I'm going to be echoing what everyone else has said....
A couple of years ago, I was able to work out a menu with 28 dinners on it. It took some doing, but after fixing things for awhile, I came up with 28. I based each meal on the protein of the meal and used that for variety. So one night it's chicken, the next it's eggs, then pork, then fish, etc. From there, I just add whatever is I have that is fresh. So if it's ground turkey meatballs and spaghetti, I'll add salad and steamed broccoli. Or if I don't have the broccoli, we have carrots. Or whatever. Thus I don't usually put a fresh with a cooked in my meal planning.
Then using that list of 28 meals I figured out what I need to have for a month of dinners from the grocery store, added what needed to be on hand for breakfasts and lunches...and wah lah! I was shopping just once a month, with an occasional trip back for lettuce and eggs and one or two other things that just aren't that good if they are kept that long. Shopping once a month cut my grocery bill in half. I started supplementing milk with powdered milk to make it last longer as well.
Then after doing that, I could easily figure out what I needed to have on hand in food storage items and I began working on getting a year's supply of the cooked part of the meal. Unfortunately, about that time it got to be summer and I realized that all my meal planning was geared around winter eating. Beef stew and chili, you know? Stuff you NEVER want to eat in the summer. So I tried to revamp for summer meals and just was never as successful at it as I'd like to have been. I never want to cook in the summer so we eat a lot of BBQ and sandwiches and stuff like that.
Now the 28 winter meals are up to about 35 and I've worked out the campbell's soup based ones and worked in more healthy ones. But I still keep the original 28 on hand, because what I do is look it over in the morning (at least I try) and figure out what's for dinner. I have the fixings for 28 meals on hand generally so I can pick anything I want. I also have marked some of the meals with "CP" for crockpot, because those HAVE to be started in the morning. And I have other meals that are QF "quick fix" because sometimes I don't make it out of bed in time to get the crockpot going. But having that list and knowing the fixings are on hand keeps us from eating out most of the time, which helps us to stay on budget.
But I also like variety, so if I find a recipe that sounds good, I go for it. Sometimes it'll get added to my meal list and sometimes not. If nothing on the 28 meals sounds good, I have cookbooks. And since I shopped for the 28 meals, I almost always have what I need on hand or I can substitute something else.
I do do some weekly menu planning, especially if I have something I know we need to eat up and that requires having say...sour cream on hand, which I don't always remember to get. DH can pop by the grocery store and pick it up on his way home too (although I have found that I need to say only spend $XX amount, or he'll throw off my weekly budget in his buying).
We used to eat at 5:30, but now DH doesn't get home till nearly 6pm, so we're eating about 6:30pm these days. I pat myself on the back for 1) having cooked at all, 2) having veggies on the table, and 3) eating together. You gotta take those pats on the back how ever they come!
Anyway, hope that helps!  | 
02-15-2009, 07:31 PM
Well...you know that organization is my strong suit. That's just what's coming out. It'd be easy enough to turn this into a class and I've thought of doing that, but never been asked. The nice part about this is its extreme flexibility. Once you have the ground work done the next steps are easily built on. 
