Do you have a meal planning strategy to keep family dinners both healthy and stress-free? - Win £200 Voucher

[rosiemumsnet]

Now that January is here, it's the perfect time to settle back into a routine and focus on healthier eating after the holiday indulgence!

We know that getting a healthy, stress-free family dinner on the table can be tricky with busy schedules and picky eaters. We’d love to hear from parents who have a meal planning strategy that works - one that keeps family dinners both nutritious and hassle-free!

So whether it's planning meals for the week, prepping ingredients in advance, or maybe you’re a fan of recipe box deliveries, we’d love to hear your tips and ideas for making mealtime easier!

Here’s what Mindful Chef have to say:

Mindful Chef is the UK's number one rated recipe box company, set up to make healthy eating easy. Our recipe boxes ensure our customers have the tools to conveniently eat high-quality, nutritious meals that help them feel far healthier and happier.

One lucky Mumsnetter will win a £200 VEX voucher for a store of their choice. All you have to do is post your tips or ideas in the thread below and vote in the poll to be entered into a prize draw. Good luck!

We plan kind of - but keep things simple, and generally buy the same things each week, minced meat, chicken thighs (boneless and skinless) and an array of vegetables and sauces and packet mixes for casseroles.
Monday is mince, Tuesday is pasta, Wednesday is a chilli or jacket potatoe with a filling. Thursday is chicken and friday is my night off and always pizza!

By using the 'favourites' when creating my on-line shop. and planning meals around OOSH clubs and my DH's shift patterns. I use my slow cooker and timer on my oven to save time when we come home - especially if we have OOSH activities which mean we are extra hungry and can't wait for too long.

We shop once a week. And buy food you just put in the oven with minimal preparation. So salmon, chicken breast, jacket potato, sausages. Then add flavours like Cajun, soy, honey. Buy clean new potatoes and vegetables you can easily steam or roast. Quick and easy.

DH and I do a weekly meal plan and buy what is needed for them. We favour quickly prepared meals such as gammon and pineapple, salmon in sauce, sausage egg and chips, home made pizza (dough made in bread machine).
Sometimes we cook for 2 days. Moussaka is good, and we use the leftover mince for a pancake filling for breakfast.
We don't usually do dessert unless we are using up fruit from our allotment.
I ask make a chilli plum sauce (from allotment plums) and have it with chicken. It's really delicious.

We write a shopping list for the week and meal plan at the same time so all the ingredients go on the list. We check the store cupboards and every member of the family (in theory) is asked to suggest a meal.
We've been doing this for years, and now ds1 is at university he has started to do the same thing.

We have fussy eaters so this is tricky. I'm reading the replies for inspiration! We make sure we freeze any leftovers in convenient portion sizes for mid week. Mainly we cook things that the whole family will eat which is limited. Keep some decent freezer pizza / fish fingers for the days me and DH want a meal the children won't touch.

I write a list of meals for the week - then write a shopping list based off that.

I'll get a hello fresh meal delivery box now and again just for some new ideas -when I signed up I got a free box and 20% off the next 10 boxes.

Where possible I'll make double the quantity and freeze some- things like lasagne sauce, stews and soups.

A table spoonful of these with tinned potatoes.

Hidden vegetables in my minced meat meals, blitzed vegetable soups and sourdough bread, a slow cooked stew filled with root vegetables, and a shopping list which you can stick to - I use a notepad which is magnet stuck to the fridge. Get the kids to make their own pizza to add veg such as yellow and red peppers, corn and mushrooms.

Meal planning , eating together
and the rule of thumb one thing on the table that everyone will eat, a safe food for picky eaters

I have a few ways. I do buy recipe boxes and when everyone likes a meal I keep the card and will often buy the ingredients and cook it again.
I have a lot of recipe books but rarely use those.
Sometimes I will search on line for something. I love chicken and I love butter beans so I searched on line for recipes that had those in and found one which I've cooked several times.
And I go to the butchers and find something I like the look of and plan a meal around that.
The DC are teens now but I often ask if there's anything they'd like out of things we've had. They're not always helpful.
So no single system and often depends how busy I am.

I’m focused on health, but more on nutrition as I have a household of sporty people with bottomless stomachs. I use my slow cooker a lot, and I put leftovers in the fridge or freezer for lunches. Usually once a week we have a leftover night of all the extra bits to avoid waste.

I juggle recipes, boxes, batch cook and very fresh. We have a guy who brings round fresh fresh once a week and we’ll buy from him and eat it that day so it’s super fresh.

I also have salad on the go and eat it with meals at least once a day and I cook a job lot of roast peppers, aubergine every week and have it for lunch with protein at work.

I think if I could pick one thing to save, it’d be my massive slow cooker.

Where is the poll? I can’t see it.

My single greatest life hack, above all others, is a weekly meal plan. Reduces decisions and effort massively. Buy exactly what I need, ensures variety of meals each week, reflects who is/isn’t around each evening (house of teenagers/adults here), means whoever is cooking that evening knows ‘the plan’ and doesn’t have to think much after a day at work, and includes at least one meal each week from a recipe we’ve not used before. Also includes meals that ‘use up’ anything surplus that week. Honestly can’t imagine how we coped without it.

I plan for the whole week beforehand. We all sit around a table and decide what we are going to eat this week. I, then stick the menu on our fridge. It is a fun activity; kids love it, and we get to finalize our menu. It saves so much time.
The main advantage is that kids don't make faces while eating. They decided on the menu after all.

I serve a balanced evening meal. I put a spoonful of each component on to the child's plate and when they have eaten all the different spoonfuls they get a spoonful more of each. In this way the children eat healthily and no food is wasted.

I try to get as much fruit and vegetables into my family, especially in winter, so as well as adding my 'favourites' to my weekly order - I plan ahead with easy meals I know my family will enjoy - and I can make in my slowcooker.
So always chicken portions, diced meat and mince and tinned tomatoes and herbs.
I am trying vegan meats - but am yet to crack that one with my family.

I also always put the food on the kitchen top for them to dish out onto their own plates. If they are still hungry go back for more. Any remaining gets put in fridge as leftovers and any leftover veg gets put in with stock and whizzed up as soup.

We recently got out all our cookbooks and bookmarked all the ones we want to try. We are working those into meal planning as we keep getting stuck cooking the same meals.

I meal plan and batch cook combined. I always try and make at least one portion extra for the freezer.

But I meal plan around 'themes'. I want to ensure the family have a variety of food and we are flexible enough to make changes as needed. So my themes are

Monday - Pasta or rice
Tuesday - Tacos
Wednesday- Freezer Surprise
Thursday- soup
Friday - roast / slow cooker
Saturday - fakeaway
Sunday - Supper.

So using the above theme an actual weekly meal plan might looks like;

Monday - Roasted vegetable risotto
Tuesday- chicken tacos with all the trimmings or fajitas / enchiladas
Wednesday- Something from the week before- perhaps a bolognese sauce which I can do for pasta or chilli
Thursday - in winter often a split yellow pea soup followed by sweet pancakes for dessert
Friday- my day off so I tend to make a full roast or put something in the slow cooker
Saturday- homemade burgers or chinese stir fry or a thai green curry
Sunday- very often something simple. Last week was scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with spinach on the side.

I find that having the base already set (Monday is either pasta or rice) it provides a base for a decision and then I can work within it according to family preferences; what is on offer at the shops that day etc.

I try to meal plan but find a whole week too daunting. So I do three or four days ahead and also think about what second meal I'm going to make if one of my recipes uses, say, half a large bag of spinach. When am I going to use the second half kind of thing.

I do a variety of complicated things (like lasagne or katsu curry), easy things (baked potato and something) and quick things like omelettes or stir fries depending on work and what else everyone has been doing.

I also get my DH and my adult DD to commit to making one or two evening meals every week each and telling me what they're going to cook.

We have vegetables or salad with every meal. If it's something that is vegetable-free but stand alone (like the spaghetti carbonara we had this week) then I make a fresh fruit salad for pudding.

When the children were little they loved to have their cut up fruit made into "kebabs", or served with Greek yogurt and honey in a sundae glass with a long spoon and a wafer! On special days that yogurt would be ice cream and there might be some sauce and sprinkles involved.

Lindor, I use spinach in salads and recipes. I freeze the other half of the bag and then use them to make spanakopita, or palak paneer.

best tip that ever worked for me from my nutrition coach was have everything in moderation! we plan pretty healthy main meals and allow for certain unhealthy snacks to come in a couple times a week. same with exercise - we don't go too full on and we definitely have lazy days.

if you can have a good mix then you're on the right track!

I get my shopping delivered on a Sunday and meal prep for the week ahead.
On Saturday I make a list of what foods I have in the kitchen and use chat gpt to come up with meal ideas using that list.
Keeps cost and waste to a minimum.

Meal prepping also means we are not wasting money on takeaways because we don't know what we're having/haven't taken anything out of the freezer.

Involve all the Family
This is a bit old school, but it really works for me and my family ( 4 of us).
My shopping list is a simple table in a word document. The list contains all the items I could possibly buy at the supermarket and fits onto one page, divided into categories. I print it out every week and take this list with me when I go shopping, for example the list contains: 10 meat/fish items, 10 veg items, 10 fruit items, 10 snack items 10 dairy items, 10 cheese products, 10 bakery/ breakfast items 10 pasta items, 10 soft drinks etc.
I give the paper list to each family member in turn, along with a different colour highlighter.
They each must choose at least 1 meat or fish item and/or 1 veg item to use in a main meal. They do this by crossing ingredients off the list with their own highlighter. Plus, everyone can see what everyone else has already chosen (e.g. chicken breasts, beef mince, frozen haddock, cod, feta, halloumi, pasta sauce). It takes them seconds to fill in (a digital list one would take a lot longer!)

Plan 7 meals
I then make sure for the week ahead we always have 4 evening meals that contain meat/fish and 3 meals that are vegetarian. So simple, makes my life so much easier and no decision fatigue!

Always have healthy and quick backups
I always* *keep quick, healthy options like eggs, canned soup, baked beans, hummus and tuna on hand for hectic days.

Always have a variety of frozen veg and berries in the freezer
Broccoli, spinach, peas, cauliflower, green beans,
strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blackcurrants
pre-chopped veg, stir-fry mixes, frozen herbs