Menu planning

The last two years in our house have been one giant financial struggle. During the last 2 years, I have worked only for about 8 months, part time, so life has been a true struggle. With hard times and no job, I have had assistance for food to help feed me and my daughter. To make the assistance last, I have used one thing to help ensure we have dinners for the month: Menu planning.

Menu planning is not an art, but it can feel like it when you looking at a month worth of dinners to prepare and limited funds to carry out the plan.

Menu planning serves a few purposes:

1. Helps to ensure dinners are covered for whatever time frame you are planning for.
2. Helps ease the stress of what's for dinner.
3. Eliminates scrambling around at the last minute trying to figure out what to make.
4. Ensures you have what you need to prepare those dinners without making extra trips to the grocery store.
5. Helps keep the waist line the same size since there is no need to run out for fast food.

Here is how I do it:

I use Microsoft Word, Excel, and a basic calendar template. If you don't have these on your computer or laptop, there are plenty of free apps you can download to help with menu planning.

I start with a blank calendar and fill in the days based on the particular month I am planning.
I do have a deep freezer that I try to add to when I do have extra funds so I try to use these items first, adding them to different days on the calendar.

In my house, it is just me and my daughter so I add in nights to use up left overs. I don't like wasting food and neither of us are big on having left overs for more than a day or so after the original meal. I also tend to try to use meats for more than one meal whenever I can. Let me give you some examples. Here is my menu plan for February.



On Valentine's Day, I have a whole chicken planned for dinner. There is no way the two of us will finish an entire chicken in one meal. I will brown the chicken first and then let it simmer for a while to make homemade stock, then freeze the extra meat so that I can use it the following week in chicken salad sandwiches. There is also a beef or pork roast planned for one day. I will decide which one to get based on availability and price when I go to the store. The extra meat I will shred and use to make tacos a few nights later.

I also use any extras from a meal to create my own TV dinners, so to speak. I have a few plastic divided containers with lids. When I make a meal, I will use one of the plates to create a full meal for left over nights. Since it is just the two of us, I tend to make one extra meal in the divided plates for each of the nights that I cook. That way on left over night, my daughter has a choice for what she wants for dinner and I will have the one she doesn't choose. If I have more leftovers than will fill just one plate, I will make a second and put it in the freezer for an additional option for left over night later in the week or a night where the day just didn't go as planned.

The next part you can do a few different ways. When I first started menu planning, I would plan out the entire month first then create a grocery list of everything I needed for all the meals. After I created the full list, I would then remove the items I already had in the freezer or pantry. This made planning a bit time consuming.

The other way you can handle is how I do it now. I add one day to the menu calendar, then look over the ingredients or items I need for that meal and add them to an excel file I have open in another window. I have already separated the file into different sections so I add the items to the pertinent section, then once everything is added, I will sort that section alphabetically.

If there are any meals I have planned from recipes I have not created myself, I will print those out and staple them to the menu, which then goes on my fridge. Eventually, I want to create a chalk board wall that I can write my menus on, but until then, I just stick it to the fridge with magnets.

Here is my grocery list for February that goes with the menu pictured above.



When I created the file I use for the shopping list, I made sure to include a column so I can check off the items as I add them to my cart. If you prefer, you can write in the cost of the item on the line instead so you can keep a running total of what you are spending so you know you are staying within your budget.

There are some items on my menu that I can make myself. For example, I can make the dough for the homemade pizzas and french bread pizza in my bread machine. I do recognize that on a busy day, it may be unrealistic to think I will have 1 1/2 hours to wait for that to finish before I make dinner though, so I tend to add in items that may make those days easier on the off chance time gets away from me. I also do this just in case I have a sick kid at home, something I can't plan for, or have unexpected appointments occur. I also tend to share my menus with a few friends who don't necessarily make their own dough like I do (let's be honest though, I don't always make my own even though I can).

The nice thing about menu planning is that it is completely customizable based on what your family eats and likes. My daughter tends to be a picky eater so I try to find at least one new recipe a month to try out. If its a hit, then it gets added to the list of possibilities and if it isn't, it gets deleted from the list of dinner options.

I have not quite gotten organized enough yet to create a binder with the past menus I have made with sections of our favorite meals or foods, though that is something I have planned for the future to help make planning easier. I hope this was helpful and I would love to see your menu planning ideas as well.

Happy planning...

Danielle