Monthly Menus

A few months ago I started talking with a friend about food, menus, planning meals, and an overall grocery budget. Granted it's only myself and my husband to feed but our schedules are so different and random that I thought having a plan would help.

My friend showed me how she printed off a monthly menu each month and filled a meal each day she knew she would have to cook for her family.

The idea of a monthly menu is to keep to a grocery budget and have an organized way of planning meals without last minute panic dinners.

With a menu you:

• Don't buy everything in the store and not use some of it because you aren't sure what to do with it. 
• Overspend on things you probably don't need.
• Can be prepared the previous day before and meal and thaw out meat, make things in advance etc. 

I have been doing a menu for the past three months and it really is a great idea for us because when we go shopping, we go bulk shopping and can now know exactly what to buy. We don't have access to a lot of different groceries here and so we try to buy everything we need all in one big trip to the city.

Here is what I have discovered:

• You will probably never follow your menu just like you first write it down-but that's ok just switch a day.
• You can be more creative with food because you have time to prepare-I have tried many different things outside of the typical.
• Allow a couple of easy typical meals because things always happen when you just need a quick meal.
• If you are going to eat out one night or have a meal every Sunday with your family-write it down. That way you know what is going on and can see it all in front of you on the calendar. 
• Stick to dinners and if you are a leftover person plan for leftovers- make a big meal one night and use it for lunch the next day or a part of it for dinner. Chance and I usually make enough food one night that will last us a couple of days so I usually write a meal down for every other day. I'm sure this will all change if we have children some day but it works for now.

That is what I have learned so far from this experiment. We have saved quite a bit of money because I know what to buy at the store and I know what I am going to make and when.

Here is a link to where I print off my free monthly calendars: Free printable calendars
Once you go to the site there is a list of the months and you just click on the one you want and print it off.

Also, there are a lot of sites that make you pay for such things and plan out menus for you but I would think you would always have to tweak it anyway and might as well get creative for free!