With one simple tool, which you can create for yourself, you can answer what’s for dinner tonight and the next night and the next with relative ease. You’ll be able to see at a glance the recipes you use most often and develop a meal plan from there. Here’s how you can create your own monthly menu-planning tool:
Step One: Simplify Using Categories
It’s easy to come up with thirty (or more) recipes you regularly use when you brainstorm in categories. To start your menu plan, you’ll want to consider which categories of meals your family eats most frequently. Categories can include ethnic types of foods, such as Italian, Mexican, and Asian. Or group recipes by cooking method: crock pot meals, grill recipes, stovetop or oven cooking. If the man in your house is anything like mine, he’ll want meat at most meals. Then you could group your recipes by protein type: chicken, beef, pork, fish, beans.
Brainstorm categories until you’ve found seven you could comfortably serve once a week. My menu categories are: Italian, Crockpot/casserole, Mexican, Meat and potatoes, Soup, Pizza Night, and Grill/Quick & Easy. The category “Pizza Night” in my plan reflects our family’s tradition of making homemade pizza on Friday nights. If your family has a tradition like this, include it in your categories. It will simplify your menu planning with a weekly “gimme.”
Step Two: Play Favorites
Under each of the categories list as many as you can of your favorite recipes (aim for five to nine for each). Take out the cookbooks and recipes you use most. Then find the meals you know your family enjoys. You’ll find the 80/20 rule applies here: you probably use 20% (or less) of the recipes you have 80% of the time. That’s okay. List those recipes first.
Once you’ve created your lists under each category, you should have more than 30 recipes to choose from. If you’re one who likes to keep things loose, you can stop here and simply use your lists as a “recipes at a glance” tool for deciding what to cook each night. But if you prefer to plan ahead, take heart. You’re more than halfway to mapping out a month’s worth of dinners.
Step Three: Create A Basic Plan
You’ll want to create your menu plan on a computer in order to save and reuse it each month. I use a spreadsheet. Across the top list the name of the category. Simply create seven category columns with category labels. Next create blocks of rows to represent the weeks of the month. To fit my spreadsheet setup, I’ve found nine rows in each block works well. On the right hand most column you can list the dates for the given week (e.g. October 16-22). Then under each category enter the lists you created in step two. Duplicate each list for the successive weeks, filling in the entire spreadsheet for the month.
Once you’ve created your basic menu planning chart, you can insert and remove meals depending on season or changes in preferences. And you can change up the dates for the new month before you begin planning.
Step Four: Select This Month’s Meals
With your chart in front of you listing the meals your family enjoys, you’re ready to select a month’s worth of meals. Using a highlighter or pen, highlight or circle one meal from each category for week one. Then move on to week two and select those meals, being careful to vary the selections from week one. If you prefer, you can work your way down each category, selecting a different recipe for each week until you’ve picked a variety of meals from each category.
There you go! You’ve planned a month’s worth of meals. Using this plan you can create a grocery list. Once you have on hand everything necessary for your chosen meals (I find it easiest to shop for two weeks at once, but you could do one week at a time or shop for the whole month in one trip), you’ll be able to effortlessly answer the “what’s for dinner” question. And when schedules change, you’ll be able to adapt on the fly.
Happy Menu Planning!
Lara Krupicka is a freelance writer who loves finding ways to simplify her everyday tasks, like menu planning.