Family meal planning is much more involved than it was a few years ago because the mothers of today have a much more hectic life.
It may seem to be a daunting task to plan your meals, but with a little forward planning healthy tasty Paleo meals that the whole family can enjoy can be made ahead of time reducing the nightly meal preparation stress.
Here are some reasons to create a plan and stick with it;
The time factor is the most important.
Too many times something unexpected pops up and time becomes a factor, if your meal is already planned it can take off the stress and the family still has a healthy meal.
Junk food is not an option, just because other family’s go to McDonalds when time is short does not mean that your family can do the same thing.
You are the one directly responsible for the health of your family.
Stress is another factor.
Working and juggling time is difficult enough without trying to figure out what to feed your family when you get home.
Saving money.
By planning your meals you know exactly how much your food costs will be for the week.
Other considerations in meal planning are to make your meals interesting.
Keep records of your meals and learn what recipes were enjoyable.
Experiment with spices, sometimes something that is normally very uninteresting can be spiced up to be a cherished recipe.
Consider multiple meals from one meat item.
There is no greater value than buying a roasted chicken at the super market.
These chickens are very inexpensive and can be eaten as is on one evening and the leftover meat stripped and used in a fresh vegetable stir fry the next evening and the carcass and remaining meat used in a vegetable chicken soup the next evening.
There are many other dishes such as chicken salad and chicken burritos made with Paleo tortillas, the uses of these roasted chickens are almost endless.
Beef roasts can be prepared the same way.
Take the roast and put it in the crock pot before you leave for work and have a meal with roast beef, the left overs can be used in many of the same recipes as chicken.
Stir fry, soups, stews, burritos, enchiladas, and many more are available in the Paleo Cookbooks.
Sit aside some time to do your planning.
Prepare your meals by the week this not only saves you the stress, but it also will save you money because you are not buying impulse food that takes up storage space.
It also saves you time and gas money as you only have to go to the supermarket one time.
Many women use a calendar for planning, you can attach the recipes right to the calendar and have everything in one place.
Family meal planning not only saves you stress, money, and time but it also allows you the control of the most important factor and that is the health of your family.
This generation, according to health experts, will be the first generation in history to die before their parents.
The issue is obesity, which will cause a drastic increase in heart and lung diseases as well as cancer.
Keeping your family away from the processed and engineered foods is a great responsibility but with proper family meal planning you can safeguard the health of your family and be an exception to the statistics.
