Meal Planning

I love cooking.  I love making new recipes.  But I also love not having to think about what to make when dinnertime comes around.  I’ve tried a few different ideas to help me stay organized when it comes to meal planning, and I think I have found one that works for me.  I got the idea from this Pocket Full of Posies: Perfect Pocket Meal Planning.  I liked the idea, but I needed to tweak it to fit my needs.  

The most time consuming part of this whole project was organizing and formatting all of my recipes.  I have printed them on card stock and cut them down to be a 4x6 card.  On the front I have put the recipe:

 

On the back is the ingredient list broken down into categories: 

  

This makes it really easy when I go to make my shopping list.  I use this back side and quickly jot down all the ingredients that I need.  If I already have the item on hand, I don’t write it down.

I then made my pocket organizer.  Originally I wanted four pockets in all, so that I would be able to plan out an entire month at a time, but I messed up.  Instead there are only three pockets.  I will probably go back and fix it sometime.  To make the pocket, I found some cute scrapbook paper, cut it down to size, laminated, then sewed the pieces together:

When organizing my recipes, I broke them down into five different categories.  I have color coded each category to make it easier:

• Family favorites-this includes things like Hot dogs, Hamburger, Pizza and other miscellaneous item
• Chicken 
• Beef, Pork, and Beans
• Past and Casseroles 
• Soup, Salad, and Fish

When I’m planning my menu (three weeks at a time), I pick one card from each category.  I end up with five recipes each week.  This leaves room for us to eat out, try new recipes, or on a lazy night, just make breakfast foods for dinner.

 

Once I have selected all the recipes for a week, I put them in one pocket.  With just a few minutes of planning, I end up with THREE (four if I ever get around to making a new pocket) weeks of menus. 

 

Making my grocery shopping list is a breeze now.  Since all of the recipes are right there, I’m not looking through my various cookbooks to figure out what ingredients I need.  It’s also really easy for me  to maintain.  If I find a new recipe that I want, I have the template saved and I just plug it in and cycle it through. 

I've been using this for a couple of weeks now and so far, I LOVE it.  Like I said, the hardest part is gathering and formatting your recipes.  If you want, I can send send you the template for the recipes.  Just let me know!