Simplify Meal Planning

The parent in charge of mealtimes in any household is responsible for about 1,095 meals each year—snacks and parties not included. That's a lot of food to think about, shop for and prepare.

Developing a strategy for handling meals will help you get in and out of the grocery store and the kitchen faster, creating more time for enjoying your family. Here are some ways to simplify meal planning:

• Recruit the whole family to help with menu planning. Even meal planning itself offers opportunities to spend time together on something that benefits everyone. Schedule a meeting to discuss favorite meals and foods. Write a family menu of various meal choices.
  Every Sunday night, let each family member "order" the meal for one night that week. Post the resulting weekly menu on the refrigerator door. Each night, the first parent home can get dinner started. If you have a motivated teenager in the house, enlist his or her help on dinnertime preparation.
• Establish family meal traditions. Saturday night could be cookout night, when Dad grills hamburgers, or perhaps Sunday night could be breakfast-for-dinner night. Tuesday might be pasta night.
• Rotate weekly menus. You don't have to reinvent the wheel each week. Create three weeks' worth of dinner menus and keep them simple. After three weeks, begin reusing the weekly menus again. You can vary things a bit; for instance, you don't have to serve roasted chicken every third Thursday. Have it on Monday in the fourth week instead. You can rely on the basic meal plan throughout the year, occasionally substituting fresh, in-season fruits and vegetables or other seasonal foods that your family enjoys.
• Ask friends for their meal-planning tips. Host a menu-planning party and invite two or three friends. Share recipes and talk about how you plan menus. Address specific issues, such as how to encourage kids to eat more vegetables, or how to curb teens' consumption of junk foods.
• Spice it up. Have a basic repertoire of five or six dinner main courses that you can vary by changing seasonings. For example, serve boneless chicken breasts topped with crushed tomatoes and grated mozzarella and Parmesan one week, seasoned with white wine, lemon juice and thyme another week, and brushed with a mixture of Dijon mustard and honey the third week.
• Have "planned overs" whenever possible. Cook double portions and freeze the leftovers for a quick meal on a busy night. Leftovers from one night's roasted chicken can be turned into chicken potpie, tacos or stir-fry another night.

Whether you relish every moment in the kitchen or spend as little time cooking as possible, remember that there's something bigger going on. Family bonds are forged and memories are sealed around the dinner table.

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