Meal Plan Tips
Meal plans are a great way to stay on budget and alleviate the daily tedium of deciding what to have for dinner.  The trick is not to make a meal out of meal planning!

Organise your food life in a flash with these meal planning tips:

1. If planning a whole week of meals doesn't appeal to you, then don't!  Plan two or three days at a time.  When the week is over, keep your completed meal planner and reprise it at a later date.
2. Do it in reverse.  Instead of planning ahead, fill in a meal planner with what you ate in the past seven days.  Keep your retro meal plan for reprisal.
3. Remember – nobody died and left you in charge.  Everyone who eats dinner can participate in meal plans.  How about you pass that meal planner around?
4. Using seasonal ingredients will make your pocket heavier, your table richer and your life simpler.
5. Highlight one-pot meals in your Central Recipe Index.  Ditto your favourite funky day recipes.
6. Plan a mix of recipes you'll cook from memory and a few you'll cook from your recipe books.
7. Slow-cooked dishes like curries or casseroles will not only stand up to a second heating, they'll thank you for it.  Make double, have a night in between, then serve again or freeze.
8. Take advantage of flavour shortcuts such as canned tuna infused with herbs.  Quality sausages such as fennel/pork prepared by your butcher mean less preparation for you and an almost instant packed-with-flavour pasta sauce.
9. Make a regular rotation meal plan (or a series of them) for those times you don't want to think about cooking but still want to enjoy home-cooked meals.
10. Include quality prepared shortcuts from your favourite providores - Greek Lamb from your favourite butcher or home-made dolmades from that stellar deli.  These days the quality of prepared meals from delicatessens and butchers is varied, healthy and of a very high standard.  Take advantage and mix it up.
11. If a strict weekly meal plan doesn't appeal to you, compile a variety of things to choose from so you're not locked in.
12. Slow cooked cuts like lamb shanks and chicken thighs are your friend.  Sprinkle packet French onion soup over a lamb shank or a good quality bought spice mix (like paella spice mix) over a chicken thigh, wrap in foil then toss in the oven to cook themselves while you get on with something else. 
13. Choose one of your recipe books and cook from it the entire week.
    
    Meal Planning Resources
    Clever Pumpkin,  Taste,  Jamie Oliver, Delia Smith, BBC Food,  Foodbuzz,  Nigella Lawson, Antonio Carluccio,  Best Recipes,  Australian Gourmet Traveller,  Gordon Ramsay, Nine MSN,  All Recipes,  SMH,  Lifestyle Food,