Menu Planning – May/June Weekly Menu Plans

by PlanningQueen on May 20, 2012 in menu planning

A new batch of weekly menu plans today. I am sharing four weeks worth of plans which I have created using the menu planner app. When I posted my last bulk menu plans, I had some questions on how closely do I stick to them, when I plan this far out.

Some months I vary more from them than others. The last plan wasn’t hitting the spot right with how it fitted in with my time commitments and the kid’s activities. So while I cooked about 95% of the meals on the plan, I did vary the order quite a bit. This is one of the things I like most about menu planning, in that it gives me options. I have all the ingredients for the meals, I can easily change the day I cook it to meet my needs.

I have changed the structure of the menu plans for the week this month, based on what was working for me in reality over the last couple of weeks. Changes include cooking a double batch meal on Mondays to cater for left overs. Many recipes used to easily give us left overs, but as the kids are growing up, there is less and less left over. So I need to start increasing the quantity of the ingredients, to factor in left overs. (For the menu plans in this post though, I only added one quantity of the meal.)

The Weekly Menu Plans

Day Meal Type	Sat Self Serve	Sun Roast	Mon Morning Cook (for us double batch)	Tue Left Overs	Wed Slow Cooker	Thu Meat and Veg	Fri Fun Night
Week Starting: 19th May	Tacos Baking: Banana and Oat Muffins	Slow Cooker Roast Lamb	Fried Rice	Left Overs	Slow Cooker Satay	Sausages and Steamed Vegetables	Pikelets
Week Starting: 26th May	Marinated Chicken Sticks and Salad Baking: Testing New Recipe	Slow Cooker Roast Beef	Baked penne with bacon	Left Overs	Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup	Marinated Steak and Garlic Mash	Nachos
Week Starting: 2nd June	Tacos Baking: Butter Cake	Easy Roast Chicken With Stuffing	Pumpkin Soup	Left Overs	Slow Cooker Risotto	Pan fried chicken and veg - new recipe	Homemade Pizza
Week Starting: 9th June	Sweet Chilli Chicken Wraps Baking: 100 biscuit recipe	Slow Cooker Roast Lamb	Fried Rice	Left Overs	Slow Cooker Satay	Sausages and Steamed Vegetables	Sushi - recipe to come next week.

When you create the menu plans in the app, a shopping list is then created. You can then either use the shopping list directly on your iPhone and check off the items you have, or you can email the list to yourself or someone else.

The app plans Monday to Sunday at the moment and I plan from Saturday to Friday, so Monday in this plan is really Saturday for us and so on.

I have pasted the contents of the shopping list emails into word docs, turned them into PDFs and zipped them together, so they can be easily downloaded. Or you can purchase the App from iTunes and make your own!

Planning With Kids Weekly MenuPlans – May/June

What changes have you made menu planning as your family has grown?Tweet

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Tags: menu plans

http://blog.annaspargoryan.com/ Anna Spargo-Ryan
How many times a week do you shop for the planned meals? I like to plan, but my freezer situation is not ideal and won’t accommodate a full week of meat. That just results in my picking up whatever I can think of from the supermarket on my way home from work, and the meal plan is rendered useless.
- http://planningwithkids.com/ PlanningQueen
  We have a standard family size fridge, with freezer at the bottom. Stacked with precision I usually can store our meet for the month with the exception of the roasts – I will by them the day before or day I cook them.
  I shop monthly for groceries and we shop weekly at a market for fruit and veg. Sometimes I will need to do a top up towards the end of the week depending on what fruits are in season (some keep better than others!)
http://blog.annaspargoryan.com/ Anna Spargo-Ryan
Maybe I should just buy a bigger freezer and be done with it! I get the feeling it would seriously reduce the amount of dinner stress in my life.
- http://blog.annaspargoryan.com/ Anna Spargo-Ryan
  Way to reply correctly, me!
  - http://planningwithkids.com/ PlanningQueen
    I am lobbying unsuccessfully at the moment to get a separate freezer as I am sure it would make things even easier for me too! I could bake in bulk as well.
Julie
How on earth do you manage to shop once a month for a family as large as yours?? I have tried once a month shopping and even fortnightly and I simply can not get it all in the trolley! And we are only a family of Mum, Dad and 3 school age children. Would you please share your shopping plan, that would be so awesome. Some questions I have are, is it everything that you buy for the month at once, or do you do separate meat shops, fruit and veggie shops and then say canned and packaged foods shop. Also, where do you store it all? Thanks so much!
- http://planningwithkids.com/ PlanningQueen
  I do a few different shops:
  -I do a once a month shop online for groceries.
  -I visit a butcher for meat and will buy everything except the roasts.
  -We shop weekly at a fruit and veg market and as I noted to Anna above sometimes I will need to do a top up towards the end of the week depending on what fruits are in season (some keep better than others!)
  We have a reasonable sized pantry, normal fridge/freezer set up, but we also use storage space in the laundry for extra items like cereal, tissues, paper towel.
  It does require the pantry and fridge to be very organised to be able to fit everything in. We go from being completely chokkas until bare over the four weeks!
  - Julie
    Nicole, you are amazing, I wish I was as organised as you! Thanks for sharing your shopping plan. I am going to try some of these ideas myself.>
Jodie
Now the weather is cooler I am starting to use our slow cooker more but I have had a few mishaps with food drying out too much and sticking or burning.
While most of the recipes seem to be for about 8 hours on low, we leave home by 7:30am and eat dinner about 6pm so it is in the cooker for much longer.
Has anyone else had this issue and do you have any handy hints?
- Julie
  Jodie, I am not sure, but I think that I have seen some slow cookers with a time delay button on them. Not sure if that helps, as it means you may have to go out an buy a new one. Another idea, would be to cook over the weekend and have leftovers throughout the week.
- http://planningwithkids.com/ PlanningQueen
  Hi Jodie,
  This post has some recipes for longer cooking times – I haven’t tried any of them though. http://busycooks.about.com/cs/crockpotrecipes/a/longcooking.htm
  I have read some bloggers who add more spices and more liquid and simply cook it for longer. Again I haven’t tried that either!
  Nic