New Year, New You: Meal Planning
By Leslie Lindsay It’s a topic that never grows mold or ends up in the trashcan: meal planning. Hey–we all gotta eat, right? Well, let me take a stab (ha) at this and see if I can present you with some new ideas for planning yummy meals that you and your family don’t tire of. Gather several notecards (about 15-20). Find some time and your cookbooks (an hour?), make yourself comfy and get to work writing out your 15-20 “most preferred” dinners-at-home. (I read somewhere that most Americans have a selection of about 10-20 meals that we go to time and time again). Jot down everything that goes into that meal, just as you might read on a menu. For example, “Chicken Pot Pie with Side Salad and Fresh Fruit” would go at the top of the notecard like a title. Below that, bullet-point what goes into that meal, i.e. your shopping list (pie crusts, vegetable broth, chicken breast, salad fixin’s, etc.). NOTE: This is NOT a recipe! It’s just a list of ingredients. Do that for the rest of the “typical …