Keys to Weekly Menu Planning ▪ Start with three dishes with four portions each. Look for balance and seasonality. Good protein, some good fat and fiber. ▪ Choose recipes with 10 or less ingredients. Four portions of each of those 3 dishes gives you twelve eating opportunities over the coming week. That’s a beautiful start. ▪ Recipes should also have no more than 5-7 steps each. Unless you’re feeling adventurous, steer clear of soufflés and beef Wellington’s for weekly meals. Stick to roasting meat and veggies together, one pot stews and sheet pan veggie roasting. ▪ Can you make extra to freeze? When you’ve decided on what meals to make, ask yourself are any of them are freezable? If so, make a little extra and freeze. A shepherds pie or lasagna are fantastic dishes to freeze for another day when you might not feel like cooking. ▪ Don’t over think it. Hey If it’s grilled chicken breast over rice with pesto and veggies, so be it. We all have our “go to meals” Start where you are, with what you have. Just stay open to new menu ideas as well. ▪ As you plan your menu and go over recipes, consider the equipment needed to prepare your meals. Food processor, immersion blender or vitamix etc. ▪ Always read the recipe in its entirety first to get a feel for how the cooking process will go. ▪ If you don’t already have them, You’ll want to order some glass storage containers with snap on lids to store your meals. Avoid the sets with the different sizes, instead source only meal size containers you know you’ll need. ▪ TIP: Breakfast is the time to think about dinner. Here’s what I mean. When you’re making coffee or breakfast in the morning, ask yourself do I need to defrost something for dinner? If so, simply pop one of your frozen dish into the fridge and let it defrost so it’s ready for the oven at dinner time. ▪ Remember to label your dishes - you can easily do this with a marker and masking tape or if you’re really ambitious, print off some labels for each meal. ▪ Remember what we said, cooking is a creative outlet as well as a necessity so I encourage you to play with different ingredients and spice combinations whenever possible. ▪ Don’t be afraid to swap out ingredients. Don’t like cilantro, use parsley. By the way herbs are medicine. Use them often. Also be open especially when it comes to vegetables. Hate kale? Try spinach or chard. etc. ▪ Often times our bad vegetable eating memory can be erased by adding other ingredients like goat cheese or roasted pine nuts to Brussels sprouts. Dried cranberry with a nice sharp cheddar tossed into your greens will give them dimension and layers of flavor that will change your mind about vegetables. Speaking of veggies, plan to batch cook them. Chop, toss with oil and lay (broccoli, cauliflower, yam, carrots etc.) on a sheet pan in the oven. Graze for days. ▪ TIP: Begin the dish that will take the longest to cook, first. For example: If chicken rice and veggies are your dish, start the rice first. Then grill your chicken and you can sauté or steam your veggies probably in the same pan as your chicken as it will add flavor to the veggies. ▪ Once you have 3 solid recipe ideas, then it’s time to make your shopping list. ▪ Cook with friends and family! Cut the work, socialize and everyone gets portions to take home.