Menu Plan Monday – A Big Planning Session

When I sat down to plan the meals for this week, I realised that this week would see the start of August. For me, this year August has particular significance as I am doing the 30 Day Challenge in this month. I won’t bore you with the details, other than to say that it is an Internet Marketing Course that will require a chunk of my time every day for the entire month.

It is going to be a lot of work, so to prevent myself from meltdown because of overload, last week and for the remaining time until the challenge starts, I am trying to get as organised as possible.

A major part of this was to menu plan for all of August and the first week of September (will probably be exhausted by them!). I also used a slightly different style of planning because it was for such a long period of time. I was reminded of this process by Small Town Blessings.

Basically you allocate a style of meal to each day and then make your selections from this criteria. For the month of August, I am keeping it very simple, no new recipes, just tried and tested home favourites.

The plan I used was:
Monday – Prepare ahead meal
Tuesday – Pasta based meal
Wednesday – Rice based meal
Thursday – Big dish (has left over potential like soups, casseroles etc)
Friday – Left Overs (by the end of the week, I will need a night off.)
Saturday – Mexican
Sunday – Meat and Veg

So for this week, this means:

Monday – Shepherd’s Pie

BakingChocolate Balls

Tuesday – Fettuccine Carbonara

Wednesday – Chicken Korma

ThursdayTuna Rice

Friday – Left Overs

SaturdayMexibake

Sunday – Sausages and Vegetables

Again, I have included the shopping list for this week’s menu plan as an excel file. The below paragraphs explain what is in the attached excel file below.

0728 Menu Plan and Shopping List

It contains three separate spreadsheets. The first is named “Complete Grocery’ and it lists by supermarket aisle all the ingredients that are needed to cook the family meals for this week.

The second spreadsheet is named “Ingredient By Meal’ and it lists the ingredients that are required for the family by each individual meal this week. I have also left on the aisle and aisle subsection in this spreadsheet for reference, but if you want to print that out you will need to alter the print area.

The third spreadsheet is named “Menu Plan” and is a modified version of the menu plan that I print and place on the fridge. I have a notes section, that I like to populate with any activities that are likely to impact the evening meal routine.

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For more menu planning ideas head on over to Laura’s place at “I’m an Organizing Junkie“.