How to Organize Menu Planning

No matter what else happens in your life, you have to eat. When you are in charge of ensuring that the rest of the people in your family eat and eat well, it takes some planning to provide economical, healthy meals that everyone will eat. Once you take into account different schedules and preferences, it can be a daunting task. A little time and thought once a week can help you fight the stress and have a ready answer when you get the inevitable question, "What's for dinner?"

Things You'll Need

• Recipes (cookbooks, recipe box, computer software or websites)
• Pen or pencil
• Paper or index cards
• Current grocery store advertisements
• Family calendar

Instructions

Menu Planning

1. Go through your cookbooks and recipes and make a list of all the main dishes, side dishes and desserts that your family likes. You can use this list for all your future menus. To further simplify the planning and list making, you can list the main ingredients, other than staples, that each recipe requires. Let your own preferences dictate how you do this. Some people use one index card per dish and write the entire recipe on it. Others use notebook pages (one each for beef, pork, chicken, vegetables, fruits, starches, desserts) to keep their lists organized. You can also buy software that will help with menu planning.

   Some websites offer meal planning services, either for free or for a fee. If these happen to be meals that your family likes, they can be extremely useful or they can be a starting point for you to tweak to fit your family's needs.

2. Look through the grocery store advertisements and note which items are on sale, especially meat and other main dish items, and find recipes from your lists that use those ingredients.

3. Make your menu, using the items that are on sale. Choose a main dish and side dish (add a dessert if you have time and your family likes it) from your list for each day. Take into consideration how much time you will have each day and what activities will interfere with planning.

4. Put the sale items that you need on your grocery list.

5. Check the pantry and refrigerator for the necessary ingredients you already have on hand. Add anything missing to your grocery list.

Tips & Warnings

• Have a leftover day at the end of each week. Go through the refrigerator and use any leftovers. If you have some type of meat that you haven't cooked or a vegetable about to wilt, either cook them on this day or put them on the first day of your next week's menu.

• Organize your grocery list by starting it with headings of your store's departments (e.g., meat, dairy, frozen, canned, baking). As you find that you need things throughout the week or while you are menu planning, add them under the correct heading. When you go to the store, you should need to go through each department only once.

• Make the most of your time by cooking more than enough for one meal at a time. If you are making roast, cook two, serve one immediately and use one for French dip or shredded beef sandwiches the next day (or a few days later when you are short on time).

• You can avoid the question "What's for dinner?" entirely by posting the menu on the refrigerator or by keeping your menu on the family calendar.

References

• Creative Homemaking: Simplify Your Meal Planing
• Frugal Village: Organize Your Meals