We are familiar with the term ‘time management’ and are always looking for tips and hacks to be more efficient and save time. But ever wondered how the same thing can be applied in kitchen as well? What if you could make a 7 day meal plan in just 30 minutes? It can be done by pantry audit.
A pantry audit is nothing but keeping a check on your grocery supplies and replenishing it mindfully by deciding all the menus in mind. For someone who is working, meal planning will be a savior, and for stay-at-home moms, these easy steps will give you some extra hours to spend outside the kitchen on other activities.
Here are the steps to make a 7 day meal plan in 30 minutes.
1. Start With What You Have
First things first. You need to check your entire pantry/refrigerator for all the stuff you already have. Now this will involve
- Checking and decluttering any rotten or expired items
- Getting an idea of the stock that you have and what needs to be bought
Yes, it’s that simple. Now, while you are doing this, make sure to grab a piece of paper and pen so that you keep a tab on what you need to buy.
2. Meal Planner
Your meal planning ideally should be on weekly basis based on the choices of all family members. Try to have a broad choice of what all can be included in breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that it’s easier to narrow down and choose from that.
Now, this could be daunting if you don’t know how to segregate your daily meals until you get your hands on our right meal planner. This spacious planner will help you to jot your entire week’s menu.
Click here to download a sample 7 day Meal Plan
3. Restocking and Organizing Your Pantry
You have now decided what will be prepared in the coming week, so now it’s time to fetch the ingredients and raw supplies for that.
There is a mindful way of replenishing your pantry and that is knowing how much you are going to buy. This will depend on your consumption rate and the expiry period of that item. For example, you will buy vegetables and fruits that can be consumed within a week, and for pulses, spices and cereals, you can stock that will last for a couple of months.
When it comes to organizing the pantry, you can customize it as per your needs and requirements, but you can try to have a simple mantra of keeping those things together that are often used together. For example, all your spices, sugar, tea leaves, can be kept together. All the pulses and rice can be stacked together and so on.
4. Meal Prepping
And now, it’s time to address the elephant in the room. Once you become a pro at meal prepping, more than half of your work will be done. It is one of the crucial steps that will make your life so much easy. Let’s see what exactly it entails.
Meal prepping means preparing certain ingredients beforehand that you will need for the entire week. This can include socking lentils like chickpeas, making tomato paste, ginger garlic chutney, boiling and mashing potatoes, coconut chutney, capsicum dips, etc. You can also go for premixing which will again save your time.
Now, remember that since this prep part comes after meal planning, you will be preparing ingredients only for the meals that you have on the menu for the coming week.
Recommended reading: 10 Parenting Hacks That Will Make Life Simple
Conclusion: Make a 7 day meal plan
Following these four steps only, can change your entire pantry game. All you need is a will, a mindset to be mindful while managing all, and a good planner to make all the difference.
