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!