"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"...Psalms 27:11
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Meal Planning Made Simple
By Monica Resinger
http://homemakersjournal.com
Meal planning can be a time-consuming job and often times, this is why we just
give up on it and just go get whatever looks appealing at the store and be done
with it. I know from experience that this leads to wasted money, extra trips
to the store, frustration and cooking boredom.
So what's the solution? The solution I came up with was pre-planned 3-day
menus complete with shopping lists. This way, I'd only have to do the work
once for a given menu, then from there on, that menu would be hassle-free.
This method also allows me to work in new recipes.
Meat is usually the most expensive part of the shopping list, so this is why it
is the biggest factor in my menu planning. On a given week (I like to shop
weekly for the sales to save money), there is usually 1 or 2 different meats*
on sale that I'll buy for the good prices. This is why I make my menus for 3
days - so I can use the two sale meats* in my menu plan (I pick out 2 menus that
include the 2 meats I'll be using). This ads up to 6 meals within a week - I
don't plan 7 meals because we usually have at least one (usually more) meal per
week with enough leftovers to make up for that 1 missing meal (and of course,
there's always those nice days when we get to go out to dinner!). Maybe you or
I will have leftovers after each meal and extend our shopping trips and save us
money! *Note: if you happen to be a vegetarian, simply plan your meals around
the produce sales.
Here is the step-by-step instructions for making pre-planned, 3-day menus:
1. Choose the *meat you'd like to include in your meal plan. To help
decide, look at what meats are on sale in your weekly grocery store sales
flyers.
2. On a sheet of paper (or a page in your word processing program on your
computer), label Meal 1 and leave a few spaces to fill in a main dish,
vegetable, bread, etc. (whatever food groups you like to have included in your
meal), then do the same for Meal 2 and Meal 3.
3. Fill in the names of the recipes you want to include in each meal. For
this part, you can use your tried and true recipes or fill in new ones you've
been wanting to try. If the recipes are from a cookbook, list the name of the
cookbook with the page the recipe is on in parentheses so you can find it later,
or, if you'd like, you can write the recipes on additional sheets of paper (or
additional pages in your document on the word processing program) to include
with your menu for ease of use later.
4. Make the shopping list. On an additional sheet of paper, include all the
ingredients from each recipe you used in Step 2. If an ingredient is included
in more than one recipe, simply increase the amount on your list. It's nice to
categorize these, but not necessary.
I suggest making a basic shopping list for yourself that includes items you use
all the time such as fresh fruits & vegetables, milk, eggs, bread, flour, sugar,
etc. These are the items you always want to have on hand.
You can organize your meal plans in a 3-ring binder and section them off by
meat. Obviously the more 3-day menus you have, the better. Yes, this can be
time consuming to begin with, but it is time well invested because later there
will be hardly any work involved. When it comes time to go shopping all you'll
have to do is look up two appealing 3-day menus that include your sale meats,
write down the items you need from those and your basic shopping list, then go
shopping.
Monica is the founder Homemaker's Journal E-publications, the growing home of
many fun and informative home and garden e-books, tip sheets, articles and more!
http://homemakersjournal.com
Get a FREE Slowcooker Recipe E-book when you subscribe to Monica's FREE e-zine
for homemakers! To subscribe and receive instructions for picking up your FREE
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