Updated Sep. 22, 2019. Originally published Feb. 12, 2013.
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Meal Planning
Meal planning (or menu planning — same thing, just personal preference) is another area where we need to create both a process and a place for storing the associated paperwork. Let’s start with the process. When you finish that you’ll know what paperwork you have to determine a place for.
The Master Main Dish List
I find it easiest to do my menu planning if I have a master list of all the main dishes that are on our “tried-and-true” list. I use a master main dish list (see the bottom of this post) and just write the recipe titles down in columns. Each column has a heading based on the type of meal it is.
What headings you use will depend on your needs. I like to use headings that are protein types: chicken, beef, fish, beans, etc., so I can be sure there’s a good variety in our meals. But other headings could also be useful. A “crockpot” heading would let you know that a recipe is good for an errand day, for instance. You can use whatever headings work for you.
STEP 1: Create a master main dish list.
Creating this master list is optional; you may have another menu planning method. But I find it saves me a lot of time as I plan menus each time, because I can just go down the list and copy recipe names over, without having to think too hard. Don’t forget to write down meals you don’t need recipes for, like if you do spaghetti with jarred sauce or grill hamburgers.
The Calendar
The next step in your menu planning will probably involve working with the calendar. I’m a monthly meal planner, myself. (Well, four weeks, really. I call it a “month” for simplicity’s sake.) So I use a blank monthly calendar. First I make note of any special events, occasions, or activities that will impact our meals. Maybe there’s a dinner at church I need to bring something to, a birthday party to prepare for, or a day we’ll be out of town and I don’t need to cook at all. Then I fill in around those.
Typically what I do is designate a “type” of meal for each day of the week, and fill in from my master main dish list. So, for example, I might put chicken dishes on Mondays, soup on Sundays, fish on Thursdays, etc. I rarely actually stick to the days I’ve scheduled things – I just pick-and-choose from the month’s menu whatever looks good that day. But I fill them in this way so we aren’t eating the same thing all month!
STEP 2: Decide on a “plan” for what to cook when, so you have a framework to work with.
This could take a number of different forms. You could do as I do and cook a different type of protein for each day of the week. You could decide that errand days are all crockpot meals. You could designate every Saturday as pizza night. You could determine that Fridays are for trying new recipes or that every Friday you’re going to double whatever you make for the freezer. Or some combination of this sort of thing.
The idea is to come up with a general plan so that as you fill in the menu each week or month (or whatever your time frame is), a lot of the thinking is already done for you. (This is a great thing about systems! We want to get as much of our thinking done as possible as a one-time thing, so that we don’t have to think as hard when making day-to-day decisions. That saves a lot of time and energy.)
I’m trying to do some more freezer cooking, so I’m experimenting with a meal plan that looks a little different than the calendar-based method I described above. You can see an example of the new form I’m trying out at the bottom of this post.
STEP 3: Print off a calendar or a form with “list” spaces for however long you’re planning for, and fill it in from your master main dish list (and/or your collection of new recipes you’d like to try).
If you already have a menu planning method that works well for you, it might look completely different from this (and I’d love to hear about it in the comments!). If you do a lot of freezer cooking it probably looks a bit different (and we’ll talk about planning for freezer cooking in a couple of weeks when we get to “food prep”). But if you don’t have an effective menu planning method yet, I recommend you give this one a try.
Making it Routine
Of course you’re going to need to repeat this process! You can’t just plan a menu once and eat forever. So you’ll need to ensure that the necessary steps go on your routine lists. You shouldn’t need to create a master main dish list every time you plan menus. (That’s the whole point!) But you might want to make a note to add any newly-tested recipes to the list. You definitely will need to add the following steps with whatever frequency is appropriate (weekly? monthly?).
STEP 4: Add “plan menus” to your routine lists. If necessary/desired, add “add new recipes to master main dish list” to your routine list.
Making Space
Now that you have a system sorted out, you need a space to keep the related paperwork. You’ll probably need to store your master main dish list, your basic plan, and possibly extra blank menu forms. (You might also want to save menus you’ve already created, so you can “recycle” them later and not have to always create new ones. That’s totally up to you.)
You will want this to be in an easy-to-find and -access location, and probably somewhere near your recipes. I find it logical to store these with my recipes, but you might want them separate.
STEP 5: Decide where to put your menu-planning materials, and put them there.
(If you decide to keep old menus for reuse, you may or may not want to give them their own section.)
Forms I Talked About
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Great tips for homemakers! Thanks!
Here I am hoping to gain some new inspiration for my menu plans and you are looking at my own Pinterest boards. Ha! What a small world. Thanks for the mention. Now, to go and organize myself better! 😉
haha Well, I guess we must appreciate each others’ way of thinking!