When the extended family arrives to spend a few days you plan meals in advance and have all the ingredients on hand. With ease you cook two or three meals a day and wonder why you can’t seem to plan this well the rest of the year. Your mother is worried your kids will never know how good a seven layer casseroles is and you have to admit that the expense of eating out is starting to turn your stomach. Unfortunately, your stomach is growing with that take-out food, despite feeling a bit sick about it all. You may even be one of the many people who have to search online for instructions on how to plan a spaghetti dinner. But with your busy schedule and limited energy, how do you discover the best meal planning approach that will thrive in your family?

Here are five suggestions to get you started:

1. Agree to try exchanging meals with one or two families a couple times a week and give it a trial run for a month or two. It’s easy to double your batch of your signature lemon chicken dish one night, and know that you will receive back a prepared meal another evening. To simplify exchanging meals, split the cost in advance of inexpensive disposable containers and lids that can be swapped between homes.

2. Recreate your favorite restaurant recipes. Search for “copy cat recipes” and soon you will be baking up a batch of Red Lobster’s garlic cheese biscuits and a Bloomin’ Onion. Just search online for the words “copy cat recipes” or “top secret recipes.” Your family will quickly be saying they want to stay home and eat from your kitchen, which is a step toward creating healthy meal plans for teens who don’t want to make time for a family dinner any more.

3. Consider trying a meal preparation service like Dream Dinners. For a set price, you go in and choose meals based on your family’s likes, dislikes, eating restrictions, and budget. Then you prepare the meals right there and package them up to bring them home to your freezer. The result? Fast healthy dinner plans and finished meals. The cost may be a bit more than if you did it in your own kitchen, but it’s significantly less than eating out and much healthier. It’s a good chance to learn how to cook better too.

4. Don’t be tempted to buy entire meals of take-out, but rather mix up a large meal from your favorite restaurant with partially prepared meals at home. For example, it’s inexpensive to prepare a huge Greek salad with dressing, olives and feta cheese. Then stop by your local Greek restaurant and order a large side order of Gyro meat. You’ll get more for your money and also feel like you’re treating yourself to something that is hard to prepare at home.

5. Few people actually desire to sit down and come up with a meal planning system that works for them, but when they do, they often wonder how they lived without it. Don’t copy other’s ideas, but come up with whatever works best with your schedule and available energy. Perhaps it’s easy to make a double batch of that tortilla soup and freeze half for another meal. There are a few dinner menu planning software systems. Or design a blank print out of a weekly meal plan. Try breaking down the dinners by style of foods. For example, plan six night’s meals as: one - beef; one - salad; one - sandwich; one - poultry; and two - fish.

The next step is to flip through magazines, dust off those old cookbooks, and take a poll of your family member’s favorite recipes. Then start planning. In just a few days you can have at least twenty recipes and that can last you through six weeks of meals. And don’t take all the responsibility. Get everyone involved by putting the kids in charge of a meal a week, or let your spouse accompany you to a Dream Dinner style meal preparation excursion. Soon your dinner blues will disappear and instead you will feel a great sense of accomplishment . . . and relief!

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