Meal Planning

 I have always had a hard time deciding on what to make for dinner. When I would finally decide, then it would either take to long to make, or we didn’t have everything we needed. So then I’d have to make something out of what there was, or go to the store and end up spending more money because we would grab lots more things.  So several years ago I decided to make a dinner calendar. I found a template in Excel, you can change the year and the days automatically change, and the squares are blank so you can type in the meals. Then once a week we would go to the store and get everything we needed for that week of dinner meals (and anything else we needed). It helps out so if the dinner takes time to make (crockpot, make bread, etc.) then I can start in the morning. Also, we are only going to the store once a week so we spend less money.

We are all picky eaters (in one way or another) and some of us have allergies (shellfish and garlic) so it limits our choices. When we find a meal we all like we add it to a list of meals that we have saved in Word. Then when I’m creating the monthly calendar, I can go off that list.

Since I’ve been doing it several years, I can just change the year on the spreadsheet and most of the days are already filled in. I just have to change a couple days at the beginning and end of each month and add new recipes we have found. In the summer we have lots of things cooked on the BBQ or in the crockpot, and in the winter we use the oven a lot.

Recently I’ve seen a good idea of having each night be a different theme (Italian, Mexican, Traditional, etc.) so I’m probably going to change our calendar to have a different theme each night. I’ve tried to make sure we don’t have the same meat in a row and the same theme, but sometimes it’s hard. If I have a different theme each night that will help.

*Update*

I have made a list of dinners by “theme”. Here is the Link

Here is an example of our calendar. I change the colors to match the month (Red and Green for December, Black and Orange for October, etc.) I print them off one month at a time so if we find a new recipe we really like, I can add it to the next month. Once it’s printed I put it in a page protecter and hang it on the wall by our monthly calendar and chore chart.

I was in a hurry to get this done and printed, so a couple of the days have the same meal 🤦🏻‍♀️ and I didn’t do a good job of mixing up the meals.