In Episode 113, we talked about a meal planning method that our family’s been using, which is based on who’s cooking each night and what dishes they know how to cook. We think about what our older children enjoy cooking, and then we plan together based on that.
Today, I want to talk about a meal planning method based on themes. You set a theme for each evening; each day of the week, and then you do your planning based on that. For example, you could do French or Greek themed food, or a baked potato bar, or a takeout evening. You can vary this as much as you like.
A country theme is lots of fun, especially the countries that have food you enjoy. Maybe you like Italian food or Chinese food. You can have a soup night – look up your favorite soup recipes, old or new. You can have a frozen food night where you either eat food from your freezer that you’ve cooked previously, or you use a frozen meal online service, and choose something frozen for that particular night.
It’s good to mix nights where you have to do quite a bit of cooking with ones where you just heat up a frozen meal. Have some nights that require intense cooking just before the meal, but not too often. Then have some where you can cook the food throughout the day without it taking too much time. You can do this using your crockpot or your Instant pot. Then, by the time dinner comes around, most of the food is ready, and you just need to briefly heat it.
You could do a pasta night, where you have different kinds of pasta. You can have spaghetti, tagliatelle, or penne, or even ravioli. Some grocery stores have great ravioli. Choose some different sauces. You could also do a baked potato bar where you choose some different meats or sauces. Perhaps you could do ham and cheese sauce, or bolognese sauce, or tomato and vegetable sauce.
This way, each week your decision making is cut down because you already know you’re going to have pasta or whatever. What’s very helpful when you’re planning like this is a master list. I’ll have a printable for you for this.
The first thing you need to do is to plan your themes. You can always change them, but start off with seven themes. As I said, choose some that are high intensity, some that are low intensity and easy, and even some that are takeout or frozen food. Spread your themes over the days of the week based on how busy you are on particular evenings. When you have events or sports or things that you need to go out for, then that obviously affects that evening. Choose the slowest evenings for the most intricate cooking or the most interesting meals, times when you can slow down as a family and enjoy the meal together.
So, choose themes for your evening. For example, you can say that on Monday, you’ll do Chinese food. On Tuesday you’ll do Italian food, or pasta, to be more specific. On Wednesday maybe you’ve got a sports event, so you’ll do a quick frozen meal, or some takeout that you can eat on the go. On Thursday, perhaps you’ll use a meat theme. You could have lamb, either lamb chops, lamb on the grill, or lamb leg of lamb in the crockpot. Alternatively, you could choose Thursday as a meat-free evening, and do a vegetarian meal.
On Friday, maybe you could have pizza. You could have a different kind of pizza every time – sometimes make pizza, sometimes order pizza, and sometimes get it from a frozen pizza place. On Saturday, perhaps you’ve got more time, so you can do fancy French food. Then on Sunday, perhaps you’ll do something light like sandwiches. You can choose different types of breads or fillings each time. There’s nothing wrong with doing the same type of sandwiches each week, but it’s nice to have variety.
So, once you’ve set up your weekly themes, then you need to add ideas to each theme for the master list, because the decision making is what takes the most time and energy. First, let me mention a few more ideas for themes. There’s Mexican food, or British food. You can add in whatever cuisine you like. If you’re from Brazil, Brazilian food is obviously going to be a big part of your menu. You can do Caribbean style food, Spanish food, Middle Eastern food – things like hummus and wraps – Thai food, Japanese food, or Indian food.
Some other themes for the style are things like one-pot meals. If you have a nice big dish with a lid, and you can do a one pot meal on the stove top, that’s always convenient. You can bake everything on one oven tray. You could also do a slow cooker evening. For that day, you’d do something in the slow cooker, whether it’s a roast chicken, chicken pieces, a piece of lamb, or a stew of some kind.
You can have a category for quick meals. On that day, you choose a quick meal like breakfast for dinner, or mince and pasta – anything really fast. Again, add some ideas to your master list. You could a soup and bread evening. Choose a fancy kind of soup, either bought or homemade, and some nice bread. You could have a grilling evening, and choose a different food to grill each week. You could do a charcuterie board one night a week, and you can vary those as well – they can get really interesting.
So, brainstorm ideas with your family of what themes you’d like to use, and which are most popular. Use them for a few months and then switch it up to new ones. The most important step, however, is to list ideas under each category, so that when you get to your planning at the beginning of each week, then you have ideas that you can choose from. Let’s get into some of those. Again, I’ll have a printable for you that you can download. It’ll just be a blank template for the week where you can fill in your themes, and then a master list where you can list ideas for each theme.
Here are some ideas for French style meals. We want to keep them simple so that they’re not too much work, but things that are possible for cooks at home to do. A good option is chicken Dijon with a cream sauce. This is chicken that you pan-sear with mustard and cream, and then you serve it with rice or mashed potatoes. Ratatouille pasta is a vegetarian option with zucchini, tomato, and other veg, and you add pasta and cheese.
A lovely, easy comfort food is Croque Monsieur or Croque Madame. These are French style grilled sandwiches with ham and cheese. They have bechamel sauce on top, and the Croque Madame also has a fried egg on top. They’re nice and easy. Beef bourguignon is a stew that can be made in a slow cooker or in the Instant Pot. Just add carrots and mushrooms. This is a lovely stew that you can leave to cook all day. It’ll get nice and tender, and then you can enjoy it.
There’s also quiche like quiche Lorraine, which has bacon, cheese, and eggs in a pastry crust. You could leave out the crust and just have the actual filling – it’s actually nicer than you’d expect. I’d make a quiche with baked butternut and broccoli, which I’d steam in advance. I’d add a bit of salt and herbs to that, and then cook the bacon and add that if I’m using some. Then I’d blend up eggs, a bit of milk, some feta cheese, some cheddar cheese, some salt, some oregano, perhaps onion powder, and a bit of paprika. I’d pour it over and bake it for about an hour. That works well with salad.
So, take any ideas you have for French meals that you enjoy. Maybe something like French onion soup – anything that you think you’re happy to cook, and that’s not too complicated. Put them on your master list.
Some easy Italian options are spaghetti bolognese or tagliatelle bolognese, or chicken parmesan, which is crispy chicken topped with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese. You could do a pesto pasta with some vegetables and a pesto cream sauce, or pasta with vegetables and a cheesy sauce. You could do lasagna, or Ministrone soup, which is a thick vegetable and bean soup with bread.
Just choose whatever works for you for your categories. Do you like to say, “I want a vegetarian meal, I want a chicken meal, I want a lamb meal”, et cetera, or do you like it to be more interesting – “I want a Mexican, French, or Greek meal”? You can make it a little fun by adding perhaps a country flag or something in your decor or music from that country to add a little bit to that fun theme. Get your youngest kids involved in doing that.
For Mexican food, you can do tacos with beef or chicken, and everyone can build their own. There’s also quesadillas with chicken – cheesy and crispy. You can do an enchilada bake with chicken or beef enchiladas. This is similar to a lasagna with the sauce and meat, but the meat’s wrapped in tortillas. For Mexican rice bowls, you can use rice, beans, corn, avocado, and chicken. Chili con carne is a one pot meal. It also goes great with nachos or with cornbread.
Here are some Greek ideas. You can do chicken souflaki with some tzatziki. It can be either skewers or pan-cooked pieces with pita bread and that tzatziki. You can do a Greek salad with grilled chicken on top. To make a spanakopita-inspired spinach pie, a shortcut is to use puff pastry that you buy ready-made. You could make lemon-garlic roasted chicken and potatoes, which is like a Greek tray bake. To make gyro-style wraps, you can use rotisserie chicken as a shortcut, as well as some tzatziki, and things like cucumber, tomato, and et cetera in a flatbread. Do any Greek food that you enjoy. My son can make a great grilled Greek chicken marinated in olive oil and herbs.
British food has real comfort food vibes. There’s shepherd’s pie, which is made of lamb mince. There’s also cottage pie with beef mince, topped with mashed potatoes. There’s fish and chips – fish fingers or baked fish in the oven. You can make bangers and mash with any sausages you like, a creamy mash, and onion gravy. That’s really delicious. Chicken and leek pie has a creamy filling and a puff pastry lid. A plowman’s dinner board is a fun British meal. It’s made up of things like cheese, ham, boiled eggs, bread, and pickles – no cooking needed!
Then there’s Chinese comfort food – takeout-style at home. The great thing about this meal planning method is that if you’re really stuck and you don’t feel like cooking, then you can just get takeout from a Chinese restaurant some of the time, and other times cook at home. You can do things like chicken stir fry with vegetables. You add soy sauce, honey, and garlic – this is nice and quick. We like to have a chicken and rice noodle stir fry.
Fried rice is a great thing to make with leftovers, and you can have it with your chicken stir fry instead of the noodles. There’s sweet and sour meatballs, beef and broccoli with soy sauce, and dumpling soup. Any ideas that you have around Chinese food – add them to your master list.
Let’s talk about some Thai food at home. There’s Thai green curry chicken. Pad Thai noodles are rice noodles with egg and chicken or prawns. You can do a beef stir fry, which is mince or beef strips with garlic, soy, and rice. You can do a Thai soup, like a coconut chicken soup, using broth or coconut cream. Then there’s something like Thai peanut chicken wraps or bowls, made using a peanut sauce with shredded chicken and crunchy veg.
If you were doing a Middle-Eastern theme, you could make chicken shawarma wraps. This would be spice rubbed chicken with pita and salad, and maybe a tzatziki style sauce. You could make kofta meatballs with cumin, served with rice or couscous. To make a shortcut version of falafel pita pockets, you can just use store bought falafels. Add some hummus and veggies to the pita bread. You can make a tray bake with roasted veg and haloumi, or a lentil soup with bread.
Here are some ideas for if you’re doing a one-pot wonder theme – one-pot meals. You can do a one-pot creamy chicken and rice. Cook your chicken, add your stock, and then add your rice and peas. It’s all cooked together. You can do one-pot spaghetti bolognese, where the pasta cooks in the sauce. You don’t need to drain it. You can make a sausage and vegetable stew by just tossing some sausages, potatoes, and carrots in some stock, and then simmering it. You could even do a one-pot mac and cheese. This works great in the crockpot – just put it all in there, stir it a couple of times and then get it at dinner time.
Lastly, here are some 15-minute meal ideas; quick meal ideas. Firstly, there’s quesadillas and salad with cheese and chicken or beans that are left over. You can crisp them up in a pan. You can make a stir-fry using chicken with teriyaki sauce or soy honey sauce. A basil pesto pasta with Parmesan and cherry tomatoes can be done in minutes. You can make egg-fried rice, and add a bit of protein if you have some available. Use some egg, vegetables, and soy sauce in the rice. You can add that to some meat if you have any leftovers.
15 minute meals are generally good if you have some leftover meat to use. You could also do wraps with rotisserie chicken if you have some wraps, or can get some easily. I keep some in the freezer. Just grab a rotisserie chicken, and you can add tzatziki with cucumber and some feta, or you can fill it with some tomato, cucumber, and other cheese. Add anything that you like or enjoy in a wrap.
There are so many ideas – this is just the beginning. Choose the themes that inspire and excite you; that make you think this is the kind of food I enjoy cooking. This is the kind of food I want to cook. Remember to put in some slower evenings where you eat easy food – frozen food, takeout food, or food you’ve made and put in your own freezer. Also put in some evenings where you can be creative and do some good cooking to enjoy. Sometimes you can have a slow meal with courses, and sometimes it can be a simple crock monsieur when everybody has things on and doesn’t have long to sit at the table. Remember, you can download and print your blank sheets to fill in if you want to plan like this. That’ll be at familyfoodformoms.com/meals.
