Meal Planning

Ever since I've lived on my own I've done weekly meal planning.  Actually, that's not true, there was a brief period where I didn't. Then my son's god mother introduced me to weekly meal planning and I haven't looked back since. As a matter of fact when I hear that people don't do it I think (no offense) surely there must be something wrong with their home keeping skills... and then I remember back to a day when I too was clueless.  For a long long time I've done this one way, but lately I've been changing it up a bit.

In this post I will show you a couple different ways I do meal planning and if you don't already do this, give it a try.

The original way or should I say the way I was taught was simple. I would sit down each week, and come up with a list of meals for each day and write them down.  I would write each night's dinner on the calendar for that week (i.e.  Monday- tacos, Tuesday- lasagna, etc, etc).  Then I would make my grocery shopping list according to what I needed for each meal. Then I was making just one weekly trip to the grocery store.  Easy. Peasy. This was nice because I knew exactly what I needed from the store and I knew what we were having for dinner each night.

This way works extremely well don't get me wrong but when you have an adorable 2 year old little boy who's not real fond of grocery shopping you have to find a way to make something easy even easier.  So I came up with this:

This way takes a little more prep time but so worth it in the long run specially if you have little ones who don't exactly make grocery shopping a fun time.

I now make menus out for 2 or 3 week stretches.  You could probably go for a whole month, but you will need to go again in about 2 weeks for fresh produce and such. So 2 weeks is what really works best for me.

So if I'm planning meals for 2 weeks I write down 14 different dinner ideas, complete with sides. Then I write down 2 weeks worth of breakfasts and lunch ideas.  I then go through my meals and make my grocery list based on what I just wrote down (checking my list against what I already have  my pantry so I don't end up with 10 boxes of spaghetti noodles!)

I keep this list in my file I have on my counter top and each day I look at the list and pick out what I feel like making from the list.  After I make a dinner I check the meal off the list so I know it's been made. (yes you could forget you made something over a two week period and I keep the list so I don't forget what all I had planned to make)

I also keep all my recipes for the dishes I'm making for that week or 2 in that file folder so I'm not trying to hunt them down each night before making dinner.  Once I make a dish the recipe comes out of the folder and goes back into my recipe box, folder, or book.

Now sometimes I do get lazy because planning 2 or 3 weeks worth of meals isn't always easy or my idea of a fun time so I'll only do a menu for one week. I do it exactly the same as for my 2 weeks only instead of coming up with 14 dinners I'll come up with 7. 

Also if you notice I have letters under breakfast and lunch. These are our initials.  Since we all tend to eat different things for breakfast and lunch it's just easier for me to list those out this way.  I also have a spot at the bottom where I list any dessert or special snacky type thing I might wanna make that week.

If you don't already do menu planning give it a try.  I'm sure one of these ways could work for you.  It will save you time, money, and your sanity at the grocery store and help end the "What am I gonna make for dinner?!" panic.