. Here are three ways I keep my recipe knowledge organized:

Paper recipes

Grandma’s handwritten apple pie recipe, a recipe ripped out of a magazine, and a print-out of your favorite Julia Child recipe all need a home–a place ‘to live’ while waiting to be used. In the organizing world, we call this place to live a ‘container.’ A container can be anything from a ziplock bag to a basket to a bin. Since printed recipes are flat, storing them in a ‘container’ that organizes paper is a smart idea. A few examples:

• A two pocket folder if you don’t have many paper recipes
• A poly paper sorter for a few different recipes across many categories
• A recipe box for recipes written on index cards
• A binder with plastic sleeves for many recipes across a variety of categories

It’s time to cook! Take the recipe out, use it, then return it back to it’s folder, sorter, box, or binder. Next time you’re planning to make Grandma’s apple pie, you’ll know exactly where to find the recipe.

Cookbooks with post-its

One would think that the abundance of recipes found on the internet would eliminate the need for the traditional cookbook, but people still buy and use cookbooks. I have a bunch and reference them often. For quick and easy retrieval of your favorite recipes, use post-its to mark the pages you wish to refer back to. No need to search the index or table of contents every time–you’ve got the page and recipe marked off. Paper post-its work perfectly, but if you’d like something sturdier, try writeable tabs that can be repositioned.

Pinterest

OMG, Pinterest. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

When I first started using Pinterest, I mostly looked for and curated articles about organizing. Then, I noticed there were also recipes appearing in my Pinterest feed. Lots of recipes. Recipes for family dinners, holidays, food allergies, school lunches, and more.

Early on in my admiration for Pinterest, I realized that I could create ‘Boards’ not just for topics in organizing, but also for the recipes I thought might work for me and my family. It was then that I realized Pinterest could be a valuable recipe organizing tool. At first, my Pinterest recipe board titles were pretty vague such as “Recipes – tried” and ‘Recipes – haven’t tried yet.” Now, the titles are more specific which makes it quicker and easier to find the recipe I’m looking for.

Part of the beauty of using Pinterest to organize recipes is that the recipes you want to save don’t always have to come from the Pinterest platform. Let’s say you just read an article on BuzzFeed about 5-ingredient dinners or you just watched a show on the Food Network and wish to save one of the recipes without printing it out. Most recipes found online have a ‘Pin It’ button. Click the ‘Pin It’ button or hover over and click on the main image for a clickable Pinterest logo to appear. This will prompt Pinterest to open and ask you what board you’d like to save the article/recipe to (If you have a Pinterest account, try it out on the graphic at the top of this post…).

If you appreciate Pinterest even half as much as I do, I think you’ll find it to be a fairly effortless way to organize recipes you discover online and on Pinterest.

Planning Knowledge

Meal planning takes more time and effort than most realize. Here are a few ways to keep all of your meal planning knowledge organized and ready when you are:

Evernote

Much like the above-mentioned Pinterest, I have the same feelings of love and affection for Evernote. It’s a note-taking app that stores every piece of information you could ever need to keep track of and retrieve for yourself or others. Before I started using Evernote, my brain was a whirling dervish of details and data and my surfaces were dotted (more like–covered) with post-it notes.

How has Evernote revolutionized the way I organize my meal planning knowledge? Two main ways…

• Everyday dinners
• Holiday meals

Everyday dinners
I have about 30-40 different meals I make for dinner and rotate them over a series of 4-6 weeks. Keeping a list of them in Evernote frees up space in my brain. Organizing the meals by categories that are helpful and meaningful to me cuts down on the time spent thinking about what to cook on a particular day. One category is food type (poultry, meat, vegetarian), one category has to do with occasions (easy meals for busy afternoons with kids) and one category is for the food allergies we monitor in our household (meals with no allergens, meals with one allergen, etc.). When I’m meal planning dinners for the week, I open this file and my choices based on my family’s schedule and what’s on sale at the market are right in front of me.

Insert *sigh of relief* here…

Holiday Meals
Since we renovated our home over four years ago, we have taken on the hosting of more holiday meals. All of my notes, links to recipes, seating arrangements, and shopping lists are in Evernote. They are listed individually by holiday by year with a post-mortem included so I have a note of what worked and what didn’t. This has made hosting the holidays infinitely easier. No more trying to remember how many pounds of chicken I bought for twenty people. No more wondering what recipe I used for the Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole. It’s all in Evernote.

Insert a ‘happy holidays’ *sigh of relief* here…

Meal Planning Apps

Have you ever considered using a meal planning app? There are meal planning apps for families, for those with dietary restrictions, those who need a little help in the kitchen, and those who wish to connect with food bloggers and ‘foodies.’ If you think a meal planning app will help keep you organized, check out the information in the articles below. You just may find one that works for you!

The 8 Best Meal Planning Apps of 2020.
The Best Meal Planning Apps to Download Right Now
10 Meal Planning Apps You Need to Have to Get Healthier Easily

Meal planning notebook

I’ve been meal planning and cooking for my family for years. I know what dinners my family enjoys (they’re all listed in Evernote!) But, like I’ve said above–I can’t hold the list of dinners I cooked last week or last month all in my head. I don’t always remember the last time I made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner or how many times we did ‘take-out’ in a month. We are a food allergy household and I find it helpful to know what I’ve served for dinner and when.

That’s where my meal planning notebook comes in handy. Since the beginning of coronavirus lockdown, I started using a spiral notebook to track what I cooked for dinner. I wrote the days of the week down the left side of the page and next to each day, jotted down what I cooked for dinner that night. At this point, I have pages and pages of what I’ve made for dinner for the past five months. Having this information at my fingertips has saved me time and mental energy at meal planning and list-making time. As I plan meals for the week ahead, all I have to do is turn back a few pages to see what I’ve prepared and when I’ve served it. This has made meal planning so much simpler for me at this time. I appreciate the fact that my brain has room to think about what’s most important right now–staying safe.

Ready to make lists, take inventory, and plan for shopping and eating? I know you are!

What shopping, recipe, and food planning knowledge will you take out of your head and organize today?

---

Categories: Basic Organizing Principles, Helpful Organizing Tips, Kitchen, refrigerator