Family Meal Planning: For the busy London Family

This seems to have become more and more popular over the past few years with family life getting busier and busier and more and more parents working long hours.

We’ve always used meal planning as a way of organising even before we had children. We found it helps to not waste food and more importantly not to waste money. Since the girls have come into our World it’s even more important as I don’t want to be walking around the supermarket any longer than I have to.

Yes we are one of those families that walking around with a list and a plan of what we need and very rarely do we get something that’s not listened and that’s only if the item is on special offer. The plan is always full of healthy foods and as the girls have got older we’ve now started to all eat the same items which has helped massively, but they still don’t fancy a chicken curry which I don’t think is right.

The thing that really bugs me is when the supermarkets change the store around…how am I meant to find what I’m after now? There are times when this goes a bit wrong namely when I get a phone call at 4.45 saying I’ve forgotten to pick up rice and it’s the vital ingredient to tonight’s meal meaning a stop off at the shops is in order.

One thing I do actually enjoy doing is the food shopping online, especially with Tesco as it saves all my favourites and recently bought items meaning I can just tick the boxes and its done. I also like it because I can see how much I’ve spent before I get to the till, and now they even have a system where it stores any unused coupons in your account and you can just add them at the end so you don’t have to hunt for them.

As I get older it’s these little things that please me.

by Darren Coleshill (onedad3girls.com)