Menu Planning Strategy

I know lots of people already menu plan, but I do it a little differently. I don't create a menu for each night of the week. I just write down a dinner for each night that we need a meal. If we have plans of some sort that might interfere with cooking time, I make a * in one of the spaces to show myself that I need to plan something quick and easy for that night, or I need to do a crock pot meal. I make my grocery list based on my meal plan.






I make sure to write a few extra meals in, just in case. We are at an overseas military base, and it is very rare that the commissary has everything on my list. One time we went to get groceries and there were no chicken breasts. At all. Having an extra meal or two on the menu plan gives me options. If something I need for a meal isn't in the store, I have an alternative meal. If I decide one day that nothing on my list of meals sounds good, I have a little extra wiggle room to make something different without messing up the whole week. 

The last strategy I use for meal planning is to never PLAN spaghetti, but always have the ingredients to make it on hand. Spaghetti is a meal that inexpensive, the family loves it, and I can make it from frozen ground beef in about half an hour. Sometimes, the day gets away from me. Sometimes, I forget to thaw out dinner. Sometimes, I forget to put dinner in the crockpot. Sometimes... I think you get it! It adds about $5 to my grocery bill to buy the pound of ground beef, noodles, and sauce that we have just in case I can't get a planned dinner on the table. It would cost about $25 to feed my family pizza if I didn't have an emergency plan in place!