Between all of the cleaning, work, homework help, laundry, and motherly advice, we Moms have to find time to cook meals that are both nutritious and appealing to the kids. If we don't have a game plan, it's next to impossible.

While kids often like frozen pizzas and microwavable items, they are usually low on nutritional value. If we plan meals in advance, we can reduce the amount of convenience foods our families eat and increase the amounts of important vitamins and minerals they get

Meal planning does take some time but when you have a game plan in place, it saves more time and money in the long run. When you plan ahead you know that you'll have all of the ingredients you need, and you can plan simple meals for days when you know you won't have much time. Here's how to do it:

1. Start your meal plan the day after you plan to go to the grocery store. You don't have to go by calendar weeks, but I do find it easier because it follows the regular weekly schedule. I also like planning it out on a monthly calendar page a week at time so I can look at what we have eaten in the past and plan accordingly for the future.

2. Decide what you are going to fix for breakfast, lunch, and supper each day. Try to incorporate meals that will appeal to most members of the family. Sometimes that is hard. My three girls have very different opinions about food so I try to plan something in each meal that they will like. When that doesn’t work, I try to rotate their tastes so they have something to look forward to.

3. Challenge yourself. Try new recipes and see how many days or weeks you can go without repeating a meal. I found trying new recipes made meal planning more fun.

4. Try to make sure that each day is nutritionally balanced. You can use a food pyramid chart to refer to for the proper number of servings per day of each food group. But don’t get stuck on the daily tally. When I look back over what we ate for the week, I know that throughout it was a balanced diet and that not every day was perfect.

5. Once you've planned the meals for the week, make a grocery list. Go through your menu plan and figure out what ingredients you need to buy for each meal.

6. When you go to the grocery store, don't forget to pick up some healthy snack options. Try to vary it to expose your children to more foods but you may find that your kids settle on one thing for a stretch. My kids currently love yogurt for their afternoon snack and I am not complaining about that choice.

Meal planning does take a bit of practice but in the end it does lessen the stress surrounding the age old question, “What’s for dinner Mom?”. You won’t have to wonder since you already know and are prepared to cook it.