Tasty Tuesday: How I Menu Plan

Last Thursday I shared my Daily Schedule and My Weekly Cleaning Schedule. Today I want to share with your my Menu Planning Schedule.


As we get life in order for the fall, creating an organized meal plan is a piece of the puzzle for me. The average woman will plan, shop, cook, and clean up over 1,000 meals in just one year!!! So for me, finding a system that works, is efficient, and stays within our budget is important.

I use an Excel spread sheet that I just literally plug in the meals and voila - it's quick and easy! Often times I leave the breakfast, lunch, snacks and desserts the same and just change the dinners. I hang this chart on the fridge and I find that it resolves all meal time dilemmas. And I must admit "candy" eating is not on the chart - but we do eat it. The chart is too big to plug into this blog so click on this link to see an example of my "Meal Plan".

In Excel I have created a couple of pages titled Meal Plan, Grocery List, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert and Snacks. As I make my meal plan, I just click to my breakfast ideas or lunch ideas and plug them in for the week. I also look at ads for the best deals and what coupons I have.

But I also want to share with you a Meal Plan that one of my readers (Denice at Living Spring Drops - who also happens to be a Good Morning Girl) uses. She commented on my Daily Schedule post with this meal plan and I LOVE it and am going to give it a whirl this fall as a guide.

Here is what she wrote:

I am a scheduler but with 5 children ages 17 to 6 it doesn't always go the way I schedule it. I get in Menu ruts. So, to help me stay creative but stay structured I came up with this:

Mexican Monday
Tomato-ey Tuesday
Wild-Card Wednesday
Thrifty & Thankful Thursday
Fancy Friday
Soupy Saturday
Sandwich Sunday

Mexican is anything from tacos to cumin-lime chicken, burrito, black bean soup, etc.

Tomato-ey is anything tomato based, from the obvious like pizza and spagetti, to bruchetta or tomato soup.

Wild-Card is my freedom day. I can do leftovers or another Fancy if I like.

Thankful is something ALL my kids truly enjoy AND isn't very expensive...like mac & cheese with hotdogs.

Fancy is our night for grilled salmon, marinated london broil, and en extra special dessert.

Soup and Sandwich speak for themselves....but sloppy joes, BBQ, and pbj grilled have all been had.

Sooooooo, this helps my menu and market jobs go by faster!!! Then I'm not sitting around staring at my menu sheet with writer's block!!! :)

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I love it Denice! Thank you so much for sharing such an excellent tip!

Walk with the King!

I am participating in Tempt Your Tummy Tuesday, Dining With Debbie , Balancing Beauty and Bedlam and Tuesdays at the Table recipe exchanges. And Raising Homemakers Link Up. For more blogger recipes go to these links.