Food for four, a month at a time...

This is my calendar. It has all our scheduled events on it, as well as our menu for the month.

Menu planning can be a tedious job, or a fairly easy job. In a previous post about shopping, I mentioned in response to a question that I do not plan my menu around sales, but rather around what I have in my pantry/freezer/fridge, using sales to stock my pantry/freezer/fridge. This makes menu planning easier for me, I believe.

At the end of each month, I take out my planner and grab the calendar off the fridge. I update the fridge calendar with all our events (from my planner) and then proceed to plan the meals for the upcoming month. I only plan for supper/dinner, as our breakfast and lunch menus don't change a whole lot day-to-day. Breakfast is cereal and milk (maybe some fruit) and lunch is a sandwich or leftovers with fruit (or a microwave meal for J if he's home).

Since J works Sunday through Wednesday, I don't plan very extensive meals for these nights. Sometimes he gets home by 7pm, and other times he gets home after 9pm. Whatever I make on these nights needs to be fast and easy, or keep warm well. I usually use a "rotating schedule" for these nights - i.e. breakfast foods on Sunday night (waffles, eggs, etc), pasta on Monday night (macaroni, pasta salad, fettuccine alfredo, etc), hot dogs on Tuesday night. Wednesday nights we (the kids and I at least) eat supper at Church (we have dinner before prayer meeting), so J usually heats up some Ramen or a microwave meal when he gets home from work.

Friday nights are almost always pizza night - I've started making homemade pizzas every Friday night.*

That basically leaves Thursday and Saturday to plan for. I try to make these nights my "meat" nights - having the main course centered around some type of meat. Pork chops ($.98/lb on sale and frozen individually), chicken (usually less than $1.50/lb and frozen individually), hamburger (on sale and frozen in one pound packages), etc. make up the meat options for these nights. I try to vary the meal on these nights, attempting not to repeat a Thursday/Saturday meal more than twice in the month.

I usually stock up on meat 2-3 times a year, and stock my pantry every 2-3 months, spending around $30 each time. Fresh foods are a weekly/bi-weekly purchase (fruit, yogurt, bread, etc). WIC picks up the bill for our milk, or we'd add about $35/mo for milk. J has a loose budget of $4/day for lunch. Using this meal planning method, I can usually feed my family breakfast, lunch, and dinner for around $150-200 a month.

Q4U: Do you meal plan? Do you plan for a day at a time? A week at a time? Two weeks? A month? Do you plan from your stocked supplies or from the sales at the stores? What's your food budget look like? Do you rotate meals or try new things each night? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic!