Simple Meal Planning | Spring Edition
Stop wondering what’s for dinner each night with my simple meal planning for spring download. Each night of the week has a theme with several options to keep your rotation fresh and different.
Who here hates—no, dreads—the daily quandary of “what’s for dinner” saga? Trust me, I shot my hand up first! Sometimes I get stuck in such a rut, I tell ya. Not anymore. With a simple meal planning strategy that changes with the seasons, I bring you my spring edition to get you out of the winter blues and into some fresh ideas.
Meal Planning Around Themes and Seasons
This is key to keeping my sanity. I’m here for ya, fellow mama. I’ve been there. I don’t want to see you there.
One way I keep things a little more exciting while keeping the health of my family in mind is purchasing food in season. This also is easy on the budget. Eating in season I believe is one of God’s many blessings in our lives. I’m pretty sure He knows what He’s doing. Way more than I ever could for sure. Proverbs tells us that wisdom begins from knowing the Lord.
With spring I think of fresh, green, new life. A quick internet search tells me what’s in season where I live. It also tells me what to buy at the grocery store that is the best value for this time of year.
Next I assign a theme for each day of the week. It’s so much easier to plan meals when I have a starting point like this.
Then I apply my family’s favorite meals to fit in each theme. Typically we’ll have several that fit in each category. That enables me to rotate through for several weeks, adding variety to the menu while avoiding monotony.
Video for spring menu planning
Simple Meal Planning—How It Works
I start by thinking about all the food that is in season and at the market or grocery store. Fresh greens, herbs, green onions, new potatoes, radishes, asparagus, maybe even some snap peas I’m growing in the garden, or perennial sorrel that I planted and has sprung new life again.
Oh, and if you raise pastured chickens, hooray! Because they’ve started laying again with what seems to be a vengeance. Take advantage!
Each day is assigned a theme like in my post about meal planning Summer Edition. If you haven’t seen that yet, I made a free printable download that you can use to help you with some ideas around themes like Tuscan Tuesday and Sheet Pan Thursday.
So naturally I created another printable download for this spring edition. The themes are pretty much the same, with a little more bend toward spring. I give you some general ideas for each day’s theme to get your creativity flowing and so you can customize your meal plan to what your people like to eat.
You can find this Simple Meal Planning Spring Edition below. Just enter your email in the box and I’ll send it to you right away.
Tips for Meal Planning:
- Know what’s in season for your area. A quick web search will tell you.
- Only buy and prepare foods that your people like. Sure, it’s okay to try new things, but always keep the faves in rotation.
- Using themed days will give you an abundance of ideas to work with and variety to keep monotony at bay.
- Get the family involved! Ask for input and get their help whenever possible. Kids who have a hand in preparing food for the family give them a sense of accomplishment, pride, and ownership. In my experience kids will actually eat and enjoy what they’ve helped put on the table!
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Simple Meal Planning with Spring Menu Ideas
After you’ve polled your family for their favorite foods to eat, and figured out what’s in season for your area, it’s easy to put together a meal plan following the themes for each day of the week. Using the ideas from your family, knowing the flavors and textures they prefer, it’s easy to figure out dinner plans.
Here’s a list of themes and ideas we use as an example.
- Mondays—soups, salads, or slow/pressure cooker meals
- Tuscan Tuesday (Italian) or Taco Tuesday (Mexican)—lasagna, pasta salad, spaghetti, taco salad, burritos, mexi bowls
- Wacky Wednesdays—brinner (breakfast for dinner) or ice cream filled crepes, etc.; green eggs and ham, something really wacky.
- Thursdays—skillet meal or sheet pan dinner (pick a protein, veg, and potato, season, and roast in oven)
- Fridays—always and forever will pizza/movie night!
- Saturdays—grill night: think hot dogs, burgers, brats, steak, etc.
- Sundays—traditional roast dinner of some kind, or something simple like popcorn and smoothie bowls if I just feel like taking a Sabbath.
How do you menu plan?
Got a better idea? I’d love to hear it! Share in the comments below and help a gal out. 🙂
