How To Make A Monthly Meal Plan

Imagine not having to think about what to cook for dinner for an entire month.  Imagine having your ref and pantry well-stocked for a month’s worth of supplies.  Imagine going to the grocery only once or twice in a month.  No, these are not wishful thinking.  These are the promises of having a monthly meal plan.   If you have flexed your meal planning muscles somewhat by regularly making weekly meal plans, it’s time to move on to making a monthly meal plan.  Here are the steps.

List down about 20 or 30 meals that your family loves to eat.

Refer to your weekly meal plans for dishes which are certified family favorites.  It takes only 30 dishes—one dish for each day—to come up with a month’s worth of dinners.  Remember, you need only to plan for dinners.  Breakfast items are simple while lunches can be made out of dinner leftovers.  You also don’t need to have 30 dishes as you may have 1 or 2 days each week for eating up leftovers or eating out for a change. 

Ideally, your recipe choices should be those which you find easy and quick to do, provide balanced nutrition, are kid-friendly and suit your budget.  For convenience, you may want to rotate your meal plan every 2 weeks so that you are essentially planning for just 2 weeks and simply repeat the meals thereafter.  The best time to do this is during the last week of the month, in time for the following month.

Write down a list of all the ingredients you need for the dishes you have decided on.

Based on the recipes you have collected, write down a list of ingredients.  Be as comprehensive and as detailed as possible.  When you are first starting out with this task, it may take you a few hours each night to do this.  In time, however, you may simply be rotating your meal plan.

In listing down the ingredients, remember to add up everything.  For instance, you may need a pound of ground beef for the burger, another pound for spaghetti and still another pound for meatballs.  This means you need a total of 3 pounds.  Factor everything so you won’t miss a thing.

Make an inventory of your ref and pantry supplies.

With your list of ingredients in hand, go through your ref and pantry and compare what you need with what you currently have.  This will help you finalize your grocery list.

Search this site for coupons and sales on the items you have in your grocery list.

It pays to take some time doing online couponing before hitting the grocery.  Mark off the items for which you can use coupons.

Post your list on the ref or kitchen wall and follow it.

Some write down a dish for each day of the month.  Others would simply write down a list of recipes and check off each dish that gets cooked.  Whatever your style, make sure you cook the perishables first or during the first week of the month.