We’ve all done it in trying to decide what to make for dinner that night, we go to Pinterest in hopes of finding the perfect recipe. Hours later and hundreds of pins relating to cinnamon rolls, puppies, nostalgia, and the perfect cookies we still don’t have a recipe for dinner. Then we ask ourselves, where did I go wrong?
The same especially is true for me when I’m attempting to meal plan for my next mass making week. Starting with a “I think I’ll see what looks good” attitude just doesn’t play out the way we want it to.
To avoid another Pinterest pitfall, here are some tips and tricks that I use myself before I begin searching for recipes:
- Calculate how many recipes I’m going to need. Am I stocking the freezer or am I looking for meals for that week? Do I want to include breakfasts, or just lunch and dinners?
- Determine how you want to cook. If it’s a busy week your best bet is to stick to crockpot recipes or one pan quick dinners with little to no prep. When stocking the freezer determine if it’s more thaw, heat, and eat or if you’re just interested in saving a bit of prep time.
- Stick to your plan. The easiest way for me to do this is to sort and save all of those recipes into categories that I frequently use to meal prep. The beauty of Pinterest is that you can create categories in each board for more organization. For instance, when I want to make soups I already have them categorized by type of meat so that if I want to make a lot of soups with chicken I have recipes ready to look at. Bypassing the search when I’m planning helps me save lots of time, that I’ve more than likely wasted when I’ve pinned out of boredom 🙂
The Frugal Steward 