Meal planning has always been hard since I got married. Its pretty challenging just to figure out how to incorporate both people's likes and dislikes and have some variety and then after kids come along it obviously gets harder. I tried lots and lots of ideas and finally realized that the hardest part was just like cleaning that lots of supposedly helpful advice amounts to not help. Such as instructions that say "write down everything you eat and then cycle through those meals and maybe periodically add a new recipe" duh that's what you do when you don't have a menu. And how do you figure out how often to introduce a new recipe?
Then I discovered that woman's day publishes a month of menus both in their magazine and online. And its free to view and print it online. So I print it off and then cross out anything we would not like to try or eat that they put on there and then substitute with either tried and true recipes or new ones using any keywords from that recipe if I can even if its as simple as pasta or chicken or an cuisine like Mexican or Italian.
From there I have also modified the idea further. I wanted to make breakfasts that have to be cooked periodically and realized that its hard to remember when we last had something or how to plan something into our week and also desserts so I also put in 1 breakfast recipe and 1 dessert recipe per week. Then I put these recipes in page protectors in a 3 ring binder and store the big menu sheet in the front pocket.
We don't stick to this menu too strictly in case you are thinking that sometimes you go out to eat or don't feel like something. If a recipe sits at the front for a long time and I keep skipping it sometimes I either throw it away or just put it in the pile of recipes we've made since it doesn't seem to be something we want to eat. I usually pick from about 3 recipes that we have the ingredients for that evening in any order they appear. We are a little behind now too so I feel free to make one of the recipes for lunch and another for dinner if we want. And if we make one and don't like it we just throw it away. I have added so many recipes now that I keep the ones that are not in the current menu stored in an expandable file for later use. Also anytime someone mentions something that sounds good, I look for a recipe for it so that I have it on hand to add to the menu.
I also found a list of lunch ideas online that I printed off and taped inside one of my cabinets for days when I can't think of anything to make for lunch. And they work well for rushed dinners too. Thinking of a lunch or simple dinner used to paralyzingly difficult for me. I'd stand in the fridge and stare at the contents then shuffle over to the cupboard and stare at that for a while and on until we finally just had cold cereal or something. It also makes it easier for me to make up my grocery lists because I can pick a couple of the lunch ideas and figure out any ingredients we need and then I usually go with 6 dinner meals figuring that we won't eat 7 meals in a week or even 6 really. We eat a lot of leftovers so if I get 6 meals worth of food or even less we figure it out. That and often I can find meals past that which we already have the ingredients for if I can't make it to the store for some reason.
Hope this helped you, its sure helped me :)
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