I said that I would post my technique that has helped so many of my friends be able to plan a menu for their families in another post so here it is.

I assign a type of food to a day of the week, for example:

Sunday: Crockpot
Monday: Chicken
Tuesday: Breakfast for Dinner/Pork
Wednesday: Pasta
Thursday: Beef
Friday: Casserole
Saturday: Pizza

This makes it SUPER simple for me to plan a menu because I know that I will have chicken on Mondays and so instead of wondering what I am going to cook on Mondays I know it will be a Chicken dish. I also know Sunday night that I need to take chicken out of the freezer to thaw.

Than what I did was I bought a 3-ring binder and 8 dividers. I labeled each one by the day of the week and the meal type that corresponds with the day of the week. Than, everytime I find a chicken recipe that looks interesting online (I mostly get all my recipes online) I print them off, punch 3 ring holes and than put it in the corresponding day. So all my chicken recipes go under Monday/Chicken. On the last Monday of the month, I print off a calendar from http://www.calendarsthatwork.com/ and use the recipes in the binder to plan my menu for a FULL month.

Since I've been doing this my grocery expenses have gone WAY down, we eat out less and we have lost weight.

Rachel

Oh - and the 8th divider is for Miscellaneous - Mostly for special meals I make for holidays or other occasions.

Thanks MsRight! That is a great idea. I have been trying to do it the way my mom always did, but it was just too much for me.

She had a calendar that hung on the inside of the pantry door. Every month she would sit down with the family calendar and figure out what nights had to be easy and quick because of sports, meeting or activities and then write down what we were having for dinner on each day.

My life is not that predictable or organized. Your method seems a little more flexible and only involves a week at a time. I am going to try it!

That sounds like a system that would work for me. I'm always saying around 3pm "what should I make for dinner"...that doesn't work .
Thanks for sharing.

Where you have crockpot on Sunday, what do you do to decide that day? What meals do use your crockpot for?

And for casserole day, would you still make a chicken casserole?

Thanks

thanks for sharing I make up a meal plan when I remember too and it really does help on the grocery $

great Idea, I do what your mom does, I write out a month's worth of meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks) for everyday of the month. I make extra sometimes early in the week to have leftovers to just "heat-n-eat" on the really busy nights in advance, roasted chicken is a favorite and can be eaten cold (picnic style) and the left over mashed potatoes become potato salad etc...

I have definitely found that a planned menu (therefore detailed grocery list) have cut our grocery bill a lot!!!!! We still try for one night a week out for the family dinner when we are all available (averages to 3x per month)

I do like the idea of each night being a category entree, this would simplify the planing a great deal. Thanks for the idea.

That sounds good. I usually write out about 2 weeks worth of meals before I go grocery shopping. Then I have everything on hand so I know if I 'm not in the mood for meatloaf one night, I kn ow I have all the ingredients for chicken casserole or whatever.

Though I do like the idea of actually deciding which meat is on which night. I may have to modify my planning!

Thanks for the idea Rachel! I've been trying to figure out a system for meal planning, b/c it REALLY does cut down on food expenses! I don't know why a binder hadn't occured to me, I use them for everything else.

I have no problem making a chicken casserole or a chicken crock pot meal on Sunday. I struggle to eat beef due to digestion issues, so I eat a lot of chicken.

I literally have a few sites I get my recipes off of and a few chefs that I look for when looking at recipes on Food Network.

http://www.allrecipes.com --> Search by ingredient and look for 4 or 5 star recipes, I rarely find a 4 or 5 star recipe that isn't good.

http://www.foodnetwork.com --> look for recipes by Alton Brown & Giada DeLaurentis. I find Rachael Ray's recipes while fast aren't cost effective and you can do better if you use Alton Brown's recipes.

Other than that, I mostly google search if I want to find something and look for a recipe that fits me needs. Like when I wanted to make a Red Chicken Curry, I googled until I found something that sounded appealing.

Rachel

Great idea. I hate planning menus. You could also do it with nationalitly themes. EX: Monday is Mexican, Tuesday is Italian, Wednesday is Chinese, etc. That would mix things up a bit. I also noticed that you don't have a leftovers night. That's something we have a lot of.

If you are really looking for budget slashing menus I have found

www.hillbillyhousewife.com

a helpful site. Not only does she give you a month's worth of menus but also a shopping list and recipes to match. Most of these recipes are homestead type of recipes, just about everything is from scratch but she gives you modern ways to short cut the prep and ease of time. For some this may still be too time consuming to cook from bare-basic scratch so you can make adjustments (using canned and frozen items, store bought bread instead of homemade) and get similar results for a little bit more in costs.

We experimented with her menus and recipes and found them very satisfying and fun; we also slashed our grocery bill by more than half! It took a quite a bit of convincing to persuade my husband to go meatless for a couple of meals though.

WE dont' have a leftover night because my family never leaves leftovers! LOL Having 3 boys in the house (including a husband) pretty much all the food is eaten the day I make it. And now we're living with some friends for a short while and so I have 5 boys and 2 girls to feed, not including myself.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Rachel

Oh - and totally doing your days by ethnicity is also a great way, the only reaosn I do it more by ingredient (ie Monday - Chicken) is because I struggled to remember what to take out of the freezer the night before.

Rachel

Love this idea! I totally needed this post. I am such a horrible planner. Often times, I find myself planning dinner when my youngest is napping, then I load the boys up in the car and head to the grocery store around 4:30 p.m. to pick up that night's groceries!!! Bad, bad, bad. I spend so much on groceries as I go to the store pretty much everyday. I can't wait to start next week with a PLAN and to not only cut my grocery bills but to not end up there so often!!!

I'm so glad that this could help you. It has been my salvation the past two years that I've been doing it. Don't hesitate to ask me if you need any help.

Rachel

This sounds MUCH better than my "meal planning."

Mine:
Start cooking at 5pm the meal I decided on at 4:45, run out of ingredients, send son to the grocery 3 blocks away. He's 8, and we live in a SMALL town. Delivery charges rack up, since he gets my change But he wants to use his earnings to take me on a date - HIS TREAT!

Thanks, I'm TOTALLY going to try this!!!

I need need need to try this! Great idea!
DH and I have a standing 4:45 phone call, "what's for dinner",
too many left-overs and nooo creativity recently, not to mention all the food we waste buying general stuff for no particular recipe.

Thanks!

Thanks for the tips!! I usually try and plan for the week but it never ever works!!

I've been inspired. I plan to get organized and make sure I know a week ahead of time what the plan is for dinner all week long. I have a stack of Cooking Light magazines that I've collected over the years and I keep telling myself I'll go through them and cut out recipes that look good . . . never gonna happen. I am finally just pitching them all because I discovered that I can go to cookinglight.com and access recipes that way so I'm not only streamlining my groceries and my menus but also my magazine piles! Thanks for the nudge!

YAY for streamlining!

Rachel

Great minds think alike! I plan meals similarly only mine are strictly by main ingredient.

For example:
Monday-Beef
Tuesday-Chicken
Wednesday-Seafood
Thursday-Prok
Friday-Meatless
Saturday-Lunch-Egg/Supper-Beef
Sunday-Lunch-Chicken/Supper-Seafod

Then I continue alternating main dishes into the next week. I always list the recipes for each dish with the cookbook and page number next to it. That way if hubby is the first one home, he can get started or he can look at what we're having and make sure it gets taken out of the freezer in the morning before he leaves for work.

For exmaple:

Monday-Zippy Beef Tenderloin, Betty Crocker Light-pg 345
Tuesday-Chicken Picatta, 365 Ways to Cook a Chicken-pg 75

etc. etc.

I sit down on Saturdays to plan everything out and make my grocery list from there. It saves us on groceries, saves on time AND saves on money on eating out since we're not saying "what's for supper?" at 630p and nothing is defrosted.

Some people think I'm anal for doing it this way, glad to see I'm not the only one! LOL

Hey - just because we're "anal" I don't think it's a bad thing. Those people are likely ones who can't maintain a menu and eat out a lot. Not that there is anything wrong with that if they're okay with it.

Before I started doing this I'd get a week's worth of groceries and so much would end up going bad because I was still unorganized.

I love schedules and I love knowing what is going to happen next.

Anal? Sure.

Another money saving grocery thing is to find out if you have Angel Food Ministries in your town. www.angelfoodministries.org You get a bunch of food for approx $25. I plan my menus around what we get each month. It has saved us nearly $200 a month. The food is great and we've never had any problems with any of it.