Have you ever been surprised by dinner? It happens every night but is still often unexpected. We have a family of nine and it can be very overwhelming without a plan.

Check out these tips and ideas to help navigate your meal times stress-free and have dinner on the table when everyone expects it.

1. Make a Menu Plan
2. Make a shopping list
3. Estimate your cost
4. Shop once a week for your supplies
5. Do a meal preparation day every week
6. Think of dinner in the morning

If you want to skip straight to our process of menu planning, click here.

Dinner Thoughts

My mom always had a homecooked meal on the table when I was growing up and because I was raised this way I wanted to do it with my family too. As we began to foster children and eventually adopt, I saw it was more than just food on the table. For most of these kids, it represented the security of not going to bed hungry.

For most foster kids, hunger has affected them in some shape or form and so I always made sure we had a daily home-cooked meal on the table. Now, that’s not saying, there isn’t the occasional bowl of cereal or grilled cheese dinners, trust me, we all have those days.

A couple of years ago, we had just taken in a couple of kids the night before. One of the girls came up to me and asked me what was for dinner. I told her I was making a big batch of pork tenderloin which would be served with sweet potatoes and green beans while the rest of the meat would be served on bread for sandwiches tomorrow.

Do you want to know what she said to me? “Oh, good! We are going to have at least two good meals!” Her response blew me away! Frankly, I didn’t know what to say because I was trying to hold back the tears. At that moment, I knew my words would mean nothing and she was going to have to experience dinner every night.

The way I menu plan has made the impossible task of dinner on the table at least doable. I really hope it helps you too!

Menu Plan

Plan your meals around the same day weekly or biweekly

I sit down and plan what we are going to be eating every other Saturday. I do this every two weeks because it saves me time. Check out these forms I created to make this a little easier!

Keep your schedule in mind when meal planning

When I am meal planning, I do this on our family’s scheduling app so I can pay attention to our calendar. If we have something scheduled in the evening, I might plan to have sandwiches or a scoop and go meal. I have learned this tip the hard way when I planned to fix a complicated meal that couldn’t be prepared or eaten in the time we had allotted. Those nights became grilled cheese dinners real fast.

Categorize Your Meals

I plan to make meals in different categories so we enjoy a variety of cuisine. I try to pick one meal from each of the following categories:

• Pasta
• Meat and potato
• Mexican
• Soups, chili, or stew.
• Rice-based dishes
• Sandwiches
• Breakfast

I always try to keep in the mind seasonal dishes when I am selecting my menu. I even pull my weather app to see what the week looks like. Cold, rainy days are perfect for chili while a salad is awesome on a hot summer day.

Plan soup for lunches

I really enjoy making a huge pot of soup for dinner one night and eating the leftovers for lunch. This provides a quick, heat and eat option for everyone. Pair it with a sandwich or a small salad and you have a well rounded satisfying lunch quickly.

Plan meals with ingredients your family will enjoy

I am pretty fortunate not to have picky eaters in my family but that’s not to say we don’t have our dislikes. As I am planning my dinners, I try to keep in mind my family’s preferences including my own. Let’s say I have a kiddo who doesn’t care for green beans or peas, I will still offer it for dinner but I will be careful not to offer it more than once a week. With a family of nine, if I didn’t offer something because someone didn’t like it we would limit our menu significantly.

I also check with my hubby to see if he’s wanting something in particular. I am very fortunate to have a husband who likes to make things easy for me and will eat whatever I fix with zero complaints. This is a trait I very much appreciate so I try to ask because he will probably not tell me ahead of time.

Also, thanks to my hubby, I do pay attention to what I enjoy because I find myself not wanting to fix something I don’t like. His point is that since I am the one preparing the meal, I get a big vote in what is being prepared.

If something I don’t care for is on the menu and I don’t want to fix it, it generally results in a restaurant run. In our family, that’s a costly endeavor.

Plan meals that are easy to prep unless you genuinely enjoy being in the kitchen

I do enjoy cooking but as our family has grown I have found my time to be more limited. I’ve figured out that it is better to have a quick, healthy meal on the table than a gourmet meal that took me hours in the kitchen. I know that this is the season of life I am in and rather than fight it I have chosen to be creative and embrace it.

CrewTip: The Concept Behind My Crazy

Fix a meal on one day and use the leftovers to create a meal for the next day.

This is one of my favorite tricks. Fix a larger amount of a meal on one day and serve it. Then I take the leftovers and transform them into an additional meal by adding different components such as bread, rice, salad, pasta or baked potatoes. Let me give you some examples:

One of the keys to making sure you have the leftovers to work with is before you serve your meal, set aside the amount you will need for your leftover meal. This way the family doesn’t see the extras and feel the need to eat them.

Make healthy choices

One of the things I want my kiddos to have is a balance when it comes to their diet. The way I do this is by offering all the food groups in moderation at every meal. When meal planning, I plan something for the protein, grain, vegetables, and dairy groups. Generally, they have eaten their allotment of fruit for the day, so I focus on vegetables.

Now, a healthy diet looks very different for everyone. We have so many variances within our family that I try to focus on what I feel is healthy for each person. You have to make the choices that make you feel your best.

Think of sweet treats

What?!? Sweet treats?!? After we just got done talking about being healthy? Remember what I said about balance? Well, I believe that applies to sweet treats too. I can’t enjoy them as often as my kiddos can but I do love something sweet. So I plan ahead to offer portioned, as healthy as possible treats for when I am feeling the need for it. This way the train doesn’t go off the tracks and we end up inhaling sugar until we are sick.

Our family enjoys things like chocolate chip cookie bars, brownies, strawberry jello salad, and a variety of fruit.

We bake the cookie bars and brownies, let them cool, cut into small pieces, wrap and freeze them. This way, when we want something sweet, we have a quick appropriately sized treat to enjoy.

Shop once a week for the supplies

I try to plan to only shop once a week. I have found if I have to stop by the store it results in an extra $20-$50 of unplanned expenses. I work hard to make a list that includes everything we need so I am not adding this and that to our orders. Online shopping has really helped our family stay focused and on budget.

Make a shopping list

Now that you have made your meal plan, next comes the shopping list. I make a list of all the items I need to make meals happen during the timeframe I have planned for. Then I go through my pantry and see what I already have and mark it off. This leaves me with the items I need to purchase at the store.

Figure out the store with the best prices

I do my shopping at Sam’s Club, Walmart, and Aldi. If I know another grocery store that has a great deal on an item or two that I need, I will plan to pop in there too.

I label my grocery lists with those stores three names and begin to sort the items into the places that will have the best prices.

For some tips and tricks about how we shop, check out this blog post.

Where Big Families Shop for Groceries

Estimate how much you are going to spend before you leave the house

After I have sorted my list into the stores I’m going to do my shopping at, I estimate how much it’s going to cost.

You can download my grocery list template as a part of the Menu Planner here. It has a place for the item needed and a place to estimate the cost.

This step is imperative to keep my grocery budget intact. If I see that I am over what I want to spend, I may have to select a different protein for a more inexpensive option. This step may take some time in order to get it to the right amount you want to spend. You may have to remove some meals and add a cheaper option to get it to where you want to be and that’s okay! I do it every time!

Weekly Meal Prep Day

Do a meal preparation day every week

This step is a biggie! This is what our current food prep list looks like every week:

• Grill chicken and slice for lunches (we use this on wraps or in a salad)
• Chop vegetables and put in mason jars or plastic bags
• Make a strawberry jello salad
• Bake cookies and brownies and freeze them
• Bake sheet pan pancakes
• Bake potatoes for breakfast and lunches (We bake potatoes and store them in the refrigerator. We slice and fry them up in a pan using non-stick cooking spray. If you use potatoes already baked, it requires less oil and takes less time.)
• Cook corn on the cob for snacks and lunches
• Boil eggs

Dinner in the Morning

What in the world does dinner in the morning mean? Well, let me tell you a little secret that prevents panic at 5:00. As a part of my morning routine, I prepare dinner. This can look something like pulling something out of the freezer and putting it in the slow cooker or instant pot. It could be organizing my ingredients to cook and making a mental note (or even setting an alarm) of when I need to start cooking.

I love my instant pot for this reason! I can pop my ingredients in, set it and it’s ready when I need it. I even make pasta, spaghetti, and macaroni & cheese in it. Its a game changer!

Check out my YouTube video “How to Make Instant Pot Macaroni & Cheese.”

Well, there you have it! These are the tips and tricks I use to make sure our meals run smoothly and as stress-free as possible! I hope they will help you!

Thanks for reading! I love to hear from you so please reach out!