Menu Planning Commitment

How many of you menu plan for the week?  I’ve always made a great effort in the past to do this.  I would consider Sunday as the day to plan out meals and go grocery shopping for the week.  This usually would last for a week and then we were back into our old habit of asking each other, “what’s for dinner?”, when it’s already 5 o’clock at night.  Either we would start scrounging around for food, or worse yet run somewhere to get take out.  Now with a two and half year old I feel it’s even more important to menu plan and be organized when it comes to dinner time.  There are multiple reasons.  For starters we try hard to sit at the dinner table at least four times a week and eat as a family.  It’s a good way to get our daughter to try new food (which isn’t always easy, but at least she tries), and it also helps teach her good table manners.  I’ll be the first to admit that getting a two and half year old to sit at the dinner table for more than two minutes can be quite challenging, but it’s a work in progress.  I’m digressing…

So since the invention of Pinterest I’ve been able to see what others do for menu planning as well as being able to find more dinner recipes, which does make it easy to cook and eat as a family.  There are a lot of free menu planning printables out there.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

With the decision to commit to better menu planning and using tools like the above printables, it’s been easier for us to menu plan, grocery shop, and have better dinner time routines.  We haven’t really kept track of whether this is saving us money, but I believe it is, because there are far less random trips to the grocery store and even fewer take out nights.

I think something like this DIY menu planner is also a great idea to add to a kitchen.  This way the whole family sees the weekly plan and there’s no more “what’s for dinner tonight?” questions.  Now I just have to get my husband to agree it’s necessary to help me make and add this to our kitchen.  Baby steps…

So here is this week’s menu at our house:

Grilled Margarita Pizza

Chicken Taquitos

Pasta with Pesto Cream Sauce

Crispy Shrimp and Pasta

Lazy Sunday Casserole

Leftovers thrown in as well!

Any menu planning tips you want to share with us?  Happy eating and planning!