With six mind - and money - saving strategies, plenty of flexible recipes and clickable links to useful foodie resources, Angela Esnouf's ebook, Meal Planning Made Easy is a straightforward approach to that half-hour a week we're all supposed to spend planning what to eat each day but somehow never get round to.What I particularly appreciate about Angela Esnouf's approach is that she breaks menu planning down into seven essential questions. Answer the seven questions and the decision-making stress is cut right out. This acts as a structure to the thought-process of meal planning, which means you can go methodically through the questions and come to food conclusions that will suit you and your family.
Many people make the mistake of only thinking about recipes. Perhaps everything you cook has to be ready in a short period of time, in which case, something like Twenty Minute Meals by Leigh Ann Dutton. Her aim is to "give weary chefs grace while keeping families healthy". Alternatively, you may like the idea of a whole month of menu plans, all written out for you, with a focus on real foods and keeping within a budget. This is what urban homesteader Diana Bauman offers in A Month of Meals from My Humble Kitchen to Yours.
However, Angela Esnouf points out that there is more to consider. You need to look at your family's schedule and work out who will be home to eat, what activities are on round meal-times, and who will be at home to cook or help out in any way. "There are all sorts of ways to tackle the issue of creating a schedule, and moms tend to find themselves overwhelmed by it all," says Amy Roberts, author of The Homemaker's Guide to Creating the Perfect Schedule. Amy's "hope and prayer (is that her) ebook takes the headache and frustration out of creating a schedule that is perfect for your family by acknowledging that your family is unique and by using that uniqueness to your advantage rather than trying to squeeze yourself into someone else’s schedule." The upshot is, however, that you do need a schedule on which to base your meal planning.
Best of all, for all-or-nothing people like me who try to run before they can walk, Angela is firmly realistic and encouraging at the same time: "Know your time limits and level of skill. Stick with what you can achieve easily, especially at first. Over-reaching may end in frustration. Keep it simple and gradually build up to more complicated meals and expectations." Containing perhaps the most helpful piece of meal-planning advice I have come across, Meal Planning Made Easy does exactly what it says on the tin.
