Menu Planning

My wonderful husband got my shelves all installed in the closet in the kitchen so at last I have a working pantry. Now I am working on getting a weekly menu together so I can shop smart instead of wasting money like I have been doing as of late.

I set up a spread sheet in excel to help me - I hope. This spread sheet has a weekly meal planner where I list out all our meals. I used to only plan for dinner and purchase a bunch of stuff for lunches for the kids to choose from, but lately they haven't been choosing too good so I'm going to include all meals and see how it goes.

Then I listed all the meals we like to eat which also includes the major ingredients and where the recipe is from so I can quickly locate it if needed (cookbook name and page number). I have picky kids (and husband) so it helps me to have a list of everything they will eat. I'm hoping to try a few new recipes each month and if they like it I'll add it to my list to incorporate during the month.

I also included a shopping list section. So what I did was drop in what we're going to eat each day into the meal planner, then go over to my shopping list and figure out what I might need to buy. Then I print off the planner and post it on my fridge, and print off my shopping list.

I am going to try and do some pre-cooking on Saturday so some of the meals are at least partially ready to go. Hopefully this will save me some time during the week.

I'm in need of some make ahead/freezer type recipes of things the kids can warm up in the microwave for lunches, and dinners on the nights hubby and I might not be home and my oldest is working. If anyone has any recipes - please share! ;-)

So here is my menu for the coming week. We'll be getting groceries tomorrow (Friday), Saturday evening we always have homemade pizza so my plan starts on Sunday.


Breakfasts:

• Cream Cheese Danish
• Breakfast Rollups
• Hard boiled eggs & Muffins
• Cereal/Oatmeal
• Baked French Toast
• Eggs & sausage

Lunches:

• Stuffed Shells/Tossed Salad/homemade bread (Sunday)
• Hummus & Pita or tuna fish/PJB sandwiches
• Grilled cheese & tomato soup
• Canned Pasta or sandwiches
• Egg Salad sandwiches
• Corn Dogs
• Sandwiches
• (veggies, chips and fruit are added to each meal)

Dinners:

• Frozen Pizza (our Sunday after church snack)
• No Peek Stew & corn bread
• Sloppy Joes & veggie side
• Chicken Casserole & veggie side
• Leftovers
• Pancakes or Waffles
• Homemade Pizza

Snacks:

• Fruit & Veggies
• Monkey Munch
• No Bake Snack Bars
• Granola
• Nachos and Cheese
• Popcorn
• Brownies

Items I'll make ahead on Saturday:

• Stuffed Shells
• Sloppy Joes
• No Bake Snack Bars
• Monkey Munch
• Pancakes
• Hummus
• Frozen bread dough
• Breakfast roll ups
• Muffins
• cook the chicken for the casserole
• Granola
  

We'll see how this goes and report back to you next week.

Until next time...