Something new: Monthly Menu Plan

This month, in order to help avoid extra trips to the grocery store and stick to my budget, I planned out my dinner menu for the entire month. Some of you will be horrified at what I feed my family. :) One of my goals, though is to start using those pins from Pinterest to add to the variety, including vegetables. But for this month, there are just a couple of new additions.

I will be (hopefully) reviewing those new additions here as they come up in the month.
This month the newbies are Secret Ingredient Mac & Cheese, Baked Potato Soup, and a do-over of the Slow Cooker Sweet Chicken.

I am shopping in 2 week blocks, because I know that some nights things will change and a meal will get bumped  so it leaves me some flexibility in the second half of the month to make adjustments as needed.

Here is the plan.

February Dinner Menu – Week 1 &2
Friday	Little Caesars Pizza	Personal Pizzas
Saturday	Burgers & Fries	Spaghetti, Garlic Bread & Salad
Sunday	Chicken and Wild Rice Soup & Bread	Baked Potato Soup
Monday	Baked Ziti & Garlic bread	Leftovers
Tuesday	Leftovers	Beef Tacos
Wednesday	Chili & Cornbread	Chicken Broccoli Casserole
Thursday	Hawaiian Meatballs	Hot dogs or Leftovers

February Dinner Menu – Week 3 & 4
Friday	Little Caesars Pizza	Totinos
Saturday	SAHC Mac & Cheese	Leftovers
Sunday	Sweet & Sour Chicken & Fried Rice	Apricot Chicken & Chicken Rice
Monday	Sloppy Joes & Fries	Crock Pot Lasagna
Tuesday	Leftovers	Baked Potatoes
Wednesday	Chicken Pot Pie	Slow cooker Creamy Tacos
Thursday	Mexican Casserole	Creamy Chicken Lasagna

Friday we always have pizza and movie night. Some nights are more complicated, some are easy, some cheap, some expensive. Some of the meals have sides that are not on the list but they are on my menu calendar where I have notes for things, like on Chicken Broccoli Casserole night, make double the rice and freeze it for fried rice later on, the spaghetti sauce is in the freezer left over from the last time when I made way too much, and have peas and carrots with Apricot chicken. And when we have leftovers, if there were no veggies in the meal, then we have salad or steamed broccoli or something.

Today I made the menu, then pulled all the recipes from my books (or printed them) and put them in a little photo album in order they appear in the menu.

In the front cover I have The charts seen above.



In theory, every month I will repeat the process to stay organized and within my budget.
 :)