Weekly Menu Planner ~ Free Printable (And Why I Don't Use One)

To be honest, I am not a weekly-menu-planner-type-of-gal. My goal each week is to use what we have growing at the time, what I find in my pantry, what is fermenting in jars and what has been preserved in the freezer or canned in prior months. With these resources I am able to prepare a meal inexpensively for my family without taking too much time (the time had already been spent in the preservation process). This means that in the winter and autumn months, we don't eat foods like fresh tomatoes or anything else that isn't grown in the cold seasons or is already preserved.

Before it sounds too "out there", I will explain. When thinking of meals, I don't wonder what I "need" to make dinner, I wonder what I can "use" to make dinner.  For example, in the winter our tacos would have toppings such as cheese (that was purchased in bulk, shredded and frozen in smaller increments) canned salsa, cabbage salad (or sauerkraut) and guacamole (our avocados are ripe in winter). In the summer, the toppings would consist of shredded cheese, fresh garden lettuce, tomatoes and onions. In another instance, it wouldn't do me good to plan for burritos on Thursday and then have my husband bring in a bucket of zucchini that same day. I need to use up that squash and fast! So you see, I need to do some creative adjusting to make our meals coincide with our seasons and our surpluses. Hence, I don't meal plan (I meal "scan").

However, I find that when overnight guests come, I do need to meal plan and I do spend a bit on the extras (like those out of season foods) in order to make some special dishes. Lately, we have been having a lot of extra company and so I created a menu planner printable to get me through this busy time.  I also included a grocery list at the bottom of our planner which can be conveniently clipped off and taken to town once our menu is prepared and the inventory has been ascertained.

I store our planner inside our Home Management Binder which I have begun to appreciate more and more. It works well in our "weekly" section. You are welcome to use our menu planner, simply download from the link HERE and print.

Something helpful which I have also adopted is what the author of Healthy Foods shared. It is called the "Ten O'Clock Principle" (which she in turn learned from her friend Demaris Ford).

"The Ten O'clock Principle is simply that you decide on your dinner each night by 10:00 that morning. However, if you know that Wednesday, for example, is always very busy, then you decide on dinner for Wednesday night on Tuesday night at 10:00 PM. The Ten O'Clock Principle is the same, you just move it around (AM or PM) accordingly. That way, you can prepare! Like take something out of the freezer to thaw, plug something into the indentured servant (crock pot) or check to make sure you have charcoal for the barbecue."

~ Healthy Foods by Leanne Ely, C.N.C.

The author also gives the idea to have a basic meal plan each week that you follow like spaghetti on Monday, a meal with beans on Tuesday, salad on Wednesday, chicken on Thursday and so forth. That would be an option for some women who don't need to utilize what a farm provides. The only thing that is pretty much certain in our home is that Friday night is pizza night :)

Do you plan menus for the week? What are your thoughts on meal planning? Happy homemaking ladies and embrace your daily duties! Your efforts in every area of homemaking are forming childhood memories that will last forever in the hearts of your family and will continue to sweeten the heart of your husband.

"It belittles us to think of our daily tasks as small things,

and if we continue to do so, it will in time make us small."

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

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