Like many families, we try to budget and plan our meals in advance. We generally do a bad job on the follow through end. When we were a new couple starting out, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen trying new foods, and having a good time. Budget and time were the least of our concerns. We considered it entertainment more then the drudgery of meal planning.
Enter baby and parenthood, and we have much less time and even less free cash. Dinner needs to ready when we walk in the door, but neither of us really planned ahead – so there’s no dinner on the table, let alone in the crock pot simmering nicely.
Recently, I have started following a mommy blog, Simple Mom, that discusses a lot of techniques for Home Management. That really where meal planning fits in – Home Management. We are trying Simple Mom’s system of developing a menu on Google calendars.
I mapped out our next two weeks worth of dinner meals. First Hubby and I discussed what dishes sounded good, then I looked at what we have on hand, which gave me a couple more ideas. Then I noted the frozen meals we have waiting for us in our freezer. I took these quick brain storming ideas and noted them on the calendar, repeating a couple of dishes two weeks from now. I even made a note here and there for leftover nights or sandwich night.
To see Simple Mom’s complete directions check out her site, here.
I am giving this a try….I planned all meals for the month of January. I used a calendar template from MS Word. I will let you know how it goes.