Last week I attended a craft day at church and we made menu boards for the kitchen. I already had a monthly menu posted on the refrigerator, but this was a lot cuter. I had posted a picture to Facebook and several of my friends mentioned how hard it is for them to plan out menus that far in advance. They asked me to post my monthly menu. Which I have, although it is tailored for our family's needs (which I will explain in a minute), but it gives us a basic idea of what we are eating.
This is my new and improved menu board. "Menu" and the letters of the week are made in vinyl and placed on the backside of the glass. The meals are written in dry erase marker and the backing is simple fabric.
Here is my rotating dinner menu.
If you notice, I do not have the days of the week at the top, but it starts on Monday (to the left) and ends on Saturday (to the right). I have 5 weeks and we just started our first repeat this week. I have each meal on a certain night of the week because of our schedule. None of it is random.
For starters, we are not home every other Sunday night. We serve at the Rescue Mission and eat there. On the Sunday nights we are home, we use that night for leftovers or to try a new recipe or a simple meal that I keep on hand for when I'm being lazy (such as Viola or frozen lasagna).
Monday -Thursday night I try to have a meal with leftovers so that Howard will have lunch for the next day.
Tuesday night has to be either a casserole I can make ahead, crock pot, or super simple. Jack has dance class (hip hop) at 5pm and we like to eat as soon as we get home at 6pm. Howard usually shows up right after I have left for dance, so he can watch the casserole in the oven or fix sandwiches pretty easily. When Howard and I met, Howard was a better cook than I was. Through the years there has been a negative correlation between my cooking skills and his. The better I get, the worse Howard gets. Sometimes I think he feigns ignorance just so he doesn't have to cook.
Wednesday meals need to be on the table by 5:15pm, so the boys can leave by 5:45pm to get to scouts on time. If Howard is gone or working late, then dinner has to also be a fast clean-up since Wednesday is our late night and we don't go to bed with dirty dishes.
Thursday is when I cook dinners that usually take more time to make and/or clean up, since we're all home and generally don't have anything planned.
Friday was pizza night every week for a while, but my waist line didn't like that too much, so we cut back to every other week. Friday does not require us to have leftovers the next day for Howard, so you will see food items that won't have leftovers in our house, or in the case of Salmon, the cost is prohibitive to have leftovers (especially since we all love salmon).
I tried to separate the meals into categories - beef, chicken, seafood, noodles, grilled, crock-pot, etc.
I tried to space them out for variety in texture, flavor, and heartiness. I also have not listed all of the side dished we eat, but it's usually some form of fresh or frozen vegetable to compliment our dinner. On "breakfast" nights we usually pair our meal with fruit and bacon or sausage.
I will likely revise this menu in the next few months to give us some new choices. In the past I couldn't commit to a certain dinner on a given night, but would plan about 12 meals for a two week period, go shopping, and post the list on the fridge. I would choose my meals from that list depending on what I was in the mood for. Now that I am in school and the kids have activities, we don't have to luxury to go on a whim. I like this schedule because I can look ahead to the next day so that I can put my frozen meat in the refrigerator the day before to defrost instead of having to do it in the microwave.
Some nights we have not stayed on schedule and that's okay. It's not written in stone, but for the most part we have stayed on track. This week is a prime example. Howard was away for two days and we skipped a meal last week since we went to the State Fair, so I switched some of the items around. We are currently on the 2nd week, but you will see the modifications to this.
One added benefit is that grocery shopping is a lot easier, the hard part of thinking only had to be done once, and we go out to eat less because we don't have the excuse of not knowing what to eat for dinner.
I hope this has helped some of you. Good luck meal planning!!!!
