Become a Menu Planning Ninja

Seriously, you can become a menu planning ninja! You probably already are, you just need to unlock your full menu ninja potential. 

<<< I crack myself up.... lol

I know it sounds crazy, but I seriously like to plan the menu for the whole year. At some point in December, I sit down and start to plan a year of monthly menus, a general needs shopping list and I take note of what worked/didn’t work last year. I dont need to finish it in one day, just get started,

Believe me, its so easy once you get the hang of it!

I plan my menus on my iPad, but I used to do it in a notebook that I used year to year. I make a page for each month of the year, January through December. I list the days of that month and the weekday. 

I start with knowing that every Friday is pizza night. There you go, 52 dinners already planned! We usually do home made pizza to save money, sometimes we grab a few $5 Little Cesars pizzas etc.. Regardless of how the pizza gets here, pizza gets here, every Friday. 

I also know that I usually have a super busy Wednesday, why is every kid activity on a Wednesday? If I plan to have pasta every single Wednesday, boom, 52 more dinners planned. 

One last trick to ad 52 more dinners? Leftover night! We have left overs every Thursday with our current schedule. Thursdays are a good day for me to clean out the fridge a little and pressure my husband to take more left overs to work before I have to throw them out. 

Ok, the easiest part is out of the way, but the hard part is just being creative. 

My family goes to our homeschool co-op on Mondays from September to May. I love having crockpot meals for Mondays. Nothing is better than walking into the house, after a long fun day, knowing dinner is already done. So I mark on my calendar “crockpot” every Monday, but there is a little more planning here than pizza night. I have a list of tried and true crockpot meals that my family approves of. I am always trying new recipes, but most of the time I like to make what I already know every one likes.

I don’t always choose my specific pasta meal or crockpot meal until I am putting together my grocery order for the week. When I am ordering ingredients for my crockpot meal, I always order enough for at least 2 meals. I pick up my grocery order Sundays after church, prep my crockpot meal for Monday, then throw a crockpot meal in the freezer for another day. 

Now for the hard part. A little smart planning goes a long way. Keep a list! Keep a list of everyone’s favorite meals, try new recipes and write down what your people like. I try not to repeat a dinner more than once every 6 weeks. You can choose the length of time between meals that works for you, 2 weeks,  weeks, 8 weeks... whatever works. 

My kids wouldn’t care if we repeated the same meals every week, they are boring, “Can we have Mac n’ cheese again??”

Jump in and add a meal to your menu. I write it in, make sure I have the recipe in my recipe app and then count 6 weeks into the future and write it again. Keep counting every 6 weeks until you hit a time of year where that recipe wont work anymore. For example, you probably wont be eating Potato Soup in July, so keep counting until September/October and add it back in. 

I follow this process until I have almost every day accounted for. 

Each week I try to remember to write my weekly menu on the refrigerator, I use a chalk board like this one.

My menu keeps me on track all year long. I change things, add things, try more recipes, go on trips and spend many weeks camping all summer long. Regardless of what’s happening, I can refer back to my menu to recenter and refocus through every season. 

I know this post got long, but one more thing. I have grown to rely heavily on my grocery orders. Whenever I run out of something, I add it to my order immediately. I rarely forget to get the basil I need because when I order my groceries it is already in there waiting to be ordered.  

I could go on and on forever about my menus. I get so much joy out of this part of planning, mostly because future Tammy will totally appreciate not having to think this through in the middle of summer or half way through September.

I will try to have my menu all set before the end of January. I dont stress about it, I just take time here and there until its complete. It is a labor of love.

I hope you will try it!

Tammy