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Looking for creative meal planning ideas? Ask your friends and family for their favorites!
Digital swap
One quick way to find out what foods, recipes, and meals your friends and family love to use in their meal planning is to reach out digitally. Use your favorite social media apps to ask your contacts about their favorite meals and recipes. Collect their answers and use them the next time you meal plan!
Menu swap with friends
This is a quick and easy way to add to your current menu planning. Ask your friends if they menu plan. If they do, suggest swapping a week or month’s plan with each other. It’s as simple as making a copy of your plan and giving it to your friend the next time you’re together! This is not only a great way to learn new ways to plan, and you’ll also get to know your friends better.
Menu plan with friends
Another quick way to grow your meal planning and share time with friends is to sit down and create a week’s menu together. Before getting together, decide on the main food items your menu will be built upon. For example, if it’s summertime maybe you will want to create a week’s worth of meals that involve the grill or no cook meals. If it’s winter, consider using your best crockpot ideas.
parent QUOTE
“Sharing the kitchen with a friend makes for fast and fun work. My friends and I get together a couple of times a month to meal prep breakfasts with each other. We call them Breakfast Prep Parties, and all of the meals we prepare use WIC ingredients. These parties go a long way in helping my family start the day with nutritious meals!” ~ Shannon, mother of 6
TIP: Health eKitchen’s Veggie Fritters, Carrot Cake Cookies, Oat and Zucchini Muffins, Crustless Cheese Quiche, Simple Overnight Oats, and Banana Oat Yogurt Smoothie recipes are perfect for this party!
Build a meal party
Similar to the other exchange ideas above, but a little different. For this exchange, each person will be “assigned” a meal component. Some ideas include salad, fruit/veggie side dishes, main/protein dish, dairy dish, and grains. Again, each person will make enough of their assigned component for everyone. At the end of the exchange, each person will go home with an entire meal. It’s best to rotate these components from time to time, as some are more expensive to provide than others.
Meal exchange party
Ready to get together with a few friends AND end your time together with several ready-made meals? Plan a meal exchange party. For this party, each person will create one meal, multiple times. For example for a party of five, each person will make the same recipe/meal five times. Maybe you’ll make chili, or sheet pan chicken and veggies, or provide the fixings for a no-cook meal for five families. Once you’re done, you’ll keep one of the five for your family and take the other four to give to your fellow partiers who will each bring you the meal they made/prepped. It’s a good idea to all agree on the focus of this exchange; will you all be bringing complete meals or just meal components e.g. salads, soups, sides, or main dishes.
Soup swap
Just like the Meal Exchange Party but only soup is allowed! You can change the theme to anything you and your friends would like--salad swap, pasta exchange, garden harvest share, favorite crockpot meal exchange...the possibilities are unlimited!