Monthly Meal Plan – March 2011

I am excited to announce one of our family resolutions for this year. We are working off Monthly Meal Plans this year!! Yes, monthly!

Last year, we did weekly meal plans. Well we did weekly meal plans most of the time. I say most of the time because some weeks we forgot to plan. Life got busy, school work was out of control, the preschool business started, the family all got sick. You name it, life happens. When I suggested a Monthly Meal Plan late last year, I was sure my husband would declare me nuts for good. BUT … he was on board. He was on board so much he tried to find a monthly meal planner online. There were none to be found that worked for what we wanted though. So being the Excel junkie that he is, he made a calendar he could fill in a meal for each day.

Part of my accountable in doing this is posting our Monthly Meal Plan each month. While I label our meal plans by month, we finish out a week in each meal plan as we only shop once a week and I don’t want to get stuck mid-week needing something!

So here it is …

A few notes …

• Yes, breakfast and lunch repeat each week. We switched lunch to be a lot of salads. I bought a Walmart deal of the day Rubbermaid set for $10. It has enough containers to make 8 salads so we do this on Sundays and have our salads made for the week. It is helping us sooo much to do this.
• The breakfast and lunch plans still mostly for my husband and I. The kids dig their cereal and muffins in the morning. Plus if they didn’t have mac and cheese and apples for lunch on a regular basis (their chosen combination!) there would be a revolt around here!
• The dinner plans are simple. You can see that I try to do crockpot meals on Tuesday and leftovers on Thursdays. Those are my single parent evenings so I need simple.
• Want to know a secret? We STILL cheat. Sometimes whatever it was doesn’t happen. Tonight was a night where the meal plan didn’t happen because I forgot to put dinner in the crockpot before I left for work. I remembered at 1pm when I was at work. Oh well. I will do some adjusting for the rest of the week to either switch a meal that is in the freezer or freeze leftovers to use up my fresh ingredients.

If you are looking for answers on monthly meal planning, ask the questions you have! I don’t know that I have the answer for you but I will look for them!
If you want the empty Excel spreadsheet formatted like a calendar, let me know and I will send it you via email. Just send me an email at simplybudgeted at gmail dot com.

Have you tried monthly meal planning? How did it go? Any tips or suggestions?
So this month I have my meal plan up the first day of the month. I still don’t love this format but I can’t get a table to work right in my blog template so for now this is it.