How-To's Day: Menu Planning by the Month

What's for dinner?  The age old question that strikes fear in the heart of every person right around three o'clock in the afternoon.  My method of planning a full 31 day's worth of meals at the beginning of each month was born of this homemaker's anxiety of having something healthy, nutritious and different for the troops at dinner time.  I bought cookbooks dedicated to cooking a month's worth of dinners in one day, attended classes and actually did "once a month cooking" for a while.  Grueling!  Beside the blood, sweat and tears that went along with planning meals - making a shopping list, marathon shopping, bribing the husband or cajoling an older child into watching the younger children, cooking and storing the dinners - there came the inevitable issues.  The first problem was that my family tired of the recipes (bland, repetitive), then we realized that several of us have food intolerances.  The final straw was our desire to have fresh, non-packaged food as much as possible.  My collection of so many great cookbooks and "keeper" recipes that I have acquired over the years made the solution easy: why not just keep a calendar in the kitchen devoted to menu planning and write my menu on it?  So that is what I did.

At the beginning of each month I take down our standard-size wall calendar, fold over the new month and begin the process.  We are simple people and we know what we like!  So each week we have our grill day, chicken day, pasta day, beef day, non-meat day, casserole or soup day and one day for the quintessential food...pizza.  Boredom is averted by rotating recipes that fall into the above categories and constantly combing newspapers, websites and library books for new recipes.  Easy!  Now, my oldest-at-home daughter can set up a menu in a cinch.

Essentially, just write the meal name on each calendar day...old favorites need only that, add book title and page number if needed.  If any of your recipes are going to include ingredients you don't usually keep on hand, make a note of those items as you put together your menu and then add them to your grocery list about a week in advance so you have everything ready when the day comes.

Happy meal planning!

~ Mamasita