Ashley emailed in the following tip:
I love being a stay-at-home mom, but cooking is not my favorite part of the job. Menu planning has been difficult for me because I always had trouble figuring out what to make.
I decided I needed to make menu planning easier so that I could instead focus my attention on things that energize me. I started by going through all my cookbooks and making a comprehensive list of all the recipes that I have ever made and liked.
I ended up with 60 recipes. Then, I organized the recipes on the list so that there was good variety.
After that, I divided my completed list of recipes into three lists of about twenty recipes each. Since I don’t cook every day of the week (we typically have sandwiches and frozen pizza on the weekends), each list was enough to cover about a month of meals. After three months, I start over with the first list.
I decided to take things a step further and also put my grocery shopping on auto-pilot. I looked at each recipe and wrote down the needed ingredients. I then came up with a comprehensive shopping list to go with each of the three recipe lists.
I watch local store ads for sales on items that are on my shopping lists and stock up on whatever I can. Then, at the beginning of each month, I print off the appropriate list, cross off whatever ingredients I already have, and head to the store to buy the rest.
I get most of our groceries at Aldi, shop the sales at County Market, and get whatever else I need at Walmart. The rest of the month there are just a few basic staples we have to buy whenever we are running out, like bread, milk, and fruit.
I have a large calendar on our kitchen wall. Each week, I look at what we have going on and decide what days I am going to cook. I then fill out the calendar days with the recipes from my list. I like seeing it all on the calendar so I can keep track of how old leftovers are, and so my husband can look forward to supper.
My new system of menu planning has been really beneficial for me. I no longer have to decide what to cook; the list tells me what to cook, and I get to be surprised!
Also, I don’t have to write out long grocery lists anymore, and the pantry is tidier because I only buy things that I know I will be cooking with in the next few weeks. I am also done dealing with the guilt that comes when it’s noon and I haven’t decided yet what to make for supper!
Since the pandemic hit nearly a year ago, I have been doing my grocery shopping at Wal-mart. I do all my grocery shoppping on-line & then do a weekly pick up. The Wal-mart site helps me organize what I will shop for & cook each week. I wasn’t much of a cook prior to the pandemic. I then use my calendar app on my cell phone to plan what I will cook each day & if there are left overs, we just eat that the next day for dinner. Dinner is the only meal I plan for, as I need to make sure I have all of the ingredients I need. This system has helped me plan for what I will make for dinner week by week. I try to make at least one pasta dish per week.
Thank you for sharing your tips and tricks with us! -Jordan, MSM Team
How much do you typically spend for a grocery trip per menu? 1 week? 1 month?
I recently did something similar. I got the idea from this post
http://www.theshabbycreekcottage.com/2013/10/freezer-meals.html?utm_content=buffer07046&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
I took one day and made a freezer full of dinner meals. I used a few of the recipes in the post and a few of my own. Now I’m only shopping for staples & items on sale for my week to week meals. Then I choose one meal and double it to freeze a meal. Now when I don’t feel like cooking I just look in the freezer for a homemade meal. It is also really nice for my hubby, now he can do dinner with out me!
This has taken a lot of stress out of my meal planning and has in the long run cut my grocery expenses down, since I only buy sale items now.
Have you ever used Cozi? I have a subscription to Cozi Gold and it lets me input my recipes, then I can add them to my calendar and to a shopping list. Makes menu planning so easy
I would love to do this but I tend to get overwhelmed. Manly because I obsess and overthink everything, and end up frustrated. I’ve tried to create menu plans, but end up not wanting those meals and food goes to waste, especially vegetables for side dishes I never prepare.
I tried making extras of each meal to freeze, but it turns out that no one in my family (including me) likes food that’s been frozen then reheated. The only meals I do like, have tons of carbs/dairy in them (lasagna, etc.) and I have to eat a low-carb, low-fat diet due to health issues.
The one thing that has worked for me is to buy a protein, like a whole chicken, cutting it in half and preparing each half with seasonings or a marinade then freezing it raw. I take it out the day before or in the morning, and either cook it in the crockpot or stick it in the oven when I get home. Leftovers get eaten for lunch next day and even dinner. This seems to work best for my family.
Maybe someday I’ll get better at following a specific plan/menu. One can only hope… 🙂
I use the app meal maker. So far it’s working great!
Thanks Ashley for sharing your system. I’m impressed! I’m not that organized yet with my grocery shopping. But I’m a huge proponent of menu planning.
As someone who works full-time outside the home, meal planning has saved my sanity and our household budget. We’re also all eating healthier meals too since I started menu planning. I’m not hitting the drive-thru out of desperation at 6 p.m. anymore.
My goal is to always have two months of dinners planned because the months just go too fast to have only 30 days planned at a time.
I was once resistant to the idea of planning even a month of dinners in advance. I just thought I could never manage it. But now that I’ve been doing it, I love it and can’t imagine going back to the old way, which was spending several minutes every afternoon when I’m worn out from work trying to figure out “what to make for dinner.”
The menu plan is just that, a plan. It’s there to help save me time and energy and expenditures. If we want to get pizza instead of having what I’ve got planned, we get pizza, it’s no biggie.
Plus, I find myself trying more recipes because I can arrange a good balance of quick and easy dinners during a week with one or two nights of “experimenting.”
I made 4 week rotation menus a few years ago (spring/summer & fall/winter). It is so much easier now, I just look at my list & see what’s on the menu for each day. There are some days when hubby wants to BBQ/smoke or go out to eat, so we just skip over that days plan. If I find an new, interesting recipe I can always give it a try & again skip what was planned for that day. There are also several things that I make that make way more than the 3 of us can eat, so I freeze the extras & next month only have to get it out & warm it up. I need to put my grocery list on rotation/auto pilot too.
I have a long list of meals we like typed up on the computer, a list of recipes to try out of my cookbooks, and lots of Pinterst ideas. I try to make sure I have all the ingredients I need for what I plan to make. Then my husband ends up being late from work and I have to make something for my daughter. Depending on how late he will be I either eat with her or wait for him. Some things just aren’t as good warmed up, and I don’t like trying new things on work nights because dinnertime is so erratic. So we end up having the same things all the time that are easily cooked, such as chicken strips or something frozen thrown on the grill like pork chops. I would love to meal plan more but it gets so discouraging. Any suggestions for those of us whose husbands never get home at the same time?
The slow cooker with a warm setting and soups on the stove are what I use as go tos when my hubs is on call and his getting home times are tricky. Also, I have an arsenal of 10-15 minute recipes, such as spaghetti with sauce, tacos (especially with frozen taco meat microwaved to hot) or haystacks, or French bread/English muffin pizzas (it even works to some extent with toasted sliced bread) that can be dressed as up or down as you wish (and you can add in as many veg as you wish). Also, a salad bar. You can chop everything up the evening before and put out the containers for your daughter (and you?) when she’s hungry and pull out the same thing when your husband gets home. Breakfast for dinner is a fast one, too.
Man that sounds like a lot of work….I’m usually walking out of work at 5:00 and I dont’ know what I’m making for dinner. I don’t like spreadsheets, your system sounds awesome, can I just hire you to come and cook for us 😉
Early on in our marriage (10 years in October) I started our plan, 5 years before we had our son! Every night of the week has a different theme, i.e. Monday is Italian, Tuesday is Mexican, etc. Saturday is always leftover never night finishing up whatever hasn’t been eaten for lunch throughout the week. It seems boring and formulaic, but, I have been able to find amazing recipes this way. It also keeps our grocery bill down. I usually shop Ruler Foods or Aldi, have stopped going to Walmart altogether. We get prescriptions at Target, so I get things there I know are cheaper and use Cartwheel as well. We only shop bi-weekly, but this has seemed to work well for us!
Some great ideas but I would first start by asking my family what recipes they enjoy eating the most! Second, when the weather is not freezing cold, BBQ on the weekend and make sure that every inch of the grill is covered – chicken, burgers, sausages, veggies, etc and freeze the xtra for meals on busy on weeknights when you are too tired to cook.
i give you all great credit for running your kitchens like drill sargeants but there is NO fun in any of this! Isnt food (and how we prepare and serve it) supposed to be easy going and even a bit spontaneous?
“Mommy can we have that great chicken you make tonite?”
“Oh no, child! that doesn’t rotate in until week 3, day 4, two months from now!”
I guess I don’t like apps replacing humans in the kitchen!
Yea, this would not work for me either. We like to try new foods, and we also like to fix favorite foods when the mood strikes.
I tried menu planning on a large scale, back in the couponing heyday when one could amass large quantities of groceries for next to nothing. I had two months worth of recipes planned out. It was a complete disaster. I ended up tossing large quantities of food. Just like Karen said — eating what we want when we want suits our lifestyle, not sticking to a rigid plan. I’ll never do that again.
The only “menu planning” I do is to sit down once a week (Sunday morning for me) pick two or three dishes and make sure we have everything on hand to make them. Standard favorites, with a new recipe every now and then when I say a recipe online or in a magazine that I want to try.
Most weekends I fix at least one, sometimes two, crockpot or casserole type recipes that we eat throughout the week for lunches or dinner. There’s just me and my teenage daughter, so this works for us. We don’t think of anything as “leftovers.” As long as the food is still good, who cares what day it was cooked?
But I don’t aim for 7 days of dinners because sometimes, well, a day calls for Subway or a favorite tried-and-true comfort food.
Spontaneity is great for people who enjoy cooking. This system was what I had to do to take the stress out of my cooking.
I would love to see a printable or even a close up picture example of the inventory list. That is a great idea!
This is almost exactly how I do it. But I have mine put into three lists; one for spring& fall, one for summer, and one for winter. At the beginning of each season I do whatever freezer cooking I can do from that season’s menu. From there I have grocery lists for what’s left. It takes a lot of the redundant work out of meal planning and half the cooking is done the first Saturday of the season!
I love the seasonal list idea! Belonging to a CSA, our meal plans are based on whatever comes in the box each week. Also, I may come up with 10-20 meals, too, but I just plug them in based on how the day is going and what I have on hand.
So I am not sure how feasible this would be, but I would love to see her list of meals….and the grocery lists. I get stuck in a rut with the same meals over and over…
Menu planning is definitely something I have never been good at. Maybe I’ll have to make it a summer goal too. It would be nice to not have to think about what to make.
Curious how long you ladies have tried this for? I generally do this but we don’t have 60 different meals that we eat and truthfully after a few months, I get bored with our meals. I would love thoughts and ideas.
I have that same struggle! I do not have a large volume of tried and true recipes to pull from plus I now try to eat low carb for my glucose so that has axed alot of my old standbys.
You don’t really need 60 recipes. Why not have a few “leftover” nights thrown in? Or a “breakfast for dinner” every couple of weeks? Hubby and I have made the same 25 or so recipes for so long, we pretty much know exactly how long each batch will last. Pork fried rice or potato soup last 3 days. Pepper steak, taco salad, and chicken alfredo last 2 days. So does rigatoni.
Also, once every 2 weeks or so, we have “fend for yourself” night. That basically means Ramen, macaroni and cheese, a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup… whatever you happen to be in the mood for that’s easy.
Sounds like our house. I make out our plan, but sometimes depending on the day, I either don’t have the time or don’t want to prepare what I planned. We eat a lot of cereal and mac n cheese on those nights
I made a list of all the meals that we like and categorized them into beef, chicken, seafood, pork, vegetarian, no cook, etc. When no one can come up with their own idea, I refer to the list and find something that we have not made in awhile. It’s great because it is an easy solution to “what’s for dinner?” If items on my menu have a specific recipe to follow, I usually note the book and page number so that my hubs or kiddos can help get things started, too.
Wondering if you would share an example of your menus.
We had one set up for a 6 week rotation, and we even added non-food items that we’d buy (cat food on weeks 3 & 6, cat litter on week 1, etc.) on it. Then my daughter got diagnosed with celiac, and it’s thrown things for a loop. I’m trying to recreate it again. Also, we always had Plan B and C (which might be breakfast for dinner or frozen pizza) in case we weren’t in the mood to cook what was planned.
This time around, I’m adding in breakfast, 2-3 lunches, and snacks onto the menu.
I keep explaining to others how this works for us, and people kind of look at me weird. Maybe if I called it our ‘autopilot plan’ it wouldn’t sound so strange. I’m glad to know other people try to do it too.
I’m a meal planning drop out. I’ve tried everything, including online meal planning services, but nothing works.
I do believe I will make this a summer goal project. I have 3 months to work on it. Thank you for this awesome post!!!!
You are not alone Dawn!
I’m a drop-out too. Much as I would like to menu plan I just can’t seem to get into it. I think I like to over complicate it though.
lol, i’m a drop out too!! i always think back to when it was nice when I was doing it, but I kinda felt like a supper nazi, like I didn’t want to be the one to dictate every nights meal. My family told me to just do it, but I guess I’m a procrastinator too…
Great motivation to give it another go, especially with the kids home for summer and needing to plan for more than just breakfast and supper! thanks MSM team and contributors!
I am not crazy about meal planning at all! I’ve tried, started and stopped more times than I care to admit. What has helped us stay on track is that everyone in my family gets to choose one meal. We have several go-to’s that we like, and one evening each week we have a meal with our Bible study group. A night of left overs is usually on there, too, so I am only left with 1-2 slots to fill. I shop each weekend for the next week’s meals, which allows me to take advantage of the Farmer’s Market items available. I can plan around that and use fresh, local produce whenever possible. Now that we are on summer break, we will have to add the lunch selections in, but I think we will keep that easy so we can ‘grab and go’. =)
Wow, you’ve got this down to an art! I admit that I’ve tried, and failed, to keep a meal planning schedule going longer than 2 weeks. It’s definitely tricky to keep coming up with new recipes, and to account for days when I just don’t feel like cooking. I like your idea of just hoarding the recipes and lists, and sorting them out from those picks.
Do you have a system for making the most out of your leftovers? Martha Stewart used to have these little weekly meal plans that used up everything by the time the week was done–leftover chicken from this went into stew for the next day, and so on. I seriously miss those little magazines… ~Brenda from SuperMoney.com
I pretty much do what the post suggests, but I have been wanting to tweak it to do what you said too, work it out so that the leftovers get put into another meal, etc. I keep getting stuck though.
We just eat the leftovers for lunch. I’ve never tried to work out a system where I cook with them.
We usually eat leftovers for lunch, but if we get a super small amount of leftovers that won’t suffice for anyone’s meal I throw it in a bowl in the freezer. When the bowl is full, I make soup with what’s in it!
This is fantastic! Going to find time to do this. Thanks for sharing
I did this on index cards, so when I was stuck on deciding what to cook I could just pull them out. Easy! Love the idea of taking it further and making grocery shopping easier.
I did something similar during a very busy season of my life. So that things didn’t get too stale, Wednesday was “Curry Night” and we tried a new scratch Curry recipe that night. As a result I still got to feed my culinary creativity while not having to try/think/work too hard.
That’s a good idea. Sometimes we get in “recipe rut”. I like having a set night to try something new. 🙂
I also don’t love meal planning. It’s a necessary thing, but boy do I hate it every. blessed. week. I will have to check this out and see if I can’t get myself a little bit (okay, a lot more) organized. Thanks for the inspiration!
I also do something similar – although I don’t have the grocery shopping down quite so well! I write out a month of menus on my kitchen calendar, loosely based on a list of recipes we like, but leaving room for some fun new things now and again when I know I’ll have the time to actually cook. Then the only thing I need to remember is to look at the calendar early in the day or the night before so I can take meat out of the freezer, or put the beans to soak, or whatever. And of course, when life happens, or there’s a great sale, or someone’s coming for dinner, I can give myself grace to be spontaneous and toss the plan – because it was created to serve me, not the other way around!
I created menu plans the month I was married, and have been using them for the last two years! I put all of the meals I could easily make, afford, and coupon for on one column, and match them with items that would be in season or on promotion quarterly, and then created 24 menus, each for two weeks at a time, and then created three holiday plans, to cover the longer months, which usually have holidays within them. I am not one for long lines at the store, and so with my list in hand, I shop at night and buy my couponed and rebate items and could not feel the least built guilty! In two years I will be debt-free from undergrad, as I’ve paid for it by myself, and one way I have done so is with cupboard shopping and meal planning!
We do something similar also. We use a menu planning app on our phone. When we start our menu planning at the beginning of the month, the app shows the meals in order of the last time we made them. We just start at the bottom of the list and go up so the meals we made longest ago are the ones we make next. Every once in a while we’ll throw a new one into the rotation, usually on Saturdays when we have more time to cook. We do our grocery shopping every week, so we just look at what we’re having for the week and buy that plus whatever staples we need.
I suppose it’s a bit easier for us since (a) we eat a LOT of leftovers (most of our meals last for 2 or 3 days) and (b) we only meal plan dinner. I eat the same breakfast (bowl of cereal or oatmeal) every morning and the same lunch (two cold cut or PB&J sandwiches and whatever snack is cheapest at Costco) every afternoon so dinner is all we ever really worry about.
Can you tell me what app you use?
Food Planner. The app itself also has a tab for grocery lists, and a recipe box to keep the recipes in.
Thanks!! I am going to try this. I used to be so good at meal planning. I have been horrible since taking on a full time teaching job. I’m hoping can get back into the swing this summer and carry it through the school year!!!
Love it! I do something similar with an excel spreadheet. I feel like such a nerd getting out the excel spreadsheets to do my grocery list and meal planning but it works! 😀
I have ax excel grocery list too, organized by store aisle so I can move quickly in and out. Mom nerds are cool that way!
That is awesome ! 🙂
Can you share that excel file?