When dinner time rolls around, many families are left scrambling trying to figure out what they have in the cabinets to eat. If you learn to create a monthly meal plan, however, you can not only take the guess work out of making healthy meals for your family, you can also save a lot of money in the process. Here's start.
Instructions
1. Create a recipe file. This doesn't have to be anything elaborate, just gather together all of your favorite recipes and put them in a binder or index card file. As you come across new recipes, simply put them in your file to include in future menus.
2. Pick out 20 to 30 recipes for the month. The number of meals you plan will depend largely on the size of your family and the way you cook. If you usually have lots of leftovers, you can choose 20 recipes and eat leftovers one or two nights each week. If you eat out once a week, just factor this into your monthly meal count.
3. Do an inventory of what you have on hand. This step is crucial to saving money. Go through your cabinets and see what you have, and cross-reference it to the meals you plan to create the next month. Then create a grocery list based on the items that you still need to buy.
4. Post your meal plan on the fridge. When you create a monthly meal plan, you don't have to decide right away what meals you'll eat on which nights. Type up the meals that you plan to make and then cross them off the list as you make them.
Tags: meal plan, create monthly, create monthly meal, meals plan, monthly meal, monthly meal plan
