Meal plan for the month with these supplies: • Recipe Cards • Recipe Box • Recipe Card Protector Sheets • Pocket Chart • Free printables on DIYDanielle.com* *You can make your own but these help setup your menu planner.
If you already use recipe cards, you are all set! For printed recipes, I cut them out and glue them to a traditional recipe card.
I used plastic covers for my recipe cards. This keeps them clean if I spill food on them while cooking.
I have dividers for: Fish, Beef, Chicken, Pork, Vegetarian, Other Meat, and Frequent Meals.
This meal planner is a customized pocket chart. It hangs on the wall and is customized with numbers 1-31, for each day of the month.
For each week of the month, I try to vary what types of meals I'm cooking. This helps lower my grocery costs and gives us a more diverse diet. I try to choose: ☑ 1-2 Frequent meals ☑ 1 Beef meal ☑ 1 Chicken meal ☑ 1 Fish meal ☑ 1 Vegetarian meal ☑ 1 Pork/Other meat meal I look at my monthly calendar at the same time, placing the quicker meals on the days we're busy. During the month, if anything changes I can easily swap cards around.
Kids can help choose one or two meals from each category for the month. This gets them engaged in meal planning!
Recipe cards should be placed on the day you want to cook the meal. If needed, they're easy to swap out.