How to Do Long Term Meal Planning

I have my meals planned out for the rest of the year. I used a plain old 12 month wall calendar.

Each week I have pork, beef, chicken, fish/seafood 2x, 3S (soup, sanwhich and/or salad) and leftover/junk food each night and rotate the order. Wk 1 Mon pork Tue beef Wed fish Thur chicken Fri 3S Sat fish Sun leftovers. Wk 2 Mon beef Tue fish Wed chicken Thu 3S Fri Fish Sat lefovers Sun pork, etc.

So, I wrote this rotation on the calendar. Then, I go to my cookbooks and start plugging in recipes according to each day's main dish, making sure to write down the page number and which book. I just started at the beginning of each main dish category and go down the line.

My main ones are "6 Ingredients or Less" (6 IOL), "Easy Slow Cooker" (ELC) and Betty Crocker (BC). I turn to my more creative and ethnic cookbooks depending on my mood and time available each day.

So my calendar basically looks like this: Mon Pork 6 IOL pg 13, Tue Beef ESC pg 110, Wed Fish BC pg 28 Thu Chicken 6 IOL pg 256 Fri....etc.

Obviously, if we are having people over, I either double my recipes or use my other creative/ethnic cookbooks to make something else more approrpriate for dinner parties on those nights.

This system has saved me SO much time. I don't stand around trying to figure out what to make for dinner, how much time I need to cook and even what my grocery list looks like each week.

hth!

First of all, my hat is off that you're exposing your kids to different foods. I applaud that. You're way ahead of me in several aspects in that you plan 6 weeks ahead!!! OMG! The only thing I would do to help this along is make sure that from one shopping trip to the next, the meals are "related". For instance, I might be a roasted chicken on Monday when I shop then, on Tuesday and Wed. I used those chix leftovers to make chix. and dumplings and chix spaghetti (maybe you could freeze those so you wouldn't be eating chix. 3 nights in a row..) The rest of the week I would probably fill in with BLT's, tuna salad sandwiches etc until the next shopping trip when I buy things related to ground meat (because it was on sale). Anyway, like I said, you're WAY ahead of me but that is what I do to cut back on waste and still give variety to my meals.

Ugh - I am struggling with this also. My bf and I are now spending 6-7 nights a week together and I prefer to cook because a) I eat healthier b) like to cook and c) it saves money. We've been dating 14 months and I'm now finding out about all of his food things: He doesn't like sandwiches for dinner; he doesn't like breakfast foods for dinner; he doesn't like leftovers (he will eat food from the night before, but it has to be reinvented as something else); he has to have at least two vegetables with every meal (yes I know - at least he eats veggies).

But I'm used to being a single woman with no kids. I come home, I can make dinner out of a couple of crackers, some cheese, an apple, etc. I also can and will eat the same meal several days in a row - if I'm on a salad kick I'll have salad for lunch or dinner a couple of times; If I make some noodle dish, I'll eat it for dinner three nights in a row. I have NO problem with leftovers and no problem with sandwiches or breakfast foods for dinner. My feeling is - if it's good for me and it fills my stomach, it's served its purpose.

I work full time and when I get home, I'm used to whipping up a dinner for myself in 10 minutes. On Sunday I cook a couple of things so I have something for lunch and dinner for M-W. But now it's like I have to have this "man's" meal - lots of meat, a starch and two veggies at every dinner. ARGH! This has been very challenging for me. I know he's trying - he's trying all sorts of veggies he wouldn't normally eat (I belong to an organic farm and get tons of different veggies). And he's trying to be patient. But I feel like I always have to be coming up with new ideas and being so much more creative. Also, because I'm only cooking for two and his highness won't eat leftovers, every time I cook I just try to cook enough for one meal. If there are leftovers, I'll take them to lunch the next day. I don't know how you ladies are doing it!?!

I used to do something like this a while back. I would sit down with a calendar and make my menus up for a month and one extra week of "bonus" meals. These meals were based similar to what you have described in larger quantities and then divided for meals later in the month. The extra food was placed in the freezer. Each night except for Saturday night were new meals and Saturday night was left overs. I even made homemade bread, cakes and cookies.

The bonus meal week was in case I had something extra or I couldn't get a certain item or two to make a regular meal. Then I would shop for what was on my list only. If it wasn't listed it didn't get bought hence the bonus week.

I did this because we were paid monthly and it helped with the budget. The end of the month was usually vegetable soup and grilled cheese sandwiches which everyone liked.

So my hat is off to you trying to do meals long term and to cut down on your budget.

The other S.