Meal Planning With Pinterest.

I am sick of cooking the same meals over and over again. I need to add something new to our meal plan before I go nuts.

But adding new dinners to our rotation isn’t as easy as it sounds. Finding meals that everyone will eat and that fits within our budget and our schedules often requires a triple degree in negotiation, accounting and food science, and it’s really not that much fun, until now.

Now I don’t need that triple degree because I have an ipad and pinterest!

These days menu planning involves lying in bed with the ipad and perusing pinterest for inspiration and information. It’s positively decadent, and I even manage to make a little progress towards my goal!

Here’s how to meal plan using pinterest

Cultivate a major pinterest addiction, like I have.

That means that you are constantly pinning and repinning recipes and meal ideas, so when it comes time to writing up that plan you can quickly and easily find a huge collection of ideas.

Categorise your food pins into separate boards to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
I have Family Food – Main Meals, Family Food- Sweet Treats and Family Food – Snacks and Extras boards, which work really well for me, but you could break it down even further.

Find awesome food boards to follow.
I love Tiffany Dahle’s Meatless Meals for Lent board and her blog, Peanut Blossom has lots of great recipes to pin also. Mary – Barefeet in the Kitchen has boards full of recipes and you can’t go past Mama Bake for all kinds of resources and recipes.
Group boards, where lots of pinners collaborate and all share pins on a theme, are a quick way to find lots of varied recipes and ideas. Bring Back the Family Meal and Simple Family Meals are both boards full of inspiration.

Write it all down somewhere!

I plan a month of dinners at a time, so I use a simple month grid that I made into a printable. I also have fortnightly and weekly menu plans if that is more your style, or have a quick google as the internet is bursting with free printable menu planners of all shapes and sizes, you are sure to find something that suits you perfectly.

None of my planning is set in stone. I change and rearrange things as needed across the month and yes, sometimes I get to Thursday night and just don’t feel like making spaghetti, so I don’t. But most nights, not having to make a decision about what is for dinner and knowing that I have all the ingredients to make whatever is on the list eases my dinner stress a lot!

Here are a few meals I am hoping to add into our rotation this month:
Spicy Roasted Vegetable Macaroni and Cheese – The Comfort of Cooking
Broccoli Cheese Rice Casserole – Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice
Pan-Roasted Chicken With Lemon-Garlic Green Beans – Real Simple

So while menu planning still isn’t my favourite thing to do, it’s at least a lot more fun when get Pinterest involved. And ok… I confess… I may get a little, or a lot, side tracked by all the other goodies on Pinterest along the way! You can find me here on Pinterest.

How do you make menu planning fun and interesting? Where do you find inspiration for new meal ideas?