The Menu of the Month

I've had a couple people actually ask how I went about getting food organized for a month's worth of meals, and I know everyone has a different system for accomplishing this task, but I thought I'd share mine here, along with the recipes I'll be using this month for anyone who was curious :)

I started by printing off a blank calendar for the month--for us it was the middle of November until we leave to visit our families for Christmas break on Dec. 17. I filled in all the evenings I knew we already had commitments that would have us away from home during the dinner hour (knowing that this may change over the month as schedules change, but it at least gave me a place to start). I generally cook about 3 meals a week--something in the crock pot on Mondays while we are in class (leftovers will be dinner Tuesday), we always eat dinner with our youth group on Wednesdays, I cook something else on Thursday, and then depending on weekend plans I do one more over the weekend, usually on the smaller side. (I wish I had a big freezer but I don't, I have to be careful about leftover portions!). Then I start again on Mondays.

Once you have an idea of your schedule, I started going through recipes (which wasn't hard, I just scroll through my recipe blog which you can find here) and chose 4 main dishes. I decided I would make two of them one week, the other two the next week, and then week 3 go back to the first two meals and week four would be a repeat of the second two meals. This way when I had to buy groceries I just made a list for those four meals and bought two of everything (or bought a bigger package of something at Costco). We like to eat a lot of different salads, so the third night of the week I'll do a big batch of a different salad each week to vary our menu a bit.

Then I made my grocery list, and this part took a bit of time (about a 1/2 hour) but was totally worth it. I had 3 lists going (I just used a word document on my computer). One was stuff I could buy at Costco. Several recipes used chicken breasts, several used shredded cheese or frozen corn, to top things with etc. These things can be bought at Costco and kept in the freezer. My next list was the non-perishable items I could buy at a normal grocery store because I only needed 2 cans of something and not a case that would come from Costco. On my way home from Costco I ran by Albertsons and got all the rest of the non-perishables for the month, just to have on hand so I wouldn't have to go each week. So my chili recipe calls for a can of black beans, and so does my chicken azteca--since I'm making each of them twice throughout the month I bought 4 cans of black beans etc. My 3rd list was the list of produce or perishable items that each recipe calls for. I broke it up by week, so I have a short list of the produce I'll need for each week already made. On Mondays now I can just add to that short list the things like milk, bread, lunch meat etc that we're out of and do one quick grocery trip. We'll see how this continues to work in the future but so far it's been great! I love having a plan (that is totally adaptable if schedules change but which gives me a place to start!)

Here are the main meals for this month, which will be repeated once each, with salads, veggies, rice or pasta as side dishes being mixed in here and there. Feel free to try any of them :) (Click on each to get to the recipe)

Crock Pot Chili and Cornbread
Crock Pot Chicken Azteca
Enchilada Casserole
Pesto Chicken Pasta
Club Salad with Homemade Honeymustard
Chinese Chicken Salad with Peanut Dressing
Crock Pot Minestrone
Cobb Salad with homemade Garlic Ranch dressing