I am running out of things to blog about, clearly. I was going to post a vent about my lack of exercise options and photography opportunities now that we are stuck indoors all day with the Heat of Summer which Will Not Abate until Winter. But who wants to hear that? So instead, I bring you Meal Planning by Nicki.

We are always looking for easier and better ways to come up with new and different meals every day. We’ve tried many methods, some with more success than other’s. But this is the method we have used with the most success the longest. For those of you who struggle, struggle no more.

Equipment:
1 two-sided dry-erase board with calendar on one side
dry erase marker

Routine:
At the beginning of the month:
Fill in the calendar with a general theme for each night. I don’t do the same themes week in and week out but I do repeat. Some of our themes include: breakfast for dinner, pasta, Mexican, casserole, pie night, soup, kids’ choice, grill, etc. Total time: 10 minutes.

At the beginning of each 4-7 day period:
On the other side of the dry erase board list the days you will be planning meals for. I shop for 4 days at a time. Anything more and stuff starts going bad. For each day, look at the theme for that night and pick a meal that matches the theme. You can get creative. I tend to mix it up with old standbys, easy meals and new meals we’ve never tried. I use All Recipes almost exclusively for new recipes. Don’t forget to add a few side dishes. Total time: 10-15 minutes.

Make the shopping list:
I use the meals list as a basis for my shopping list. I usually do this simultaneously with the above step. Easy peasy. Total time: 10 minutes.

Post the board where everyone can see it. One of my huge pet peeves is how my kids will hound me all day about what’s for dinner. It doesn’t even matter if I tell them, they still ask 100 times. Now they know to look at the board and that also means picky eaters can plan their own substitutes in advance or prepare themselves otherwise.

I’ve found our meals are more complete, my shopping lists are more complete, my shopping trips are shorter and less expensive and we eat out, well, never. Bonus: the kids rotate getting to chose an entire meal once a week and they LOVE this. I was never organized enough to remember to do this before. They look forward to it all month!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 7:37 pm and is filed under House Keeping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.