February 2011

Welcome to Week 4 of our Make-A-Menu Series with Menu Maker Mom. Leslie, Menu Maker Mom, is going to take you through her Menu planning process one small step at a time!

Hopefully you enjoyed Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3!

If you have already set up your Make-A-Menu Binder and are following my menu planning strategies, you might be thinking, “Can it possibly get any easier than this??”  Well…. Get ready to do a happy dance, because I’m going to make your daily meal preparation totally effortless!!!!

In order to make your daily cooking happen without any strain or stress, we’re going to set up a weekly Make-a-Menu Box. The purpose of the Make-a-Menu Box is to guarantee that you have EVERYTHING you need for each meal. All the ingredients will be ready for you to use. No more surprise runs to the store!

To get started, we’ll take it step-by-step! Print out these instructions and plan to assemble your Make-A-Menu Boxes on your menu planning day or on Sunday, whichever day makes sense in order to get your week organized.

Step #1

Your materials for this project include the following boxes or baskets:

• 1 box for dry goods that fits in your pantry
• two small boxes/baskets that will fit in your fridge and freezer

Make sure your boxes are clean!

Step #2

Get out your shopping list and your Menu Calendar.

Step #3

Start setting up the boxes like this:

• As you review your menu, find the items that are essential to creating the menu items for the upcoming week. In the dry goods box, assemble all the pasta, rice, canned goods, and other dry goods necessary to make your recipes. Put the freezer items and fridge items in their boxes/baskets.
• As you fill your boxes/baskets you might find that you don’t have this or that. Add it to your shopping list.

Step #4

You can stop here or you can set up a lunch menu box and even a breakfast box. Get creative here! Just make sure that you aren’t creating more work for yourself. The idea is to be efficient with your brain power, energy, and time.

Step #5

The final step is to tell hubby, kids, the dog, and whoever else likes to raid the pantry, that they are NOT allowed to remove anything from the boxes or baskets… Or they risk the wrath of the Menu Nazi!

You’re done! Put up your feet and RELAX! Your cooking is on autopilot!

Tagged as: menu planning

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