Easy Meal Planning for Teachers – Quick, Low-Stress Ideas for Busy Educators

Teaching is stressful. After planning instruction all day long the last thing I wanted to do was plan for dinner at home. At the same time, our family needed to eat and we were spending way too much money on meals. So, I came up with some practical and hassle-free ideas for meal planning for teachers. These quick and low-stress tips will ensure that educators can unwind and enjoy a delicious, satisfying meal without having to spend excessive time in the kitchen.

Automate Meal Planning to Make it Less Stressful

One thing I have done over the past few years to make it less stressful is to try to automate as much as I can at home.  I try to make sure things are set up for the week and are in place, so that when I come home in the evenings, I don’t have to figure out what’s for dinner, what needs to be cleaned, or what I need to do for my own kiddos at home, beyond the routine. Having a yummy meal for teachers is key!

Here are a few ways that I have automated meals at home.  These are a few quick, low-stress solutions to meal planning that work well for the busy lives of teachers.

Make a Weekly or a Four-Week Teacher Meal Plan

Making a weekly or four-week meal plan can be of great value to teachers who are short on time. Having an organized meal plan provides structure and saves time when it comes to deciding what to cook on any given day.

Meal planning also helps avoid food waste by creating menus that use up all groceries at the end of the week or month. Another benefit is that it allows for more budget-friendly grocery shopping by providing a clear list of what needs to be purchased.

Having a meal plan in place makes it easier to make healthy meals as well, since the meals are pre-planned and measured out, ensuring that each dish contains all key nutrients. Overall, making a weekly or four-week meal plan can be incredibly beneficial in helping create an organized, nutritious lifestyle.

You can create a weekly plan, but even better is a four-week plan that you can rotate monthly.

Pick out 28 of your favorite recipes and assign them to days of the week over a four-week period.

When planning four weeks of meals to rotate, it is important to consider both variety and efficiency. First, it helps to consider how often you are likely to cook each week — for example, if you plan on making a few large batches of food that can be spread out over multiple meals. This will help inform your decisions about which types of recipes would work best.

Additionally, it is important to incorporate different ingredients and flavors into your meals so that you don’t become bored with the same flavors too quickly. When creating the actual meal plan, try to create a balance between simple staples such as grilled chicken and vegetables and more elaborate dishes.

Create a Grocery List for Each Week

From there, create your grocery list for each week. Create your grocery list at your favorite grocery store. Most stores will allow you to create separate lists. Have a week one list, a list for week two, and so on.

Order Groceries Online

When it’s time for you to shop for the week, instead of actually going to the grocery store, use the lists that you’ve already created and have the grocery store shop for you!

Where to Create Your Lists of Meals

One more thing I have done for dinner is to keep a list of the 20 or so meals that we enjoy.  In the past, I used Evernote for my list and recipes.  

I’ve started to use Airtable for my meal planning.  Airtable is like a glorified Excel or Google Sheet document.  Not only does it include a grid form, like a spreadsheet, but it also includes cards, as you see below, and a calendar where you can drag and drop recipes onto different dates. It is so easy to use!

Airtable does take a little bit of set up, but the 30 minutes I spent setting it up means that I don’t have to go digging for all of the recipes and ideas when meal planning.

Use whatever system works for you. Before I used Emeals, I kept a list of recipes and we would just plug them in over the month, repeating them every month.  It’s not the most innovative, but it worked.  I still have the list, but rarely use it now that we use Emeals for our recipes.

The picture above is some of my favorite Emeals that I’ve imported into Airtable. I love that I can visually see what I’m planning to make for dinner!

Where to Find Easy Recipes to Cook

One great place to look for easy recipes is online cooking blogs. There are countless websites devoted to cooking and many contain easy, delicious recipes that don’t require a lot of time or effort. Pinterest is also an excellent source for simple recipes. You can search based on criteria such as ingredients, type of dish, and more. Another great place to look for simple recipes is in cookbooks. Many cookbooks contain tasty meals that don’t take a lot of time or complex ingredients. Additionally, magazines like Food Network Magazine often have quick and easy recipe ideas as well. With all these resources at your fingertips, you can find a range of quick and delicious recipes to make any night of the week!

Here are a few of my favorite places to find yummy meals:

Emeals Recipes Make Meal Planning Easy

Another thing that has simplified my life significantly has been Emeals.  It’s basically recipes and a shopping list that get sent to my email inbox every week.  They email 7 recipes each week.  You can choose from 20 different meal plans, so there’s enough choice for everyone.

We do the clean eating recipes.  Generally, we pick about 4-5 recipes a week, knowing that we’ll either eat out or eat leftovers or something will come up some nights.  We shop for those 4-5 recipes and we’re good to go for dinner for the week.

The benefit of Emeals this past year has been that my husband could follow them easily.  He often took over cooking in the evenings if I was having a particularly busy day.  The recipes are well-written, healthy, and delicious. They make the perfect teacher meal plan!

Since I’ve been using the Instapot for the past three weeks, I’ve figured out how to adapt many of the recipes for it and it’s been so good, easy, and quick.  The perfect combination.

*Note: I am not an affiliate of Emeals.  I have just used them for the past several years and loved how it has simplified our meal planning.

Just Eat Real Food in your Teacher’s Meals

These two recipe books have become my favorite go-to recipe books lately. They are filled with real food recipes and are mostly dairy and gluten-free.

While the books are written by someone who lost a ton of weight, they’re not focused on weight loss, but on eating real, healthy food and being intentional about what we eat.

Humble Apron Food Blog

My husband has recently launched Humble Apron, a food blog that’s still in its early stages. I invite you to visit and discover some delicious recipes to add to your recipe collection.

Our focus is on recreating restaurant-quality dishes in the comfort of your own home. The majority of our recipes are simple and perfect for weeknight cooking.

Pinterest Ideas

You all know the value of Pinterest, right?  I tend to pin meals that seem easy, low-stress, or just plain yummy.  There are a ton of food bloggers out there with good recipes that fit those criteria.  Here’s my main food board:

Tools that Have Made Meal Preparation Easier

Cooking during the week can be exhausting after a long day’s work. But it doesn’t have to be! With the right kitchen tools, you can make meal prep and cooking much easier, so you can spend less time in the kitchen and more time doing what you love. From slow cookers to air fryers, there are plenty of tools on the market that make weeknight cooking more efficient and enjoyable.

Get an Instant Pot for Easy Meal Cooking

The lifesaver for me this season has been the Instant Pot.  I know it sounds like a gimmick, but it really has been so easy, especially with all the hot days (100º!) we’ve been having.  It has been so easy to put in a couple of chicken breasts, beef stew, and all kinds of different things.  It cooks really quickly, like 12 minutes for chicken breasts and 5 minutes for cut-up potatoes.  Plus, it doesn’t make your kitchen hot.

One of my favorite things to cook in the Instant Pot is hard-boiled eggs.  They come out perfect every time.  I put them in the cardboard on the trivet and steamed for 6 minutes.  So easy!  You can sauté and cook with the same pot, so it’s a low mess.  Again, so easy!

There is even a Facebook group for the Instant Pot.  They have been so helpful, answering questions quickly and giving me more ideas of what to cook in it.  Mostly, I Google what I want to make or adapt to the Instant Pot and change the recipe to fit.  Most recipes are easily adaptable.

One website that has been especially helpful has been Pressure Cooking Today.  They’re not all recipes for the Instapot, but they’re all pressure-cooking recipes.

Can you tell I’m in love with it?  Thank you to a few friends who suggested I NEEDED one.  BTW – I now have TWO of them and yes, we use both at the same time!

Plan for Leftovers so you have a Lunch Meal

This one is kind of easy, but I always cook enough for dinner so that I have lunch the next day.  I tend to overcook just a little bit.  But, since I can’t leave campus during the day, it’s necessary that I have lunch each day.  

I tend to be OCD about it and get stressed out if I don’t have lunch.  It’s just one more thing that I have to worry about. , and I don’t like worrying about what to eat.  Silly, I know, but still, it’s a stress point.

So, do you have any tips or tricks that make dinner easier for you? Or meals for teachers that are key to making your life easier?

How do you create meals that are low-stress for you?

Do you have any favorite meals?

I’d love to hear about them (and pin them to my Pinterest board so I can make them!)  Yum!