I was going to title this, “How to plan a menu”, but there are probably a bazillion equally valid ways to go about this…so, this is how I plan my menu. If my method helps you out, great, but if something else works better for you, that’s great too.
For starters, I don’t plan our breakfast or lunch meals. We generally have cereal for breakfast, which needs no planning. For lunch, my husband eats leftovers, and the kids and I eat leftovers(if necessary) and also bread and yogurt and fruit. So, all I have to plan are seven dinners since the rest of our meals are pretty darn predictable.
I plan ahead to give myself some lead time. I plan my menu on Wednesdays, and my weekly plan runs from Saturday-Friday. This means that I’m always planning a new menu several days before I actually need to. This is handy because then if I’m a day or two late with getting it done, it’s no big deal, and, well, I just like being ahead of things.
I use sale fliers. Wednesday is the day that the new sale fliers come out where I live, so before I sit down to start planning, I get the ads from the stores that I frequent. I try to plan at least some of my menu around what’s on sale, so I look at these before I start picking my meals. I have my main store(Weis), and then there are several other stores whose ads I peruse(I generally only look at the front page of these other ads, as it’s where the stores advertise their cheapest items). Usually several of the meals I choose are inspired by store sales.
I also try to take a peek through my fridge to see what needs using, and I plan accordingly. If I haven’t come up with seven meal ideas from the sale ads and the fridge, I rely on my stash(more about the stash in another post) of previously purchased food, which resides in my chest freezer and on a shelf in my laundry room.
I use this planner from TheHomeSchoolMom.com, but if you are adverse to the idea of having that written across the top of your menu plan, there are tons of other similar things out there on the web. I also print out a grocery list that I wrote up on Word(you can see a picture in this post). It’s very simple…instead of listing every item I might ever buy, I just wrote down categories in an order that matches the way I go through the store(produce first, then seafood, the toiletries, and so on).
Armed with my sale ads, my menu planner page, and my grocery list, I sit down at the table and begin. To assist my feeble memory, I made a word document that lists all the meals that I make for dinner. These are divided into categories, like Soup, Salad, Chicken, Ground Beef, and so on. This means that if I see that ground beef is on sale, or if I know that I’ve got ground beef in the freezer, I can easily jog my memory and come up with some meals using that kind of meat. I choose main dishes first, based on sales and what I have in the fridge or freezer. Operating this way ensures that I rarely have to pay full price for my main dish ingredients and that saves me a lot of money.
After I choose the main dishes, I go back and fill in with side dishes. I try to include fresh produce with all of our meals, and to do this cheaply, I plan around the produce sales and fill in with produce that is a bargain all the time(more on that here). Of course, as I go along, I write down all of the necessary purchases on my grocery list.
Depending on how inspired I’m feeling and how much time I spend looking for new recipes, this process can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. When it takes me an hour, the time is still well worth it because it saves me way more time than that over the course of a week. Then there are the financial benefits. Even if doing this only saves us $20-$30 a week(which is quite feasible, considering that doing this keeps us from eating out), that still means that in essence, I’m getting paid $20-$30 of tax-free income for the hour I spend planning(and even more per hour when I have a more efficient planning session). And that’s well worth it to me.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve just started cooperative planning, working with my kids.
We’re able to get just what we need at the store.
I’m able to respond to “But we always have that” arguments.
Working toward having less food to throw away, as well.
You have inspired me to make a dinner plan. This is something I have always wanted to do but didn’t know how to start. I am a bargin shopper and read all the sale ads and can find deals along with the best of them but it is random with no planning or long term goals to go with my deals! Thanks for the step by step directions!
About the recipes…what are bacon and chicken wraps? and do you just create the bacon, chicken and chedder quesdillas?
Jill
Joe, that is a good idea for older kids. I think as mine get older, I’ll try to involve them more. For now, I get to dictate the meals around here.(mwahahahah!) lol
Jill-that’s awesome! I hope you find menu planning as helpful as I do. The quesadilla recipe is from the Cook’s Illustrated site…but basically it’s just your normal quesadilla filled with bacon, grilled chicken, and shredded cheddar cheese(and I cook them in butter). The bacon and chicken wraps are very easy…just cooked bacon, chicken, lettuce, tomato, shredded cheese and your choice of dressing all wrapped up in a tortilla. They’re good though(is anything with bacon bad???). :p
It’s so worth it. It’s way too easy to simply eat out. But as a country, we’re getting fat and broke by thinking this way.
Yeah…when I don’t plan and prepare, eating out is so, so tempting. I’m scared to think how much money our family of 6 would spend if we ate out regularly, though. Even a trip to a fast food restaurant can easily cost $20.
I save time grocery shopping by making a aisle by aisle list of frequent used items at my favorite grocery store. I printed out the list and put it on my refigerator and when I was out of an item or needed it for my menu planinng I just checked it off. Now when I go to the grocery store I don’t have to search for the items I can just go down the aisles and easily pick up items off my grocery lists.
I always here about people saving money by coupon clipping and watching for sales… What about people like myself who shops mainly at Aldi’s (discount grocery store). Prices are always the same here (with occasional increases) but no sales on items. They do not allow coupons because their prices are already pretty cheap. How can we cut costs further?
We do not have too much waste food because a lot of what we buy is frozen or boxed goods with a long shelf life. But we are still trying to cut costs with our grocery spending. Perhaps I am being a little unrealistic that we could even be saving any more in our grocery spending as we currently are. We probably spend around $75/week for a family of 4 (one is a baby though, and her food is mostly free for us).
I definitely want to start menu planning, though for me it’s not for the money factor. I absolutely hate cooking. My husband is the cook of our house, but he shouldnt have to cook all our meals. I have a hard time coming up with new things to make, even when looking up recipes online. So for me, menu planning is something that my husband and I could do together, and then I would be much more willing to get dinner started when I’m not having to also plan it at the same time. (Also allows for me to start thawing any meat we need for the meal the day before).