Are you one of the moms who feels stress ever meal time? Here’s the things you’ll tick-off after reading this:

✔️ Prepare a well balanced meal every time

✔️ End sickening repetitive food prepared

✔️ Have a game plan every meal time

Eating is one thing any person in the planet need to do to survive yet one of the most dreadful questions one would like to be asked is, “What do you want to eat?” OR “Where do you want to eat”? In fact, over the years, people have been creative enough to solve this problem by either making a food decider wheel, something like the ones used in Wheel of Fortune but instead have food places on it. Other’s even use technology and make it available online like this Wheel of Dinner which you can check out online or if you want it very handy, download these apps: Restaurant Roulette!! from Apple App Store or What to Eat from Google Play.

Those may be helpful but for moms who’s task is to feed the family every meal and want it to be healthy, we wouldn’t want to depend our meals on fate, aren’t we? It actually isn’t the cooking itself that’s stressful but choosing what dish to cook as sometimes, we tend to prepare the same dish all the time. So instead of just adding stress to your life with this daily task, why not make a plan, and simply let your day run smoothly ever meal time.

Are you ready to get started? I do!

First of all, this weekly menu isn’t like the ones you usually see online where recipes are already listed, here, you get to choose and pick the food you need to prepare. Why? Because I know that I’m not the only Asian who also loves Japanese, Italian, Mexican, and American dishes but can’t find a weekly menu online to fit my tastebuds. So I thought it would be better let this method be a general method for everyone to use.

A bit confused? Hope you stick with me and keep reading…

Second, as a mother, of course I just don’t want to prepare tasty meals but nutritious too. I’m not a Nutritionist nor a Dietitian so I only go for the basics of science when it comes to making sure my family gets the nutrition our body needs. Too basic that it’s taught at primary school. Any guesses?

You got it! The Food Pyramid! That’s the Go, Grow, and Glow Foods.

Lastly, mindful eating. Yes, that includes savouring each bite we do and making sure we get the right portion of each dish prepared that’s right for us. If there’s one thing we want our children to learn about food, that would be discipline in eating. With this, they wouldn’t feel deprived eating junk, sweets, or whatever since they know already how to control their eating.

Now that we’re done talking about the principles of this meal plan, here’s how to do it.

1.Start by having a Weekly Meal Plan Template like the one below.

2. Choose per day which base you would like to have. For us being Asians, it’s quite easy as we usually eat rice for our daily meals so I only need to choose a dish to match with it. So choose from either Pork, Chicken, Fish, Beef, Vegetable, and Takeaway.

Even if you’re not a rice person, having this base on mind before you make your weekly menu helps breakdown the options you’ll need to decide on that specific day. You’ll also notice I’ve included Takeaway on the list. Well, let’s get realistic, in today’s world, when you’re not in the mood to cook, or you just want to have a day off from cooking, wouldn’t it be nice to know that you’ve also had that planned out?! Less stress = happy mama!

With that in place, your Weekly Menu should look like this. You’ll notice that Chicken and Fish is used twice as I find those two as healthier choices than beef and pork. It’s also cheaper!haha.

Having a big breakfast isn’t a thing in our family. I personally don’t think that saying applies to everyone as not everyone wakes up early and does vigorous work after breakfast. With the Pandemic nowadays, I’m sure most people wake up later than they used to (raise your hand if you don’t miss the morning traffic). With that in mind, we go pretty relaxed on breakfast.

Usually it’s just cereals, yoghurt, eggs, or bread and spread for us. I just get a couple of selection of cereals and spread to choose from and everyone makes their own breakfast of choice. How’s that for a freeing you up from one meal of the day to think from!

Next is lunch. This is where your base comes to place. With the kind of meat chosen already, what I usually do is think of a cuisine. Whether it’s Filipino, Italian, Japanese, American, to name a few, this would help you save up more thinking time. Make sure to add some fruits to eat at the end of each meal as dessert.

Here are incredible sites where you can get recipes for every cuisine of your choice. All you need to do is choose from a vast selection of recipes they’ve got per base you’ve chosen.

Filipino Recipes – Panlasang Pinoy

Italian Recipes – Great Italian Chefs

Japanese Recipes – Chopstick Chronicles

American Recipes – The Spruce Eats

After choosing the your recipes, simply list down the ingredients you need. As easy as that, you got your grocery list ready! Congratulations for saving yourself thinking time and relieving yourself from stress of meal prep.

If there’s something I want to remind you about preparing meals, it’s to enjoy doing it. The more you procrastinate on the thing/s you’re doing, the more you’ll feel bad doing it. Food also tastes better when done with love, so enjoy and keep the love burning!

I’m planning to update this post in the future after compiling easy recipes for you! I’d love to hear cuisine and recipes you’d love me to include on it! Hope to hear from you all on the comments below!

As always, Stay Safe!