Hopefully you have taken the challenge to cook more meals at home. Maybe you've even decided to experiment with some new foods or cooking techniques. Cooking works great when you have the time and energy to put into it. Most of us know that an abundance of time and energy is not reality. For the most part, lack of planning (not lack of time or energy!) is the biggest barrier to people eating healthy.
There are many days when I get home from work and the last thing I want to do is cook, much less think about what to cook! What helps me the most is to have the meal already planned out so that when I get home I just need to put it together. Or even better is to prepare something ahead of time, in a crock-pot or the weekend before. That way you just have to heat it up.
Here is a tool that I find handy in order to eliminate the hassle of trying to think about what to make for dinner. It's called the "meal planner". I got it from the NC government's public health department and their website called 'My Eat Smart Move More NC' (myeatsmartmovemore.com).
This sheet encourages you to keep a list of all your tried and true main dishes and sides. Often when I'm planning a week of meals, I forget what meals I like and can cook. By using this list, it makes my planning of meals for the week much quicker.
The "meal planner" is also useful when grocery shopping to make sure that you have the ingredients needed. That way if you get home one night without a meal planned, you can pick one off the list to make.
As mentioned before, lack of planning is the biggest barrier to people eating healthy. Use this meal planner as a place to start. Think of it as your index to fighting cancer!
-Julie
PS. To see my list of main dishes and sides, click here.
Great post! So true about the planning. I'm actually sitting down right now planning out our week of meals and I'm going to print off the meal planner to help with my non-creativei'mrunningoutofideasandtimetocook nights! :)