Over the past few weeks I have been trying to devise a more efficient way of planning my meals. I’m moving from planning my menu weekly to doing a hybrid monthly-weekly-seasonal plan. Well, I am going to experiment with that anyway.
I used to plan my meals monthly. I did this from the time we were married until we moved to Minneapolis…so, for a little over four years. During that time I did most of my grocery shopping at Aldi, along with some bulk purchases at Sam’s and weekly meat and produce purchases at Fareway (a regional grocery store chain in Iowa). Other than meat and produce, I never really felt the need to “shop the sales” because it seemed that Aldi had consistently low prices. I didn’t really have access to coupons, and none of my local stores did coupon doubling anyway. I had space to store nearly a month’s worth of non-perishiable food items at once, so I could do one mega-Aldi trip per month. Our schedule was pretty predictable from week to week so in making a monthly meal plan, I usually knew what to expect each night and what type of meal I should plan.
When we moved to Minneapolis, I felt like the monthly menu planning just wasn’t going to work for me. Prices seemed to vary more at my local stores, and Aldi wasn’t always the cheapest. I learned more about coupons, and wanted to start saving money that way. I didn’t have space to store more than a week or two worth of food in our new place. Our schedule seemed more varied and unpredictable, so if I did find myself planning more than a week ahead, I ended up having to change a lot of it anyway. I liked the flexibility of weekly planning and feeling the freedom to be inspired by new recipes on a regular basis.
But over time I remembered how much I liked doing the chore of menu planning only once per month. It can be a bit time consuming, and it’s nice to get multiple weeks out of the way in one sitting. I think I’ve “cracked the code” a bit in terms of some of the sale cycles. While I don’t know exactly which week beef roasts will go on sale, it seems they go on sale at my target price at least once a month at one of the stores I shop at. A lot of things will go on sale about every 4-6 weeks. I’ve also started to notice some seasonal patterns in how I select my meals (such as having soup on a weekly basis during the fall/winter).
Using all this information I created a menu planning template (download it here as a word document: Fall-Winter Menu Template or here as a pdf: Fall-Winter Menu Template). At the top of the template I have a chart, with about as many boxes as there are nights in the month I need to cook dinner. (In November, due to Thanksgiving travel and other plans, I only need 24 dinner nights). I also might use some of these meals as weekend lunch ideas. I have the chart divided into various categories such as soup (4 per month or approximately once per week), “Meat Feature” meals (same thing — about once a week), and Mexican meals (enough for once or twice per week). I’ll start the template with a few favorites filled in that we probably have every month, and fill the remaining spaces in with other recipes, new or old. To help me think through this, I listed a few dozen of my favorite recipe titles below the planning chart.
I used this planning chart to fill in a little more than a week’s worth of menus on my actual menu-planning calendar. I’ll refer to the chart to fill in the subsequent weeks on a weekly basis, and this should take a lot less time than filling it in from scratch each week. By not filling out the actual calendar all ahead of time, I save myself from lots of erasing later on, as we figure out exactly what nights we are doing what things that may affect our dinner plans and as I see when various things actually go on sale.
Clear as mud? I am also hoping that by making a basic plan of what I hope to cook throughout the month, I’ll be able to take better advantage of sales and remember to buy as much as I need of various items. And there’s definitely still some give and take in this system…if I find fish on markdown or there’s a great sale on some kind of produce, I can easily modify the menu as I go.
All that being said…here’s my menu for this week:
Monday: Pork Chop “Skillet” with rice (see recipe below — but I made it in the crock pot — and it was awesome!) and asparagus
Tuesday: Tator Tot Casserole
Wednesday: Date night!
Thursday: Pumpkin soup (maybe using this recipe?), salad and bread
Friday: Creamy Beef and Noodles (though I usually make it on the stove now instead of the crock pot) and salad or veggies
Saturday: Chicken Fajitas
Sunday: Black Bean Burgers + sides our dinner guests are bringing
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Pork Chop Apple Skillet (source unknown — recipe from a friend)
- 4 pork chops
- 1 onion chopped
- 2 cups mushrooms, sliced
- 2 tablespoons basalmic vinaigrette dressing
- 1 1/2 cup rice, uncooked
- 1 can condensed chicken broth
- 1 cup water
- 2 red apples, sliced
- 1 teaspoon thyme
1. Spray nonstick skillet with cooking spray. Add chops and cook on medium-high heat 4 min. on each side until browned.
2. Add onion, mushrooms, and dressing. Cook an additional 3 minutes.
3. Stir in rice, broth, water, apples, and thyme. Reduce heat to medium and simmer 10 minutes or until heated through.
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For lots of other menus, check out the Menu Plan Monday post at orgjunkie.com!
He didn’t even discover them on the first day, but I think Erik’s favorite piece of the Tot Pack were the pattern matching monsters:
