I hate menu planning.

But homemade, nutrient-dense meals are not just going to show up on the dinner table all by themselves. Especially during this busy season.

Actually, I should say I used to hate menu planning. I was hating it because I was making this detailed plan that, invariably, I’d deviate from, and despite dinner being served on time, I’d still feel like a failure.

I was believing the lie that the more detailed a plan I made, the more chance I had for success. But success is more often found in simple systems that are easy to put on repeat.

What I needed was a flexible plan that took minutes to make and worked no matter what the week threw at me.

That’s when I developed the:

Flexible Menu System

This system takes less than 10 minutes once a week and gives me peace of mind and space to think about other things than food (glory!). It’s just 3 1/2 steps and will surprise you with how painless it is.

1. Jot down at least three dinners that sound appetizing in the next week.

I do this on a scrap of envelope or cardboard if I can’t find a notebook. If this feels like menu planning, trick yourself and call it a Wish List. I try to choose meals that are appropriate to the season, but sometimes I just don’t feel like it. So there.

Get meal ideas from:

• recipes you’ve pinned on Pinterest
• a magazine
• a new cookbook
• your favorite eCookbook
• call a friend and hijack her menu plan (I’ve totally done this)
• Poll facebook (always eye-opening!)

2. Add a few more family favorites to your Wish List.

You know, those meals you find yourself making every week because no one complains about seeing them again and again? (Ours weekly favorites are homemade pizza, anything wrapped in a tortilla, and anything grilled).

3. Jot down 3 breakfast ideas.

That’s all you’ll need because you’re gonna eat each of them twice, and the 7th day? We’re gonna be spontaneous (Yehaw!!!)

3 1/2. (Optionally) If your lunches need to be packable, jot down 3 lunch ideas.

But if you usually eat lunch at home–you get to skip this step! Lunches will be leftovers, mkay?

OK, that’s it. You just made a week’s meal plan. In less than 10 minutes. And you still have brains cells left. You gotta love it.

What’s that? That doesn’t look like much of a plan? Ahh, you see it’s enough–the rest is in the execution…

How to Execute your Flexible Menu System

Once a Week:

• Think through each meal and jot down the ingredients you need to buy in order to create that meal. If you have a robust pantry and freezer, you may only need an item or two to complete each meal. If you haven’t shopped in a while, well then, it’s a good thing you’re making this list, right?
• Go shopping and buy the stuff you need for the meals you’re in the mood for. Add or replace items in your cart if you see a good sale. The key is to be let your list guide but not bind you!
• Bring Food Home. (Elementary, I know.) If you bought fresh meat, check the expiration date and toss it in the freezer if you don’t think you’ll be in the mood for it before the expiration date.

Daily:

OK, now comes the most important part of being a free-spirited meal planner: for just 6 minutes each day, you will have to think ahead. Just 6 min. and then we can go back to being spontaneous as larks, OK? And this 6 min. is divided in two parts, so I know we can do it.

• First 3 Minutes: As you’re making breakfast each morning, look at your day and make an educated guess how much time you’ll have to prep dinner, and what meal from your Wish List fits the day’s mood and meal requirements. Once you’ve decided, do one small thing to help prepare for that meal, like pulling meat out of the fridge, making salad dressing, or starting some dough to soak or rise. I’ve found that if I think about dinner just a little bit in advance and do just a teensy bit of advance preparation, the task of getting it on the table is much more natural and less stressful. It sometimes even feels fun. You’ve been warned. 
• Second 3 minutes: As you’re cleaning up dinner, decide what you feel like for breakfast the next morning. Again, do one small thing to facilitate that meal before you leave the kitchen–setting pantry ingredients out, soaking grains, or even just setting the table. When you wake the next morning the hardest part of breakfast (trying to decide what to make while you’re still asleep) will be past you. It’s a feeling nearly as good as that first sip of coffee (or so I imagine, as  non-coffee drinker).

If you’ll take 10 min. a week to quickly brainstorm a few meal ideas, shop with a list, and incorporate just 6 minutes of forethought into each day, you will be setting yourself up for success in feeding your family well, and nobody got carpal tunnel from endless list making. Glory.

Do you think this flexible plan would work for you? Give it a try by listing 3 dinner ideas real fast in the comments. You’ll inspire my next menu planning session (thanks!), and maybe find something to add to your Wish List this week!

This post is an excerpt from my book Your Real Food Journey. If you like this simple system for streamlining your kitchen, you’ll love the rest of the book! Grab yours on Kindle or in full color paperback (qualifies for Amazon Prime free shipping!). Makes great Christmas gifts, too. 😉 

I was racing around my kitchen the night before a road trip, scrambling to collect and create enough nourishing snacks so we wouldn’t have to rely on road food the whole trip, when I realized I was in “chicken with my head cut off mode”.

Knowing that that’s not a healthy state of mind to be in, I paused just long enough to ask myself—what would it look like to not worry about what we ate? And what would it take for me to get to that point?

Would it take a larger food budget? More time? Better equipped kitchen?

I sensed in my spirit that wasn’t the root of my problem, nor would more money or time be the answer to my stress.

I poured homemade yogurt into individual jam jars and then swung around to the fridge to find some homemade jam to complete my DIY yogurt cups and asked myself again,

“What would it take? What does not stressing about our food look like?”

Would I still eat the way I do? Yes. Would I still be making yogurt the day before a trip to make sure we have good probiotics in our tummy on the road? Probably. What would be different? Could it be different?

That’s when I realized that my anxiety in regards to feeding my family well would not diminish until I realized that it was a matter of misplaced trust.

God created my body. He numbers the hairs on my head and keeps my heart beating in my chest without me having to give it a thought. He alone knows the mysteries of my brain, hormones, nerves, and cells.

When I take an obsessive approach to nourishing my family I’m forgetting that my body is not a machine that I can only hope to maintain well. It’s a miracle created by a loving Father who knows my body and my needs better than myself, and has a history of nourishing and healing that body in ways that defy human logic and efforts.

(Remember the man healed of leprosy by washing in a dirty river? A blind man who could see because of mud paste? A widow and her sons existing on miraculous supplies of wheat and oil? And manna—remember that stuff? Came out of the sky and nourished a million people walking through the dessert for 40 years?)

And here I am worried about a few snacks on a two day road trip.

When we worry in our kitchens, we are forgetting that the food we eat is not the biggest factor in our well being. The biggest reason you and I are breathing, thinking, and reading these words and understanding them is not because of what you ate for breakfast this morning, but because of the power and love of the God of the Universe.

“In Him we live and move and have our being…” (Acts 17:28)

That’s why I wrote this book–because you and I both need the reminder that this whole thing is a journey, not a target we have to hit the first time.

So, slow down, friend. Take a deep breath. It’s not all up to you. You don’t have to do it all today, or learn all the things this week, or completely change your diet this month.Take a deep breath–there’s another way.

Your Real Food Journey: a gentle guide to steady progress is my newest cookbook that I wrote just for those of us who have gotten a bit winded in the effort to feed our families well.

“The real food bandwagon feels like it’s careening past me at 100 miles an hour and there’s no way to jump on. Trina presents ten key places to start eating real food with built in grace for the journey. She makes what seems like such a daunting task into something I can conquer one thing at a time.” Rachel of RachelZupke.com

With eight years’ experience preparing and serving traditional, whole foods to my family, I’ve learned a couple things along the way. Eating better is not so much about the equipment you have or the grocery store you can afford to shop at. Joy and success will be found in making one small change at a time, while trusting that our Maker is sustaining us.

“Your Real Food Journey unravels the myth that real food is high maintenance. It’s the perfect real food primer full of useful information, tasty recipes, and genuine encouragement. Trina makes feeding your family healthfully a fun, attainable adventure. Her approach is all about sustainable habits – really finding out how real food can work for your family, not the other way around.” Emily of EmilyCGardner.com

If you’ve spent way too much time down the bunny hole of the internet trying to figure out what the real food diet looks like for real families, let me break it down for you into simple explanations and practical stuff you can do today. If you’ve gotten burnt out on this track, let me show you a more gentle approach. If you love eating healthy but it feels like more of a burden than a blessing—this book will lighten that load.

Let’s slow down and stop stressing about what we’re eating and feeding our families. Let’s take it one step, skill, and recipe at a time. Because real food is not a target we have to hit the first time—it’s a journey to be enjoyed.

Get a peek inside the book here!

The other day I made a pound cake.

With white flour and sugar.

Does this shock you? Have I completely lost my credibility as a real food blogger?

I hope not, because I have a really important point to make in this story.

We were living in the bus at that month. I was making a pound cake for my son’s birthday because it only required very basic ingredients, and would be yummy enough without frosting (it’s all about simplicity on the bus, dontchaknow).

Problem: half of our family and Seth’s aunts and uncles love chocolate. The other half don’t (I know, I don’t get it, either). Personally, I was craving chocolate, but didn’t want to make a dessert that only half the party would enjoy. So, I compromised. 

I mixed up a lovely vanilla pound cake, and poured half of the rather thick batter into the pan. Then I stirred in a heaping measure of cocoa powder into the remaining batter, and poured that into the other half of the pan. It was a beautiful marriage of delectable batters, and it baked up beautifully. I wish you could have smelled it, let alone tasted it. Everyone was delighted (including Seth).

What does this cake have to do with your real food journey?

There will be days when you will struggle to please both parties–the voice in your head that is full of your accumulated real food knowledge, and the voice of reality that says you only have so much time or money or energy–will be at odds with each other. You will have to make a choice that is a nod to both your ideals and your reality. You will have to compromise.

And you know what? It will be OK. You will live. You will not die from one white flour/white sugar pound cake. And life will be full and rich and sweet. And stress need not flavor every meal you make.

So, as we close this month-long series, my final piece of advice to you is this: Be intentional in your food choices for your family, realizing that compromise will be a regular part of the process. The fact that you are making the effort to become more conscious of healthy eating habits is key, even if it doesn’t show up in ever meal from this moment on. Real food is a process–let your goal be to embrace the journey.

It’s been absolutetudenly delightful to have you join me this month on our Real Food Journey. If you have further questions, or topics you’d like me to cover in future posts, don’t hesitate to join the conversation on my Q&A post, or contact me.

Ready for your next step? It’s time to get cooking!