2 Week Menu

I tried this a few years ago but did not like it at the time. Mostly because at that time I thought if you set up a 2 week menu you needed to have each dinner assigned to a night and you had to follow through or it wouldn't work. I've since them come to the obvious conclusion that you do not need to do this! I know, duh, right? So recently I have sat down with my family to put together a list of 14 meals to last us 2 weeks. This is done just after pay day so that the first Monday after pay day I can take our allotted amount of grocery money for the pay period, my complete grocery list, and go grocery shopping, I only buy what I need to make the 14 dishes on our list, nothing else. This has saved us a lot of money! We are no longer running to the store looking for ingredients we didn't have at home to make something that sounds really great that night, nor are we buying unnecessary items while shopping. Also, we are no longer having to come up with dinner ideas on the spot, the ideas are all listed, we just have to choose one. It's made my evenings so much easier! To make life even easier I have put all our usual dinner ideas on an excel spread sheet, we will add ideas as they come. Next to each idea the ingredients are pre-listed so when I go grocery shopping I only need to stop and copy down what I need instead of pulling out recipes and racking my brain to make sure I get it all. And, I put the date we last ate the dish next to it as well, this will hopefully help us avoid repeats too closely together! On the spread sheet I highlight the meals we are currently on so as not to be confused remembering what I bought supplies for. The nice thing is our 14 day menu usually ends up extending past the next pay day because of family dinners, dinners with friends, nights out, etc. Even so, when pay day arrives still plan 14 meals and on grocery day I purchase the ingredients for those 14 meals, eventually pay days will come when we will already have quite a few meals planned and ingredients stocked up, thus saving us even more money.

I highly recommend trying the 2 week menu idea with your families!

A few other ideas that have been tossed my way:

Plan different types of meals, make each day of the week a certain type of food day, i.e. Mexican Food Night, Italian Food Night, French Food Night, Pizza Night, Comfort Food Night, Family Traditions Night, etc. This way you get more of a variety in your diets as well as prepare your family so they know what to expect for dinner, thus making it easier on them, not much room for surprises here.

Plan Breakfast! Assign each day and keep to it: Waffle Monday, Pancake Tuesday, Cereal Wednesday, etc. Keep the ingredients on hand at all times, don't switch it up for whatever reason, stick to it! If your kids know what to expect for breakfast in the morning they will be less likely to argue. Kids like routine!

With this new idea I most likely won't be posting often here, unless I find a really great recipe that I want everyone to try. I do have a new Home Made Mac and Cheese recipe I'd like to post when I get a minute later on :).