Meal planning for beginners

Meals planning can be pretty intimidating, here are some tricks to get started.

Remember to start small and recognize that over time this becomes a lot easier. Plan a basic breakfast for each day, and keep this simple. Finally, search the web and use other people's ideas to get started.

Flexible plan
Goal: choose 5-6 meals that will form dinners, and leftovers for lunch. This leaves 1-2 meals per week to eat out, go over to someone's house, etc.

Tips: Use local flyers to choose 1 meat, and potentially a few veggies that will make up the back bone of your meals. Try to prepare the meat differently several times throughout the week. If you can cook once and re-purpose the leftovers even better. Check out these Turkey and Roast Beef  examples for ideas.

Example:
Breakfast: Bagels & Cream Cheese/Cereal & Milk

Snacks: Yogurt, Granola bars

Meal 1: Vegetarian Stir-fry & Rice
Meal 2: Sloppy Joes (ground turkey)
Meal 3: Soft Tacos (ground turkey)
Meal 4: Hamburger Surprises (ground turkey)
Meal 5: Taco Salad


Structured Plan:
Goal: Created a detailed plan for each meal and day of the week.

Tips: Start out coming up with 6-7 dinners that can double as lunch leftovers. Slot these into your meal plan, then fill in the breakfasts. Then add the snacks.

Example:

	Breakfast	Snack	Lunch	Snack	Dinner
Su	Granola + Yogurt	Clementine	Oven Roasted Chicken Legs + Sm. Salad (1/2 Romaine, Tomato, 1/2 Pepper, 1 carrot)	Yogurt  + Apple	Chicken Soup
Mo	Oatmeal	Carrots & Celery+ 1/2 c. raisins	Left over Oven Roasted Chicken Legs + Sm. Salad (1/2 Romaine, Tomato, 1/2 Pepper, carrot)	Yogurt + Apple	Herb Butter Salmon + Brown rice + Beans
Tu	Granola + Yogurt	Carrots & Celery+ 1/2 c. raisins	Left over rice w/ soy sauce + Sm. Salad (1/2 Romaine, Tomato, 1/2 Pepper, 1 carrot)	Yogurt + Apple	Slowcooker Beef Stew + Potatoes
We	Granola + Yogurt	Carrots & Celery+ 1/2 c. raisins	Potato Salad + Sm. Salad (1/2 Romaine, Tomato, 1/2 Pepper, 1 carrot)	Yogurt + Apple	Chicken soup + Bagel w/ cream cheese
Th	Oatmeal	Carrots & Celery+ 1/2 c. raisins	Greek Salad (1/2 Cucumber, tomato, mushrooms,  feta, red onion, pepper) + Bagel w/ cream cheese	Yogurt + Apple	Chicken Ceasar Salad (1 Romaine, parmasan, 1 Chicken breast)
Fr	Granola + Yogurt	Carrots & Celery+ 1/2 c. raisins	Left over Slowcooker Beef Stew + Ceasar Salad (1/2 Romaine, parmasan)	Yogurt + Apple	Salad (1 Romaine, Tomato, 1 Pepper, carrot)
Sa	Oatmeal	Clementine	Chicken soup + bagel w/ cream cheese	Yogurt + Apple	Greek Salad (1/2 Cucumber, tomato, mushrooms,  feta, red onion, pepper)