Backwards Meal Planning

In the past nine months or so, I have been “backwards meal planning.” I have been simply writing down what we eat each day (save a couple months of not) in attempts to eventually create a full year meal plan for our family.  I made tabs in a spreadsheet for each month and marked feast days and birthdays, plugging in the things we do each year for that feast/birthday. Eventually, I will have the year filled, can edit at will and print a month’s meals at a time to post to the refrigerator.

I knew that we were eating the same things over and over and that we tended to eat certain things at certain times of the year and on certain holidays.  I figured I might as well write it all down and see what the details really are.  I found there is plenty of variety. No one grows too picky and I am learning better what my family really enjoys eating. They are good eaters, so there are plenty of options. Planning ahead in this backwards way really gives me solid information as a homemaker.

Before I go today, I’ll share a funny anecdote. In January, my husband decided he wanted us to be gluten free without leaning on gluten free substitutes (GF pastas and breads) for various reasons. This was a bit of a blow to me, but I agreed.

Actually, I told him that was fine with me, but I would need his help meal planning. Meal planning is a burden to me after planning over a thousand meals a year every year for a dozen years. I felt like I was finally really succeeding in cooking meals the family liked and gluten free was about to throw a wrench in it. He agreed to plan with me.

So one day we sat down and he opened an AI program on his computer!! What?! I had not thought of doing that. It felt a little like cheating, but we prompted the AI anyway. It gave us a meal plan that was good, but not quite what we were looking for. It was just giving us lots of quinoa, hummus and lettuce wraps over and over. Nice things to eat, but we didn’t feel that was sustainable long term with our large family and hungry, growing children. I mean, there was no bacon–a naturally gluten free option.

We continued to adjust our prompt until we landed on ideas that worked for us.  The final prompt? 1960’s middle class America, gluten free.  We found the bacon, ham steaks, orange slices, potato salad, and much more.  This was enough to get us going and we have been successfully gluten free this year. I will say, there are many other naturally gluten free meals that it did not list that we do eat on a regular basis.  Things like pad thai, chana masala, and tacos. These are all yummy, filling meals our children enjoy.

If you are struggling with meal planning, have you considered doing it backwards or using AI to help you? What else do you do to help lighten the burden of 1,095 meals a year?

above: my Cobb salad. I love serving salad on this giant platter. It’s beautiful and enticing for the children.