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Anyone do menus?

RebeccaH

RebeccaH

Life is exciting, yes it is!
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Jul 12, 2009
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If you do a menu each week, what do you do to keep track of it? Write it out on a paper? Something fancier?

I seem to be doing way more grocery shopping than I would like, and I notice that I keep rebuying things I didn't realize I already had. Grr. I need a better way to keep track of what meals I could possibly make, and then scratch them off the list of possibilities once I've made them (or, as I often do, once I have used the ingredients for something else instead... *sigh*)
 
I do a menu plan every week. I use the Menus feature on food.com because I save quite a number of my recipes on there. You can build shopping lists from it too. Easy peasy.
 
I bought two menu planner apps on my Mac but have yet to use them ::sigh::
 
I made my own little menu chart on Excel. It's really simple, just the days of the week at the top, meals {i.e. bf, lunch, dinner} on the side and then boxes for each meal. Sometimes I just list the things I plan on cooking that week along the bottom fill in the boxes as I go because my husband is the WORST about saying, "That doesn't sound good to me tonight..." He hates to be confined by meals written in boxes, apparently, lol.
 
I don't do any official menu planning but I wish I could get organized like that. Before kids I would do menu planning but I just can't make the time now. It seems like when I want to cook something new (like not one of the things we eat a lot like tacos) I will go to the store just for those items I need. Otherwise I grocery shop for the regular things we eat all the time like fruits, veggies, cheese, bread, etc.
 
joelsgirl said:
I made my own little menu chart on Excel. It's really simple, just the days of the week at the top, meals {i.e. bf, lunch, dinner} on the side and then boxes for each meal. Sometimes I just list the things I plan on cooking that week along the bottom fill in the boxes as I go because my husband is the WORST about saying, "That doesn't sound good to me tonight..." He hates to be confined by meals written in boxes, apparently, lol.
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See, I am EXACTLY like your husband. I have TRIED the regular "Monday - spaghetti, Tuesday - fish" meal-in-a-box-on-a-chart type of thing. It just doesn't work for me. I like to have general ideas, but I can't for the life of me seem to stick to a very strict plan. I need - NEED - flexibility. It's like I just can't do the days-of-the-week labels on the menue boxes. *sigh* Sometimes I wish I had a compartmentalized, type A brain that needed a place for everything... that would be nice.

Tonight I threw a 2-minute chart together in excel that listed SNACKS, MAIN COURSE, SIDES, OTHER across the top & then just had a bunch of blank lines in columns below the labels. I took 20 minutes and wrote out all the possibilities for each based on what food we have. Maybe it will work better for me since I can glance at it and see everything I have to work with instead of whatever specific things I tried to plan for a certain day. IDK.
 
I make meal plans ever Monday and then shop on Monday. I am not fancy or anything. I was getting Cooking Light for about 2 or so years and cut out all the recipes we wanted to try. Then I put then in a photo album (a cheap not photo safe kinda thing). Now I just go through that and pull the recipes for the week.

It does help though that we have categories for two days a week. Sunday is almost always Italian. And Monday is almost always soup in the winter or sandwich/salad in the summer.

HTH
 
Once I get into normal routine mode (and not sofa surfer) I am going to use YummySoup (on my computer) and Recipe Pad (on my iPad). I was super sold on it because I could import recipes from websites super easily then export them to my iPad, make a consolidated grocery list off the weekly planner (all in the app), and carry my now sorted by isle/area iPad list around the store. Oh to be efficient. Also plan for leftovers. :)
 
I plan 2 weeks at a time before I go shopping. I also have a menu board in my kitchen that displays the menu for the week. My hubby is opposite of you... he likes to know what to expect for dinner! :) I also found this on Pinterest and thought I might give it a try. http://pinterest.com/pin/70411435/
 
Here's what goes on in my home. The boys come home from work or school...what's for dinner mom? Are you making dinner? Do you have any plans? Should I just grab something to eat? Mom? Do you hear me mom? Can I make this pizza up? Are you going to the store? Why do we only have frozen french toast? Can you buy waffles?

I'm not always this bad. Rick's been out of state for 10 weeks, I've been on weight watchers, so I'm totally unmotivated to cook. I'm such a bad mom!!!
 
4noisyboys said:
Here's what goes on in my home. The boys come home from work or school...what's for dinner mom? Are you making dinner? Do you have any plans? Should I just grab something to eat? Mom? Do you hear me mom? Can I make this pizza up? Are you going to the store? Why do we only have frozen french toast? Can you buy waffles?

I'm not always this bad. Rick's been out of state for 10 weeks, I've been on weight watchers, so I'm totally unmotivated to cook. I'm such a bad mom!!!
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Debra- you're cracking me up!!! :lmao
 
Brandi said:
Debra- you're cracking me up!!! :lmao
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so sad that it's the truth. I dread Eric (my youngest) getting off of work. I know exactly what he's going to say! lol
I do have some meals planned though...I just need time to make them. I'm wondering how the working gals make meals. Do you all use crockpots, or just something that's really quick to throw together. I hate anything in the crock pot!
 
I just started using the site E-MEALS and it has already paid for itself. It has saved us a ton of money and I cook almost every night now. Before this we would eat out a lot or just not have a clue what we were going to do for dinner and my husband would stop and grab stuff at the grocery store on his way home from work and we would end up spending triple on our groceries. Part of the reason is because I just hated sitting down trying to plan out a menu and what all I had to buy and this web site completely does every bit of the work for me right down to the grocery list. I just print the menu and grocery list off each week and then just shop. Now if I could just find someone to shop for me I would be made :)
 
Oh, and I want to add that the meals are soooo easy. I don't have a lot of time, especially now that my oldest 2 are back in school, and I do not want to be in the kitchen all evening and these meals are so quick and easy and very yummy. It also has a lot of variety. I have been doing it for 2 weeks and we have yet to eat the same meal twice which is a huge plus for me because I was cooking the same thing over and over and over etc.....
 
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I always menu plan, it makes grocery shopping so much easier. Also my husband is usually the one who comes up with most of the meals, which is great because thats the part I don't like about the whole plan, shop, cook process.

I printed out sheets of a cute menu from House of 3 and glued them together into a pad.

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gracielou said:
I just started using the site E-MEALS and it has already paid for itself. It has saved us a ton of money and I cook almost every night now. Before this we would eat out a lot or just not have a clue what we were going to do for dinner and my husband would stop and grab stuff at the grocery store on his way home from work and we would end up spending triple on our groceries. Part of the reason is because I just hated sitting down trying to plan out a menu and what all I had to buy and this web site completely does every bit of the work for me right down to the grocery list. I just print the menu and grocery list off each week and then just shop. Now if I could just find someone to shop for me I would be made :)
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Sooooo gonna check this out! Thanks Amanda! ;)
 
No. But I totally need too! Most nights, I look at the clock, think oh, crap! It's 4:30 I need to start dinner! And then I go and pace and stare into my fridge and pantry for 30 minutes to see what I bought the week before to cook! I never can remember what I had planned on cooking! So, um...yeah. A menu planner might be good for a goon like me! LOL!
 
mommy2boyz said:
No. But I totally need too! Most nights, I look at the clock, think oh, crap! It's 4:30 I need to start dinner! And then I go and pace and stare into my fridge and pantry for 30 minutes to see what I bought the week before to cook! I never can remember what I had planned on cooking! So, um...yeah. A menu planner might be good for a goon like me! LOL!
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wow! this whole process you just described sounds oddly familiar! this would be exactly why i started this thread! :giggle
 
I tend to menu plan as I shop...i see something that is a good price or something that looks good and I plan a meal around it (love having evernote to help with this process .. I store a lot of recipes there so I can pull them up on my phone while I'm out and about). I then think about what can be frozen, what needs to be used right away, and plan my menu by days (we usually shop a couple of times a week..so I'm only doing a few days at a time). Shopping twice a week also allows me to take in consideration what's in my kitchen that needs to be used right away so I can plan a meal around these items. It may not be the smartest way to do it...but menu planning before I go shopping never has worked for me (and believe me i've tried every which way..I'm constantly striving to find the perfect system).
 
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