Bullet Journal Meets Meal Prep: This trick makes it easy to set up a meal plan for the whole week. We show how to do it.
Yes, we actually want to eat healthy, balanced and varied. But something always comes up, right? We don't have the ideas or the ingredients for a spontaneous cooking session and then we have sandwiches or whatever else we have in the house. The problem can be solved very easily with good planning: Good meal planning (trendy English called Meal Planning) helps you plan ahead, shop and cook healthy and varied.
Meal Prep Meets Bullet Journal: Smart Meal Planning
We discovered the idea of meal planning on Pinterest, where blogger Shelby from "Littlecoffeefox" presented her idea. She writes: "I know there are about a dozen recipes that I could cook off the cuff without a cookbook or video, but with the best will I can never remember her. That leads to me making the same handful of recipes over and over again. As tasty as spaghetti is, I have to provide a little variety. "
She has come up with a clever system for this in her "Meal Planning Masterpiece", as she calls it. She uses a notebook, colored post-its and various overview boards, for example "old favorites", "something new" or similarly labeled. There are no limits to you. "Quick meals", "Special occasions", "For guests" and "With friends" are also conceivable. Perhaps you also want to make a board with recipes that you have eaten at for the time being, but that you would like to bring out again in six months.
This is how it works: Colorful meal planning week after week
The colors of the sticky notes have a meaning, of course: Each color stands for a certain type of recipe. Either for meat dishes, vegetarian dishes, salads, soups and desserts, or for Breakfast, lunch, baking, dinner and dessert. Which system you want to use is of course up to you.
Now it's time to start the actual planning: Behind the overview pages, Shelby now creates classic weekly calendars based on the bullet journal model on double pages. Every day has its own field. And then when she plans her week she takes the post-its from the overview pages and simply sticks them in the relevant field for the day. At the end of the week, the sticky notes are removed and stuck back in their respective place on the overview boards.
We would add one more addition to Shelby's idea: on the right-hand side of the double page we would add one Shopping list for the respective week write. Because the Post-its in Shelby's version unfortunately only contain the name of the recipe. Here you could also add the recipe source to be able to find the recipe more quickly afterwards. With the shopping list in your notebook you can then do the weekly shopping – and make sure you don't forget anything.
Back at home, if you like, you can go to the classic meal prep.
Create a meal plan with the Master list of Meals
Another option for meal planning is Kim's "Master list of Meals", which she presents in her Bog "Tinyrayofsunshine". Also based on the Bullet Journal, she also developed a quick and clear method of cataloging all of her recipes, and because she loves lists, she created a table with five columns in her bullet journal.
In the last column she wrote hers Master list with simple and quick favorite recipes and in the four columns in front only the Letters B, L, D and S. Each recipe was then assigned a small bullet point in the corresponding column. B stands for breakfast, L stands for lunch, D for dinner and S for snack or side (side dish).
Alternatively, she writes, you could also write H, R, S, F and V in the columns: chicken, beef, pork, fish and vegetarian recipes. Which method you use to cluster your Master List of Meals is of course entirely up to you. It is important that you then have an overview of all the recipes from the corresponding category at a glance – and that you can continue down the list as you like.
Meal planning deluxe: turn the bullet journal into a cookbook
If you want to take the idea a little further, you can create a complete notebook just for your recipes, divide it into three parts and write the Master list of Meals on the first pages. Further down, in the second third, there are pages for the individual recipe areas on which the recipes and their respective ingredients are listed.
In the third third you put together the menus and shopping lists for the weeks. If you prefer to separate these things and want to use the Meal Planning book for a long time, you can also transfer the menus and shopping lists to your normal bullet journal (alternatively to the classic shopping list) in the respective week and go shopping with them. So you have everything in view, well organized and ensure a lot of variety on your plate.
Meal Plan for Professionals: Shop once a month
We discovered a third and final tip for smart meal planning from Joanie from "Simple Living Mama". She was looking for a way to get the Eto limit buying to once a month. Like many others, Joanie just doesn't like shopping. No wonder: With several small children, she only says "the less often I have to go shopping, the better".
And if it works for her, why not for you too?
We wish you all the best!
By the way: The free app Bring! simplifies shopping and saves you a lot of time – thanks to a mobile shopping list with delicious recipes and great offers. Simply download it from the Google Play Store or App Store.