House of Order: Meal Planning

Our family likes to eat-- like three times a day!! (or more) :) And since I'm the one primarily responsible for providing the meals it can become a relentless task. Here are a few things I've done to simplify the process:

1. I've put together a customized cookbook with all of the meals we like to eat. (I have a separate notebook for recipes I've copied from blogs or magazines.) Once we've tried a recipe and determined that it's a keeper it can go into Our Favorites cookbook. Each week I sit down with the cookbook and pick out five or six meals that sound good.

2. I use a cheap spiral notebook for our meal lists and grocery lists. On the left page I write the meals I have planned for the week. On the right page I write out our grocery list (using the our customized cookbook as a reference for what ingredients we need for each recipe.) I keep the spiral notebook in a cupboard in the kitchen so I can refer back to it when I'm deciding what to make for dinner. (I don't assign days to the meals because I like to have some flexibility in determining what we want to eat each night.)

3. My grocery list is divided up into categories: Produce, Grain, Canned/Prepared, Meat, Dairy, Frozen, Misc. Most grocery stores have their isles separated into the same categories so it makes it easy to find and check off the things that you need. If there is something I can't find or decide to skip on the list, I just circle it and then transfer it to the next week's list. And at home it's always handy to add something to the list when I notice we're running low.

(My kids have also learned that when they go grocery shopping with me, if it's not on the list we do not buy it. If there is something they want they can request it be added to the list before we go in to the store.)