Feature Friday is an occasional highlight of something that works in my home/ life.
I love menu planning.
It saves me such a lot of time and helps us all to eat healthier and shop better for groceries.
Here is my favourite little magnetic menu planning board (South Africans, I got it for R30 at Mega Mica about 3 years ago and it’s not actually intended for menu planning – I think it’s for kids’ homework).
I start off by cleaning the whole thing.
I then check my freezer and see if there’s anything I want to use up or if there are freezer meals that need eating.
Add those to the board.
Then I make sure we don’t eat any one carb two nights in a row (I like to switch things every night).
I only plan for Mon – Fri and on Saturdays and Sundays we fly by the seat of our pants.
Not really, I just felt like saying that.
We usually use up any leftovers or I’ll do the quickest thing which is a pasta.
Notice our meals are on top and the babies’ meals are on the bottom of the squares.
The babies eat what we had for supper the previous night since they eat at 5 pm and I’m not even home from work then. Except when we have spicy meals like curries.
And that’s it.
Easy-peasy menu planning.
I don’t consult a lot of recipe books except when I’m uninspired which is fairly rare because I do love food.
I have set myself a little goal this year though; I’m to try two new meals every month. Of course, all these new things are always cooked on the weekends which is the only time I have more than 30 minutes to spend in the kitchen.
Do you menu plan?
Do you cook the same things or do you like trying new recipes?
P.S. Are you joining me for Spring into Organising?
I think I need to find myself one of those boards.
I do try ad menu plan, but then i get lazy and forget. And cooking is becoming such a chore that coming up with new ideas is a real pain in the you know what.
I also like to try a new recipe a week.
And I usually cook a huge batch of savoury mince which i freeze in batches and whip out when lazy me is in the house. luckily i have a seriously unfussy family so they gladly eat whatever i serve up.
i think we should share recipes somewhere – don’t you?
Shayne, I don’t know why your comments aren’t coming through to my email!
Anyway, I saw those boards again yesterday at Westpack, still for R30 🙂 They are fab.
And yes, menu planning helps.
I also have a list of about 20 meals we like to eat so I do look at that often.
Have you seen my very-boring recipe blog? http://marciasrecipes.blogspot.com
In my head I do – but its not working so well.
Every now and then I make an actually plan but then get bored and forget about it.
I am starting one for next month though purely because I spend too much time at PnP now that I am at home and its wasting money :-/
LOL Laura, I know! The mental planning doesn’t work too well in practice.
You don’t have to stick to each day as is – I often move the meals around if I’m not in the mood for x on a particular day. It’s just nice to know you’re prepared for x meal 🙂
The saving money thing is one of the biggest reasons I do it. I hate wasting food!
I plan, I have to otherwise I buy veggies for 2 weeks and meat for 2 days (or the opposite) and DBF, who cooks, don’t know what to prepare. But we switch and improvise when needed, I just have to remember to freeze anything that might go bad if not used. BTW, such a planner would be pretty easy to make with fun papers and laminate so that you can reuse it over and over! Or with digital scrapbooking stuff if it’s your thing! 😉