Menu Planning Update

Last month, I finally dug in my heels and started planning a monthly menu.  This was one of my goals for the year, to have more organized food plans.  Even though we almost always cook from scratch, I was flying by the seat of my pants way too often.  Here is my original post of how I got started.

I was pretty pleased with the first month.  I enjoyed getting most of my staples in a single trip to our health food store.  There were, of course, some forgotten items and a weekly trip to market for milk and produce, but it did feel like we were shopping less.  I wouldn't say we spent any less than we normally do, but I think with time, I'll be able to get better at that.

I did make a few changes to my monthly planning sheet for March.  I kept the same routine for planning dinners.  I made a list of enough dinners for the month, trying to balance out beef, chicken, fish, and vegetarian meals.  Instead of writing down specific breakfast and lunch meals for the month, I just wrote a generic list of the things we normally eat for those meals.  I'll share those ideas with you soon, just in case you're curious what we eat around here for that.

I also decided to make a weekly planning sheet as well.  I found that only having a montly planning sheet required a lot of moving meals around.  I made a chart that has seven blocks, one for each day of the week.  Then I put a line for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is each block.  I then take my generic lists for breakfast and lunch and fill one in for each day.  I use the master list of dinners and fill those in as well.  I like planning for the week this way because I plan easier dinners for the nights my husband works or if we have something going on in the evening.  It was always hard for me to plan weekly until I made the master month list first.  Below the dinner line I put a section for planning ahead.  So if I need to take meat out, grind flour, or soak some grains (another new thing I'm trying-more on this later), or prep something, I won't forget to do it.  Well, as long as I remember to look! This has made everything go so much more smoothly.

The other thing I put on the weekly planning sheet is a small space to the right of the dinner blocks where I can put any ingredients I didn't plan ahead for or things like fruit and vegetables I might need to get at the beginning of the week.  It's kind of like having a weekly grocery list and since it's right next to the menu, again, it's a lot easier.

Has anyone else given this a try?  I encourage you to do so!

I'm having a recipe party next weekend. Can't wait to share the details of how it goes!