Meal Planning

A few years ago I did a post about how I make our monthly menu and grocery lists.  A lot about how I do that has not changed, but I did want to update you on how I actually decide on our meals these days.  Being a stay at home mom means cooking in a lot more.  Having a baby means not traveling and going out as much in general.  So I have had to make a few adjustments to my process.  The steps are still the same for the most part.  I will refer to each of the steps and note any changes I have made to accommodate our new needs.

Step 1 is still practically the same. I no longer print a calendar to write down everything we have going on for the month.  Instead, I use note paper in my planner (Happy Planner), and I list out all the days of the month.  I then add in our daily plans from there.  I like doing it this way so that I can keep this schedule by month in my planner and all reference it if needed.

Step 2 has been the step that has changed the most.  Most weeks we cook in Sunday - Thursday.  Fridays we typically go out to eat and get groceries.  Saturdays we usually go out or we will see friends and cook in [or sometimes go out].  We rarely eat out in the middle of the week with a few exceptions.  On weeks Brad needs to get his oil changed, he will meet a friend; we may meet his friend just because; or sometimes it will be out of the blue we decide to eat out one night.  

Now how do I decide what meals we are having on which days?  First is my method for "types of meals" Sundays and Mondays are typically when I cook the most labor intensive meals.  I try and make one new meal on one of these days [sometimes I will make two new meals].  Since Brad is home on Sundays, if I want to grill something this is the day I plan for it.  Mondays are my most productive days of the week, so I typically have the energy to do a more labor intensive recipe or something new in general.  Tuesdays are either fairly easy cooking meals or crockpot meals.  Wednesday and Thursdays are usually meals from the freezer, super easy meals [i.e. bacon and eggs] or if we do eat out in the middle of the week, I plan for one of these days.

I look through the information I gathered in Step 1 and determine how many of each meals I need [labor intensive, crockpot, freezer/easy].  I then decide what I want to cook in each category.

After I decide what I want to cook in each category, I assign it to specific days.  I do try and apply some logic to this by cooking similar things during a week.  An example would be Mexican.  I might cook enchiladas and tacos in the same week so that when I buy chips, the chips won't go stale and can be used all in that week.  

Steps 3 - 5 are the same.  I make a list of all the food needed for all the recipes.  I go through our kitchen and establish what we already have.  Then I make grocery lists for each week and buy as much as possible our first week of the month.

Step 6 is different in only how I track the weekly lists.  I place the lists in my planner so that when I open my planner for that week, I have the grocery list I need to use.

Step 7 no longer exists.  I do not enter the meals into our shared calendar.  Since I use a planner, I no longer need to do this.  I do have a plate that I write our weekly meals on in our kitchen so that we can easily see what we are having all week without opening the planner if we want.

That pretty much sums up our meal planning process.