>Make Life Easier… Plan Out Your Meals!

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Make Life Easier… Plan Out Your Meals!
By: Deanna Gemmer
24/7 MOMS Writer

I love to sit down and plan out meals for the week before I go to the grocery store. This helps with my food budget, as well as the frantic “what’s for dinner” rush in the evenings. I don’t attach meals to a specific day, instead pick 4-6 meals for the week and then in the morning or afternoon decide which one feels best for the day. Sometimes I’ll ask my husband for his opinion before he leaves for work so I can take meat out of the freezer or put the food in the crock pot.

Usually when I sit down to plan meals I pull out 5-7 cookbooks and just start flipping through recipes until I find one that looks good, or one that we’ve tried before that we liked. I’ll put a sticky note on that page, write down the recipe name and ingredients needed, and set that cookbook on top of the microwave for ready access when we’re set to cook.

But this system isn’t working for me anymore. For one, it takes too long. For second, I need a list of go-to recipes my family loves and I love to cook. In one place.

So when I stumbled on this blog post today I had a whole new burst of inspiration. Time to gather some supplies and get to work on putting my favorite family recipes all in one binder.

And printing out extra copies of this grocery/meal planning list to put right in front so they’re ready when I’m ready to plan? Brilliant!

A lot of my favorite recipes come from online sources (print out!) or magazines (tear out!) that can easily be put in the binder. But what should I do with the recipes in my beloved Better Homes & Garden book, or any number of other hard-backed cookbooks on my shelf?

A few ideas:
1) If you have the time, why not type out those recipes on your computer, print out, and put in the binder?
2) If you have a scanner or copier in your home, scan and print the recipe for your binder.
3) Keep a few sheets of blank paper in the back of your notebook. Add a handwritten note about the recipe, where to find it, and if you can, add a simple 4×6 picture you snapped before serving it to your family. (If you’re anything like me, I NEED a picture of a recipe before I’m even interested in attempting it!)

I’m moving at the end of the month, but once we are settled I fully plan to tackle this project. I can’t wait to have all our favorite recipes all in one place!