What's Your Plan?

There are hundreds of meal planners out there- calendars, white boards, magnet boards, apps for mobile devices, and I have tried them ALL!!!!  None of them were to my liking. I have literally spent hours trying to find one I like, with the mindset that someone out there had created what I wanted, so why take the time to make my own?  In hindsight, I should have just made my own! Oh well, I did find what I wanted so I guess it worked out ok!

Check this out!                     http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/meal-planner.html

The person that created this template is a genius! I have now used it for a month and love it!  Easy to set up, easy to manipulate, printable,

Here's a few tips I've put together after my very long journey of meal planning.

1) Write down a list of meals you are familiar with, like to fix, and your family likes to eat.  I would aim for about 40!  I know, it sounds like a lot, but for my family, it equated to eating meals Sunday through Thursday (Friday and Saturday is leftovers, eating out, parties, etc), with repeating every other month. There are a few meals we repeat more often, like grilled cheese with soup, because they are the kids' favorites, but I typically try to have variety.

2)  Look at your calendar and decide when you are going to be fixing meals.  For us, we have karate nights for the boys, so those nights are reserved for super easy meals (the grilled cheese mentioned above!).  Decide if you are going to cook on weekends.  Look at your week, are you fixing meals that will provide a lot of leftovers? Label nights to eat those!  Be sure to cross off the days that you have conflicts with work, sports, etc.

3)  Look in your freezers, your pantry, your refrigerator and pick meals to accommodate what you have.  This will save you a lot of disappointment when you have to throw out food because it has expired!

4.  Don't be afraid to make changes as you go- plans are made to be changed!  Be flexible-you can move meals around according to what's going on that day, what you're craving, etc.

Hopefully you won't have to spend the hours I did finding something that works.  I'd love to hear about what planners you use or your methods of menu planning.  Feel free to leave a comment!