Meal planning is a smart way to take something off your plate, but can be overwhelming to start doing. Here are 5 Idly tips for making meal planning work for everyone in your family:
1. Make a Dedicated “Meal” Category
Instead of lumping meals in with the rest of your life, make them stand out in their own calendar category. This is where meal planning gets strategic. Suddenly, you can see how busy you’ll be on a given night compared to how complex a recipe is, and readjust accordingly. Substituting ingredients for things you have on hand and repeating meals with enough days in between them is also easy. And, when all of your meals show up as one color against every other event, its glaringly obvious which nights have yet to be planned.
2. Attach Recipes as Images
Our Founder Laurel keeps the family iPad in the kitchen for everyone to use. Not only does it mean everyone can check Idly (and see the upcoming meals), but it doubles as a recipe book. By taking photos and screenshots of the recipes she’s planning and attaching them to their respective event, whoever is cooking has all the information they need right in the app. No more losing a tab or repeatedly scrolling through a blog to get to the ingredient list again.
3. Delegate Shopping (and Cooking!)
Arguably the best part of using Idly for meal planning is dividing and conquering. With meals in your calendar, you can see who has the time to go grocery shopping and who can take on cooking throughout the week. By assigning events and setting reminders, meals become a shared task that’s less likely to fall through the cracks—or fall on the shoulders of one.
4. Take Inspiration From Your Family
Not every meal has to be a big creative endeavor or a brand new recipe you’ve hunted down—take the pressure off and make planning a group effort. Create an event for brainstorming and let everyone type, speak, or write their suggestions throughout the day. Then, when you’re all together, vote on which meals are most exciting. Maybe the winner is frozen chicken nuggets, but we’re not mad about that.
5. Make Big Events Manageable
Hosting a get-together is the ultimate meal planning task. But with flexible sharing and privacy features, Idly makes inviting guests, getting RSVPs, and deciding who’s bringing what simple. In the event notes, detail what you’re making and put out a call for sides. Your invitees can claim the dishes they want to bring while avoiding repeats. With everyone involved, hosting a big Saturday grill out is as easy as planning your average Wednesday night dinner.
