Menu planning seems so hard that it’s tempting to buy pre-made plans. It seems like it would be so easy. After all, hasn’t someone else already done the hard part? But even if the plans are free, I still have 3 simple reasons not to buy pre-made menu plans.
All new recipes take longer
A menu plan you get from someone else has recipes THEY know and love. They’re all new to you! And guess what? New recipes take longer to make simply because of the novelty. I find myself reading and rereading the recipe along the way, questioning if I remembered the quantity of this or that right, or checking the order of events.
Tried and true recipes you have made for a while come much easier. While you might have the recipe open, you’re already familiar with how you’re going to move through it. If it’s a favorite, you might even have it mostly memorized.
The times for prep and overall cooking time marked on a recipe are what the recipe creator can do with this recipe. But they’ve made it…and probably several times during testing, no doubt doing better each time. So, this is a faster time than what it will take you your first time for sure.
What if you don’t like the recipes?
Gotta be honest…of all the plans I’ve used, I find I like about 3 or 4 out of every 7 recipes. It used to be the same with cookbooks. I would buy one thinking the food looked SO good, then find I only actually would even try about 20% of the recipes in the book. They included ingredients I didn’t like or hadn’t even heard of before.
The internet has saved me bunches on cookbooks because I can try whatever recipes I want but don’t have to purchase a book. I think everyone has their preferred ingredients and tastes…it’s part of what makes you YOU!!! And that’s why kids generally think Mom’s cooking is SO good…it’s the tastes they were raised on.
Is the shopping list still usable?
Once I cull out the recipes I don’t like, any shopping list they provided is now toast. You can back a recipe out with a little time, but backing half the whole set out??? That’s just not worth it to me. Now instead of a menu plan and shopping list, I have 3 or 4 new recipes…and that’s it. Back to square one.
Make your own menu plans!
You can do what those other menu planners do. Pull together your favorite recipes and make your own shopping lists to use again and again. Using your own recipes means you can prepare meals faster, you already know you like the recipes, and you can keep using your shopping list over and over. Now wouldn’t that be a great menu plan?
Want some more ideas on how to do better at menu planning? Try these!
