Family Meal Planning for Diverse Needs and Dietary Restrictions

I have resisted meal planning. I have artistic tendencies that don’t like schedule, and my cooking background allows me to pull off a carefree approach to churning out 21 meals a week for four people. 84 individual portions. Cooking for a family is a small commercial endeavor, in terms of scale.

Seven years into parenthood I started a light version of getting organized, planning for three meals a week. Five years later, as I round the corner on 50, my own health has become a bigger priority. Perimenopause requires particular attention to detail. With that, I’ve gotten more specific about how and when I want to eat to feel my best. Throw a picky eater into the mix, (and the fact that I’m not always home to prepare dinner), and it was time to come up with a program that maximizes my time spent shopping and in the kitchen.

If planning the whole week of eating in advance sounds mundane, you probably haven’t made it past the heading. But if you have, know that I understand the sentiment. I once balked at cooking ahead of time, preferring to shop for dinner daily, based on what looked good and what I was craving. We lived in North Berkeley in that era, in the “Gourmet Ghetto”, where I could walk to several grocery stores and a farmers market. Also, I had no children at that time. Maybe Eddy and I will retire in Europe, and I can once again shop for that day’s meal without getting in a car. For now, more rigorous measures are needed.

If this subject is the bane of your existence, you are likely the main cook for a family with diverse and complex needs. My goals around feeling our family these days are threefold: eating food I want to eat, making food my kids will eat, and staying sane. While it might not seem so, they are not mutually exclusive.

I plan meals for Monday-Friday. There are leftovers on the weekends, maybe a meal out, or maybe I make something I feel like making in the moment.

I created this system for myself, I wasn’t expecting how much everyone else in the family would love it. Knowing what’s coming, not having to think, and looking forward to specific meals are some of those reasons.

Each Day of the week is programmed. Everything is gluten free except the spelt tortillas we use for burritos. We eat some dairy, but not a lot. I’ve yet to find a brand of gluten free tortillas that work well when they aren’t being consumed right after heating. Breakfast and lunch for the kids are always the same each week, but different each day. Things like breakfast burrito, oatmeal, smoothie, and omelettes. They pack lunch almost every day: quesadillas, rice and bean burritos, PB& J with homemade gluten free bread, Sometimes we’ll switch it up and replace a meal the kids are no longer exited about, or sub leftovers if they are excited to bring them to school or camp.

Dinner is for the whole family. Monday is chicken salad (which rotates between caseser & chinese chicken salad), Tuesday is rice & beans and some type of meat. Wednesday we make tacos with the leftover meat from Tuesday’s meal. Thursday is pasta, and Friday is fish with vegetables from our farm box.

For Eddy and I, I make one salad each week in a large batch and portion it out for the week. I eat it every day, he eats it some days. I have about 8 salad recipes I rotate through, so each salad repeats once every two months. Enough variety to keep from getting bored, enough routine to get good systems in place.

This weeks salad: A chopped Italian Salad inspired by a Nancy Silverton Recipe

Ideally I shop and prep on Sunday, making the rice and beans (which have been soaking and sprouting for several days), the meat for the stew and tacos, assembling salad greens and toppings into individual containers. grilling chicken for our salads, two big batch of salad dressing, something sweet (but gluten, dairy and refined sugar free), and possibly the sauce for the pasta. I sometimes make salsa, and sometimes buy it depending on time. It does take about 3-4 hours of dedicated work to get it all together, including shopping. But the week runs so smoothly as a result. I also find I enjoy the dedicated prep time where I am cooking many things at once. I do not enjoy the rushed feeling of trying to crank dinner out in 30 minutes with hungry mouths. That means that for the most part, food Monday - Thursday is mostly reheat, assemble or simple steps like heating tortillas or cooking pasta that anyone in the family can do on their own.

Menu Board Close-Up

It’s a tight program, but with lots of room for variation. This month’s pasta includes mac n’ cheese, cold sesame noodles with broccolini and tofu, angel hair pasta with fresh tomato sauce, and zoodles with pesto. So far we’ve had chicken and beef tacos, and this week is al pastor. Last week’s salad was a keeper: Mexican, with a lime, avocado and cilantro dressing, jicama, bell peppers, kale, romaine and pepitas.

There are so many benefits to cooking this way. We are eating better, more delicious food and spending less money as I inevitably get tied up somewhere some afternoons, and have to scramble to make dinner or order take out. Our overall enjoyment and ease has improved. I realized I’d been optimizing for less food waste, which was actually costing us more in dining out. And it’s not even wasted here, as the chickens eat it and turn it into eggs.

Because I’ve gotten so organized, I know have more extra time to bake bread, make healthy cookies, and large batches of granola, adding to the savings and overall good decisions we make around a food.

Gluten Free Simple Loaf, a recipe by Aran Goyaga.

I broke down and bought a bread maker. I don’t like any of the gf breads on the market. Being able to put everything in one bowl and push start means I actually bake bread on the regular. The loaves are a funny shape, but that’s okay.

As I’ve struggled with my own metabolic health, I am experimenting with some radical changes to how I eat that fly in the face of the sacred family dinner. Things like not eating after 3, or eating carbs early in the day. I’m trying to reverse some signs of my own early insulin resistance. This plan allows me to play around some. I can eat the salad for dinner and have the taco for lunch. It was hard to let go of all eating the same thing at dinner together, but that ritual wasn’t serving my health. As the kids get older, everyone has more going on. Some nights I make dinner and one kid is gone and Eddy isn’t hungry b/c he had a late night. It’s frustrating to put a lot of effort into a meal no one eats, for whatever reason. Having a system has eliminated these frustrations.

Every once in a while it happen that we all sit down together and eat the same thing, and while I wish it was more, I think this is a more realistic standard for feeding a family these days that also takes into account the adults health.