How I got started

How I decided to start Menu-Planning

I started by reading a short ebook called "Menu Planning Made Easy". After reading it, I felt like most of the information was generalized and basic... and it didn't give me too many new ideas. BUT, I have wanted to start implementing menu planning for a while now and it gave me the initiative to start it.

Here's what I did learn from the book : 

 1. Make a list of your family's favorite foods :breakfast, lunch, and dinner (that is, if you plan to cook all those). We only cook dinner, really, so I made a list of our favorite dinners. Having an extensive list makes it easy to pick new recipes and not get bored of the same few. 

 2. Check your pantry to see what items you already have before you go grocery shopping. If you already know what you're eating, then you should know what ingredients are needed to make your meals and you should be able to check what you already have before you go to the store.

It sounds simple, right? Well, it just might be... A normal trip to the store for us would have gone something like this: I would have a list made of all the items that week that we had run out of already. When we get to the store, we would pick up the items we need and browse every single aisle for things we might want to eat during the week. (Not a good idea!) So, we would come home with all kinds of odd and end items that looked tasty while we were at the store, or better yet we would have dreamed up some dinner ideas while at the store - buying ingredients that we may or may not have already at home... and hoping that we remember what we wanted to eat when it comes to dinnertime the upcoming week. :)

Thus, the reason why we need to change. 

This week I decided to keep it simple as to not talk myself out of this whole menu planning thing. As I get better at it, I will start doing more complex dinner recipes and hopefully turn our dinners into something delectable instead of something I dread.

Here are some other tips from the book that might help make things easier for you:

1. Cook in bulk and freeze part of it (for instance, beef) so it makes dinnertime quicker and less stressful.

2. Plan meals a month at a time.  (How can anyone do this? hehe)