'Meal Grouping' Is The New Meal Planning Trend and I Am Trying It

I don’t make meal planning calendars, and I sometimes I feel a bit inadequate about that.

All my friends have their elaborate weekly meal menus done by Sunday night, before I even know what’s for dinner for the day.

Here’s the thing. My family is full of picky eaters. Without a doubt, if I plan for spaghetti and salad on Monday, we won’t want spaghetti on Monday. If I start slow cooker chicken tacos on Thursday morning, by Thursday evening, the family will be begging for hot dogs.

I know. In theory, I should just tell the kids to “get over it.” They should just eat what I make. But, the truth is, I don’t feel like fighting with them.

We are doing at home learning, and all I do is argue and butt heads with the kids all day. I’m so tired by the end of most days, by dinner time, I just want 5 minutes without an argument.

If taking 5 minutes to make hot dogs in the evening is going to stop them from whining and arguing, I’m going to make those hot dogs.

So, my sister-in-law gave me a great idea. She puts meals groups together on the shelf in the pantry (the dry ingredients to make tacos, macaroni and hot dogs, spaghetti, etc).

She doesn’t plan each day down to the ice in the cups, but she loosely plans a group of meals.

They are always meals that are easy and pretty quick to make. These are meals that she KNOWS will elicit minimum whining and arguing from the kids.

Then in the evenings during the week, she just grabs one of these pre selected meals out of the pantry, and that’s what’s for dinner.

This gives her a bit of leeway in the her meal plan for the week, but she at least has somewhat of a rough plan of what they MIGHT eat during the week.

She has also learned to not sweat the small stuff — something I’m still trying to learn. If they decide to get pizza one night during the week, they go ahead and get pizza. She doesn’t let it ruin her plan.