Shopping & Planning Meals - Part 4

Monthly Menus

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  Between Christmas and sick children, I have not been able to write lately.  I pray that I can pick up where I left off!!

In Shopping & Planning Meals Parts 2 & 3, I wrote about making your meal rotation and making your check-off grocery list.  Today, I want to guide you in a monthly menu using the meal rotation. 

My Monthly Menu

I know a monthly menu may seem completely outrageous, but it serves many purposes.  At the end of each month, I look at my meal rotation and plan out the menu for the next month.  Now, the meal rotation is strictly for supper, but in my monthly menu, I plan for breakfast and lunch as well as supper for the entire month.  The purposes for the monthly menu are:

1. Shopping Organization:  When planning my grocery list, I look at the meal rotation to quickly check off the ingredients needed for supper.  But for breakfast and lunch, I look at the menu for the week and skim through the pantry for what items are needed.  I don't have to sit down and plan these meals out once the montly menu is complete.
2. Couponing/Watching Sales: The montly menu helps me to look for items that are on sale.  Even if I don't need an item for that particular week, but it's on sale and/or I have a coupon for it, I might as well purchase it to use later in the month. (This will be discussed in Part 5.)
3. Sanity Purposes: Amist homeschooling and daily cleaning, sometimes breakfasts/lunches sneak up on me.  It saves a lot of time to quickly check my menu, which is clipped to the fridge, and there is no thinking involved. The meal is already planned and I have everything needed.
4. Curious Family Members: Sometimes, my girls and my husband will ask when we are having a certain meal.  If it falls in the monthy menu, they have something to look forward to!

Now, I start by setting up a blank calendar in Microsoft word.  For each day, I list B, L, S (Breakfast, Lunch, Supper).  I start with breakfast.  My breakfast choices are also on a rotation, but I have a lot less options.  We alternate cereal, pancakes, and oatmeal throughout the week.  On Sundays we have cinnamon rolls.  So, to keep it simple, from month to month, I leave cinnamon rolls on my menu for every Sunday, no need to retype.

After the breakfast portion is complete, I work on the lunch menu.  I constructed a list of meals my children like to eat for lunches, just like I did for supper on Part 1.  However, like the breakfasts, I do not have as many to rotate.  For lunches, I simply keep a list of what we have and alternate them throughout the menu. 

Finally, I type in what's for supper.  I use my meal rotation (Part 2) for this.  I look at the week in my meal rotation that I left off on from the prior month and pick up there with the current month.  I type in what's for supper for each week on the calendar of my monthly menu.

Once you make your menu and use it a little while, you may decide to change things to suit your family.  For instance, after a few months of using mine, I noticed I was planning and shopping for Sunday lunches but never cooked them.  This was because we usually eat out after church on Sunday.  So, I started leaving Sunday lunch blank.  I didn't want to plan/buy extra if I didn't have to.

Again, if there are any questions or suggestions that you have, please feel free to comment.  I would love to attach these documents to my blog for your use.  However, I am a newbie to the blogging world and am not sure how to do this.  If anyone knows, please share with me.  For now, all I can do is describe how I construct them and share pictures with you. 

Here is a close-up of a few days from the menu:


Close-Up of my Montly Menu


Thanks for reading!  May the Lord strengthen us as a wives and mothers!

O Come, O Come Immanuel!

Merry Christmas!

My husband and I with our little "Gingerbread Girls"!

I hope you and your family are having a wonderful Christmas season!  I have a couple  more posts to write regarding Shopping and Meal Planning, but with all the business, I will be writing after Christmas.

I wanted to share something my husband and I have done for Christmas this year.  I wanted my kids to understand that even through all the  commercialism that they see and hear, we celebrate for a completely different reason.  We used an Advent Calendar this year with scripture. I visit a blog written by the name of Erica frequently for homeschooling purposes.  It is a wonderful resource by the way!  Click the red link below to view her blog.

Confessions of a Homeschooler

While looking, I found her advent calendar (click to the right): Erica's Advent Calendar

I used the numbered triangles that she provided, but instead of the activities on the back, I wrote my own verses.  Each night we gather in the living room and read the night's scripture(s).  When compiling these scriptures, I wanted to start with prophecies of the birth of Jesus.  I wanted the girls to see how the birth was foretold long before He walked the earth.  I used verses out of Isaiah.  I thought I would share these with you.  Even though it may be too late to use this year, you could make them to put up for next year.  Hope you enjoy!

Day 1: Isaiah 7:14-16

Day 2: Isaiah 8:14-15

Day 3: Isaiah 9:6-7

Day 4: Isaiah 11:1-2

Day 5: Isaiah 22:22

Day 6: Isaiah 28:16

Day 7: Isaiah 53:1-3

Day 8: Isaiah 53:4-6

Day 9: Isaiah 53:7-9

Day 10: Isaiah 53:10-12

Day 11: Luke 1:26-38

Day 12: Luke 1:39-45

Day 13: Luke 1:46-56

Day 14: Matthew 1:18-24

Day 15: Luke 2:1-5

Day 16: Luke 2:6-7, Matthew 1:25

Day 17: Luke 2:8-20

Day 18: Luke 2:21

Day 19: Luke 2:22-24

Day 20: Luke 2:25-38

Day 21: Matthew 2:1-12

Day 22: Matthew 2:13-15

Day 23: Matthew 2:16-18

Day 24: Matthew 2:19-23, Revelation 22:20

Merry Christmas everyone!

Shopping & Planning Meals - Part 3

Making the "Check-Off" Grocery List



My mom (right) and I (left) at the baby shower of my first daughter.

Growing up, I thought my mom was way too organized.  You should have seen her planning this baby shower!  As a young adult, I remember teasing her for typing her grocery list.  Mom, I'm becoming more and more like you every day.  Typing that grocery list was a fantastic idea!

In this post, I want to share with you how I became organized enough to have my own typed grocery list.  I tell you the truth, people actually walk by me in the store and ask, "Is that your grocery list?"  A little embarassing at first, by now I'm like, "Why, yes it is!"  So, now that I have you wanting to be 'that lady' in the store, let me tell you how ; )

If you are like me and have minimal time for planning grocery trips, you have to do it the quickest way possible.  I thought it would be time-efficient to be able to check-off the items I needed as I planned rather than write my list down.  I also thought it would be a time-saver once in the grocery store if I had my list separated by aisles.  So...this is what I tag along with me on each trip:

Again, I used Microsoft Word and made a table with four columns.  I started by listing the various 'aisle names' in the order I shop them.  For instance, I start shopping in the back at the snack and refridgerated sections, so I listed them first.  Next, I head over to the drink aisle, and so on.

Once I set up my 'aisle names', I needed to start listing my items into the columns.  I took my menu rotation (Part 2) out and started with week 1.  I started adding items to the grocery list from my list of ingredients on the menu rotation.  This is really very simple because, as you will notice, a lot of the ingredients repeat throughout the rotation.  Continue this until you reach the last week of your rotation.

If you notice on my list, I listed non-food items that I also need on a weekly to monthly basis.  I listed these under 'Cleaning Products' and 'Paper Products'.  I should probably go in and add a section for 'Body Care' as well.  I also kept an open spot labeled 'Other' to write in items that aren't needed regularly.

When you get your list completed, save it to your computer.  Then all you will have to do is print it and check off what's needed to plan your shopping trip.  I keep this with my menu rotation in my shopping binder that I take with me to the store. 

Again, I hope this helps to lighten your load and enjoy providing for your family!  Once the work is done, it makes your grocery planning run more smoothly. 

Shopping & Planning Meals - Part 2

Making the "Meal Rotation"

Ok, so you have your list of meals (from Part 1), now what??  In this post I will tell you how I took my lists of meals and turned them into a "menu rotation", as I like to refer to it. 

You will need to get your list of meals and all of your recipes in hand to complete this.  The next step is assigning the meals into a spot in the rotation.  The first time I made my rotation, I just went down my list and put two meals per week (again you may be cooking more than twice a week).  Since then, I have made several adjustments to my rotation and have learned a few pointers that could save you time.  Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when assigning meals to the rotation:

• Group Meals with "Like" Ingredients - When assigning meals into the rotation, group meals with like ingredients in the same week.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have had food spoil because I wasn't able to use all of it.  But if you are planning meals with like-ingredients, this is less likely to happen.  For instance, if you have two recipes, and one calls for 1 cup of sour cream and another calls for 1/2 cup sour cream, you can pair these two recipes together in one week.  You can buy one tub of sour cream to save money and keep from spoiling the sour cream.


Group Meals by the Number of Ingredients - The second thing I have learned is to group recipes by the number of ingredients.  If you are trying to save money at the grocery store, you want to be sure to buy less each shopping trip.  Right?  One way of saving money each shopping trip is by not having recipes with a lot of ingredients in the same week.  Try grouping a recipe with many ingredients with a recipe that doesn't call for a lot of ingredients as opposed to two recipes with numerous ingredients in one week.  As mentioned in Part 1, I do try to avoid recipes with a lot of ingredients, but let's face it, some of them are just too irresistable. 



Week 15 of my Menu Rotation



Once you have your meals organized and assigned into weeks, you will need your recipes.  In the picture above, you should be able to see I have listed my ingredients for each of the meals I have planned.  This makes planning my shopping trip a whole lot easier, because I do not have to flip through my recipes to find what I need to put on my list.  While I am listing my ingredients, I go ahead and put the amount that I need to make planning even more easier.

Some of you may be looking at my menu rotation and wondering what do we do on the weekends.  I found out on the weekends, that either, (1) we had food left over from the week that we needed to eat or it would spoil, (2) we wanted to eat out, or (3) we do something spontaneous and head out of town.  So, for the weekends, I typically keep ingredients on hand needed for quick meals, such as, sandwiches.  Planning for the weekends may help you to be even more organized.  If so, plan meals to cook on the weekends and add these to your rotation as well!

I constructed this table in Microsoft Word and started typing my menus in.  I developed 15 weeks of meals.  Ideally, I rotate these meals around every 15 weeks.  However, things do come up.  There are weeks that my husband and I realize that our freezer is overflowing and we need to eat what we have in the freezer.  Or, we have someone visiting and I would prefer to cook a "more-impressive" meal (wink, wink).  The majority of the time, I use my menu rotation as planned. 

These menus have cut out a huge amount of chaos from running my household.  I pray that it helps lighten your load as well and you enjoy providing delicious food for the blessings God has given you!

"She also rises while it is yet night, And provides food for her household..." Proverbs 31:15


If you have a question about anything that I have written, feel free to leave a comment!  I will be happy to answer!