Meal Prep Ideas (and Grocery Shopping Tips) for Busy Moms
Cooking and shopping for busy, young families can be overwhelming. It used to be hard for me, but with time I have learned what has worked for us to simplify my life a lot. I want to share my ideas and tips to simplify meal prep and grocery shopping for you.
Meal Prep Ideas
Growing families use lots of food. We still just have little ones, but I have to keep working to keep their tummies filled, and hopefully with some healthy meals or at least not junk food most of the time.
Cook Simple
One of the things that most helps me is cooking very simply. Cooking isn’t necessarily my favorite chore, so I like it if the options don’t need to be overwhelming.
This means that at this stage I don’t often make new recipes, but just stick with the tried and true.
My husband is also not a picky eater so I know that makes it easier for me. He enjoys simple meals even without a lot of variation. If we need more variety, it is usually me who wants more.
Children can be taught to enjoy simple meals (though we are still working on some of ours being picky eaters), but if your husband would like more, you might have to work a bit harder (and I encourage you to do it when you can!).
Cook Without Recipes
Another thing that really helps me with cooking in these years with a bunch of little ones around needing my attention is to not use recipes. I know how to make our main meals without recipes, and it simplifies everything so much when my attention has to be in several places at once. Once in a while we do something different with a recipe, but that is not the norm for me.
I encourage you to learn to cook without recipes as much as you can. It will save you time and mental energy. This article has more tips on cooking without recipes.
Prepare Food in Batches
I do all my baking just once every one or two weeks. I stick the bread (already sliced) and cookies in the freezer, and just pull it out whenever we need. For someone who enjoys baking this might not be an issue, but for me I sure enjoy not needing to be baking so often.
I also cook rice and beans by the potful. We eat a lot of that! Then I keep it in the fridge and just reheat what we use each day. You can do this based on what foods you eat a lot of. It saves me so much meal prep time.
Depending on the meal you can also just double it and make freezer meals that are so handy for when you don’t have time.
Plan the Day Before
Since our lunch is usually a bigger meal, and especially now with our homeschool mornings keeping me busy, I try to plan what I will make the evening before. That gives me a chance to think of more nutritious meals and to get the meat out of the freezer so I can prepare it in the crockpot ( or instant pot if I would have one) the next day. Depending, I also do a bit of meal prepping the evening before as well.
Repeat Favorite Simple Meals
At our place, most breakfasts revolve around eggs, toast, fried plantains, and oatmeal. Occasionally I will do pancakes or something different. The noon meal is our biggest meal in the day. Most of the time it’s rice, beans, salad, and meat done in different ways. Supper is a simpler meal for us. Basically every week we eat from the following list one or two times.
Keep a list of easy meal prep recipes, or keep track of meals that you all enjoy, so that you can check over it sometime when you lack meal ideas.
Our Simple Meal Ideas
- Tortillas with mashed beans, cabbage, and toppings.
- Empanadas (mashed beans or some other filling in a tortilla dough pocket, deep-fried.)
- Rice and egg patties.
- Egg sandwiches.
- Simple chicken soup.
- Cooked noodles fried with eggs.
Find what works for you.
Obviously each family is different, and living in Costa Rica will also make our menu unique. (For me, making a weekly meal plan just doesn’t work. Instead, I keep my staple groceries on hand. If planning your entire week or month beforehand is helpful for you, then most certainly do that!)
Find what your family likes and eats that you can easily cook during a busy week of life with little ones. (Slow cooker meals can be a life saver!) Someday when some of the intensity passes, I hope to add variety and other healthy food more frequently to my meal prep.
Grocery Shopping Tips
Here’s a little story about how I got to shopping. I basically didn’t do any shopping in my first five years of married life. It probably had to do with being a young bride in a new area, not enjoying shopping, a husband who was totally okay doing it for or with me, and a grumpy, old car!
As life got busier for my husband, I decided to grow up and start learning to drive the car, and then we sold the car and got a van which behaved much better. So now I often try to do the shopping myself. I leave most of my children with their grandma or aunt and just take one at a time.
Another thing I have started doing is ordering my groceries to be delivered to my door. It helps me so much to not need to leave the house for most of my shopping.
If you have that option available, I highly encourage you to check into it. Of course, if shopping is enjoyable for you then go ahead and go on a grocery trip. For me it is not!
Have a set time to go shopping
Here in Costa Rica things might be a bit different than for some of you. Gardening is quite difficult, so we basically get a bit of corn, cilantro, and cucumbers in the rainy season if we put in the effort. We also live in a semi-urban area so we end up buying most of the rest of our food.
We buy meat as we need it, and try to get enough for a few weeks at a time. Then there is a fresh fruit and vegetable truck that comes by once a week where I can get fresh produce right to my front door. We also get whole milk delivered to our door twice a week.
For all the rest of my groceries, I try to go (or order) once a month, though we are not that far from a grocery store if the need arises to get anything in between times. I keep track of about how much we use each month and restock when I shop.
Have a Master List
One thing that really helps to be able to go shopping only once a month is a master grocery shopping list. It is a list of all the groceries you buy. I have a list on my phone of all the groceries and necessary ingredients I normally have on hand, along with how much I need each month.
Before I go shopping or place an order, I check over my basic grocery list and do an inventory of what I have on hand. I can adjust the number of how many packages or what quantity we use in a month if we end up having way too much or too little. That way I get pretty much everything that we need for a month, and I don’t remember some forgotten item as soon as I get back home.
Busy moms, take heart!
Meal preparation and shopping for your family can be a lot of work. I was no expert, but I have learned how to make it easier and more enjoyable for myself, and I am sure you can too. It will get easier with time.
If you didn’t learn these skills earlier in life, you can still learn to make simple but delicious meals. Start with a simple recipe, learn to make it from memory, and then add another. With time you will find that making good food isn’t so hard, and it will get easier to fit it all into your busy schedule.
Save it for later.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn to cook simple meals without a recipe. Have staple ingredients on hand that you can always use for some common meals that your family likes. When possible, prepare food in batches so that you don’t have to spend so much time cooking.
A master grocery list is a list of all the basic ingredients, groceries, and supplies you keep in the house. It is an easy way to remember to check your inventory on everything, so that you can check it all out before you go shopping, so you don’t miss anything you may be needing in the next while.
If you need some tips on housekeeping as a busy mom of little ones, read this article.
Share in the Comments
What are your best meal prep ideas and shopping tips for busy moms of little ones?
Do you keep a big stocked pantry? Or do you buy as you go? There is a thing these days where people in America and other places are stocking their pantries with a lot of food and dry goods and stuff. I’m wondering your thoughts on that.
Thanks for the tips. I need to simplify my menu and grocery lists.
I do not, largely due to that I have no more room in my house. I try to get groceries for a month. If I had more room I might get a bit more, and if me lived up North where we could garden and preserve I probably would. But I imagine you mean they store up stuff out of fear of what the future may hold, and that decision is up to each person.