Simplify meal planning & grocery shopping by compiling sets of recipes and their ingredients in advance! This is step 5 of 7 in the 2-Week Meal Planning series.



Step #5: List all ingredients

One point of all this planning is to simplify shopping! Grab a piece of scrap paper and, starting with the first recipe, begin listing the ingredients and amounts. It should look something like this:

flour: 1 cup
oats: 1 cup
bananas: 2
sugar: 1/4 cup
raisins: 1/4 cup

...and so on.

Now, take your second recipe. Where the ingredients overlap, add them together. Where they don’t, start a new line:

flour: 1 cup
oats: 1 cup + 1 cup
bananas: 2
sugar: 1/4 cup
raisins: 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup
apples: 1

Continue with the rest of the recipes. Don’t worry, you won’t do this every other week, just when you start your meal planning.

If you notice an ingredient ‘straggler’ (maybe a few Tbsp of something fresh that’s only sold in larger quantitates), you may switch out a different recipe at this point.

Writing one or two 2-Week Plans for each season means we never get tired of recipes, plus they’re geared to seasonal produce (like fruit) and weather (oatmeal in the winter, granola in the summer).

Once you’ve finished all the recipes, add the lines to find the total for each ingredient. Save this list for step 6, “Go Shopping”.

...and you?

What favorite ingredients are on your list? I'm loving the thought of all the grains and fruits on mine! You can share a photo at our flickr group!

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