I meal plan at the beginning of the month. It used to take me 2 hours but now that I have been doing it awhile, it only takes me about 1. I reuse a lot of recipes and I find new recipes and fill in my spreadsheet quicker now.
My example spreadsheet is at the bottom of this post. I have 5 columns - Day (Sun, Mon, etc), Date, Name of Recipe (or place where I will be to get food - church, in-laws, etc), Ingredients to Buy (more on that later) and Source (more on that too).
The 1st thing I do is list all the days of the month and then I fill in the days where I think I will be somewhere else for dinner. I am pretty conservative about this but I usually can count on my in laws a couple times a month and my friends a couple times a month. I have to adjust my spreadsheet throughout the month so if one of my plans doesn't pan out then I would just pop in a new recipe. I would be totally daunted at having to meal plan 31 days though. For some people, it would be less about going somewhere and more about adding "Leftovers" on a day but we eat leftovers for lunch and never dinner.
Next, I figure out how many meals that I need to plan for. Usually it's about 20 and I have at least 5-8 recipes that I make every single month because we like them so much. I have 4 sources where I get recipes from - my recipe manager on my computer, a Word Doc that I add recipes to, a green notebook with internet print outs and emails, and the internet. I have a ton of cook books that I never use. So my last column on my spreadsheet is Source where I list where I got it so when it's time to make the recipe I know where to find it again. BUT if it is a recipe that can be printed from my computer, I will print out all the recipes from the recipe manager, Word Doc and internet while I am meal planning, date them at the top and stick them in my family note book in chronological order.
The last thing is Ingredients to buy. I look at the recipe and I put in the spreadsheet all the things that I normally don't have in the pantry. So you won't see soy sauce or sugar and other various pantry items on the list. But I will put it in the ingredients to buy even if I happen to have that rare item that day because I re-use this meal plan. While I am meal planning for May. I will come back to March and just copy and paste so it's important that I leave all ingredients on the buy list. I don't use this as my grocery list so if I have the ingredient then I would just leave it off the list.
Grocery list - So sane people would just print out their spreadsheet (oh wait sane people don't have spreadsheets) and when it came time to grocery shop, they would just copy the ingredients down that they needed or take their spreadsheet to the store. But oh no, not me. I do all my grocery lists in advance too. So I have a 4 page Word Doc that has a grocery list for each week. I have several categories and put all my dinner ingredients in each list according to my plan. For dry foods and frozen foods, I actually have a cheat sheet of the aisle numbers in my grocery store so I can put the aisle # and put them in order. If you are still reading this, YES I am that geeky. Sad I know. So before I go shopping each week, I open my Word Doc and add on the extra things I need like milk and eggs.
So there you have it. There's my system. Probably didn't need this many words to describe but I am very passionate about my meal plans. They have helped my un-organized, full of clutter world tremendously. It's one less thing I have to worry about. Now I just need to remember to take out the chicken the night before so I am not stuck with frozen chicken syndrome. And the whole week goes to pieces if I can't get to the store on Sunday or at the latest Monday.
So my system may not be for you but I would encourage you to at least try to meal plan a week in advance. If you have a normal schedule and have a plan, I believe that you will find yourself making a whole lot less spontaneous stops at McDonalds or calling the local pizza joint. And you can also get it to where you are only going to the grcoery store once a week instead of making a pit stop with all your kids in tow to get a pack of hamburger and some taco shells.
| Day Week | Date | Recipe | Ingredients to buy | Source |
| Sun | 3/1/2009 | Craigs | ||
| Mon | 3/2/2009 | east marinated salmon | plain yogurt, garlic, ginger, salmon | Word Doc |
| Tues | 3/3/2009 | Ginger Pork | 1.5 lbs pork tenderloin, garlic, ginger | Note Card |
| Wed | 3/4/2009 | Church | ||
| Thurs | 3/5/2009 | Taco Casserole | 1 lb ground beef, 2 cans refried beans, 1 can taco sauce, 1 can ench sauce, onion, 1 lb mont jack, 1 bag taco chips | Green nb |
| Fri | 3/6/2009 | Amanda at Tinas | Recipe Manager |
2 comments:
You are my hero! :-) Love this and we are totally going to start using it in April.
Awesome post! You have encouraged me to try something - it will not include a spreadsheet because I hae no idea how to make one, but maybe I can do a calendar - and maybe I will try a week at a time, rather than a whole month. Baby steps for me ...
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