Menu Planning

Gracious, how do I blog about this without having it turn into a long, boring novel?!  I try to be organized...really, I do!  Being out of the house 10+ hours a day means that things need to be organized in order to run smoothly.  Almost 2 years ago, when hubby took a different job, I had to make more of an effort to get my act together when it came to dinner.  For the longest time, he worked somewhat of a swing shift so I always had a few hours after getting home to figure out what to make, clean house, craft, go for walks, grocery shop, and do whatever else needed to be done.  Now however, we both get home at close to the same time.  It was an adjustment for me to get used to not being able to have dinner ready for him when he'd get home.  After a month or two of floundering around, not really getting my act together, I decided that I needed to get better at menu planning.  I came up with a plan, and just needed some time to execute it.
First thing I did was to go through my recipe box, cookbooks, cooking magazines, allrecipes.com, and anywhere else I got recipes from and wrote down a list of what all I actually had on a somewhat regular rotation.  It was a surprise to me to see how many different dishes I actually make!  I easily came up with enough to fill up a whole month, with nothing repeated.  I also wrote down side dishes, but then scrapped that plan because a) I ran out of room on the calendar and b) sides are easy to figure out once the main dish is chosen!  I had an idea of what I wanted my calendar to look like and then took a day to get it done.  I bought a magnetized calendar white board and a roll of magnet tape to make pieces for all the main dishes.  Using my scrapbook supplies, I made some tags with each dish listed on them.  I color coded them as well...blue was for chicken dishes, red was for beef, and yellow was for everything else.  I cut up the magnet tape and stuck a tag on each one.  Over time, I've added in more recipes, but been too lazy to make more magnets.  I suppose I really should get on that!

At the beginning of the month, I sit down with the calendar and plan out the meals for the month. There's really no rhyme or reason to how I plan things out.  I think about what I think I'm going to feel like cooking for the first week, and then randomly put the meals for the rest of the month on the calendar.  I also try not to have a week where we have chicken 3 nights in a row, and have a couple of eat out nights built in to the month as well.  Side dishes are usually green beans, rice, potatoes, or whatever else I find in the pantry.  Lets face it, I enjoy cooking, but it's nice to have a night off here and there too!  Momma needs a break every once in a while!
In addition to my magnet calendar, I also have a google calendar set up that I can look at if I'm at work and can't remember what I had planned for dinner.  This is also handy if I need to go grocery shopping, so I need to know what to get for the week.  The nice thing about having a magnetic board and the google calendar is that it is real easy to switch things up if we get to a day where I see what I've planned and don't really feel like eating it that day.  Life happens, so we just roll with it!  As long as I've got the necessary ingredients, it's not a problem to change things up.  I'm flexible like that.
After all this, I have a confession to make!  The last few months, I've been absolutely HORRIBLE at keeping up with my menu planning!  2012 was quite the year for us, and we all ended up putting things on the back burner just to survive the year.  My goal for this year is to get back into being organized, and have our house running smoothly.  This is going to mean buckling down and working hard at first, but soon it will become like second nature again.