Food is a Four Letter Word

Recipe for Menu Planning

No matter how busy you are, you’ve got to eat!

1. Organize Recipes. Some of my favorite recipe websites are: AllRecipes.com, American Profile, Taste of Home, & Onceamonthmom. Update 3/10/12: I’ve discovered two templates at Google Docs that keep my recipes and menu plan at my fingertips, on the computer and on my smartphone. 1) Search “recipes” and choose the template by Mikelle Auman Williams. This template has tabs along the bottom for different categories of recipes. To print them two to a page I needed to insert a row at the bottom of each recipe. 2)Then search “vertex42 weekly meal planner” for the menu planner. The Google Docs mobile app, blows any other note-taking app out of the water.

2. Plan meals as part of your weekly planning. Consider sales and seasonal foods, nutrition, variety, visual appeal and textures. When there is little time for cooking, use crockpots, make-ahead mixes, and quantity cookery. After planning, make a grocery list of items you need to buy. If you have a smart phone, consider these apps:  Dinner Spinner from Allrecipes, Fooducate & Sparkpeople.

Plan A: List some of your favorite meal plans on cards. Include a main dish, side dishes, and dessert. Make about 10-15 cards, on the other side list ingredients needed for a shopping list. Mealsmatter.org and Recipenutrition.com are great online resources for recipes and meal planning.
Example:

• Pork Chops
• Sour cream scalloped potatoes
• Green Beans
• Rolls
• Apple Crisp

Plan B: Make separate lists of main dishes, side dishes, and desserts, then randomly select an item from each. You could even use a dart-board for this! A healthier version from Eatingwell.com could provide alternatives too.

MAIN DISH	SIDE 1	SIDE 2
Pizza	French Fries	Pudding
Hamburgers	Onion Rings	Cottage Cheese
Tacos	Curly fries	Applesauce

Plan C: Eat out! Keep a list of favorite restaurants.

See also: Refrigerator Magnets from The Red Chair Blog. and more ideas here. The Menu Planning post at Titus2Homemaker is very helpful too.

FORMS: Eat Sheet menu plan pdf from Mommytracked.com, Menu Planner pdf from Anythingbutperfect.com, planners from Vertex42.com.

Food Diaries: My foldable diet & exercise charts. Food Diary at Mealsmatter.org

AWESOME: A Month of Menus is a printable pdf from Kansas State University complete with recipes, shopping lists, measures and substitutions! Everything you need is right there.