How to Plan Meals for Three Months in Three Hours: Hour Three

So at the end of hour two, you should have your meal plan completed, and you could be finished. However, I have found that taking the process one step further makes a big difference. During hour three, you gather all the materials you need to make actually preparing your meals easier, namely recipes and shopping lists.

Hour Three: Creating a Seasonal Recipe Book

If a lot of your recipes come from online sources, it’s simple and quick to create a recipe book of all your meals for the season. Even if they come from traditional cook books that you keep handy, I suggest copying all the recipes for the season into one place. That way when dinner comes around, you can simply pull it out and go. I even keep a bookmark in mine so I know exactly where I am. Every second counts, right? (Only if you are obsessive like me. :D ) Plus if your recipes are all in one place, your husband can even pull off dinner if you’re sick. I can’t tell you how many times I had to scrounge through pinterest half delirious with cold medicine before I figured this out.

Here’s how to create a personalized recipe book as quickly as possible:

1. Buy your materials – I like to use a 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 binder, because it’s more compact than the traditional full page binder size and therefore takes less counter space. It’s really easy to scale your recipes to print on half a page (more on that in a minute). Grab some half size page protectors, and maybe some tabs and you’re ready to go. You’ll also need a word processing program and a printer that’s not running out of ink. :D
2. Create a title page and table of contents (Optional) – Open up a new document in your favorite word processing program. Type “Fall Recipes” (or whatever clever title you come up with) on the first page and maybe throw a cute piece of clip art in there. On the next page, add a table of contents. Most word processing programs can auto-generate one. In the most current version of Word, it’s under References >> Table of Contents. As long as you put the title of each recipe in the “Header 1” style, it will automatically add it to your table on contents. Now’s a good time to make sure your document has page numbers too.
3. Gather your recipes – Run through your menu and type each recipe onto a new page of the document. Copy and paste from the internet, type it out of your cookbook, or even take a picture–if your camera is high enough resolution that you can read the recipe. You can be as lazy or as fussy as you want with formatting, but the point is to get them in one place and in the order you are going to make them. Make sure to choose a heading format for the title if you want your table on contents to auto-generate.
4. Size up the fonts and print 2-to-a-page – This last step is the real trick: make sure each recipe fills as much of the page as possible. Size up the font on each page until the page is just filled, but not flowing over to the next page. Then make sure your table of contents is up to date–you may need to hit a refresh option to see all the recipes. Then print your recipe book, but select the option to print 2 pages on every page. (Trust me, it’s in there somewhere.) Ta Da! Your recipes now take half a page each.
5. Fold in half, put in page protectors, and start cooking – Yup, if you fold the page in half, it fits perfectly in a half size page protector. Congrats on making your own cook book.

Hour Three: Pre-Writing Your Shopping Lists

Ah, but there’s one more quick trick. Now that you have all your recipes in a binder, you can easily pre-write your shopping list. Pre-writing your list means that it takes a lot less time to write your list each week, which means you can be out the door faster!

For each meal, write the ingredients in the shopping list column of the meal plan sheet. Leave out any pantry staples that you always have on hand (like flour, salt, and milk); list just the specialty ingredients. I leave off chicken and ground beef, and common vegetables too, since I always have those on hand. Use your judgement as to what to put on.

And that’s it. I’m currently going through the process of revamping my fall meal plan. Anyone interested in seeing my step-by-step?

Spreadsheet Wednesday: Baby/Toddler Clothing Inventory

To me, one of the biggest shocks about having a baby around was the shear amount of clothing they went through.  At first, with all the various leakages newborns are prone to, it felt like Monkey was wearing a new outfit every two hours.  After that, he started growing like a weed, burning through the 4-5 sizes of clothes made to fit an infant’s first year of life.  (Can you imagine changing sizes that frequently?) I couldn’t even find time to go shopping for clothing, much less hold out for good deals, before he would grow out of it.

With Sailor, I have all of Monkey’s old hand-me-downs.  It’s nice not to be under so much pressure to shop for clothing constantly, but hand-me-downs have their own hazards.  Like returning from Old Navy with my favorite white Oxford church shirt that I knew Sailor would need soon . . . except that I already had two in that size and none in the size below it.  It is literally impossible to keep track of that many sets of clothing in your head.

Click to download a copy

Which is why I invented this lovely clothing inventory spreadsheet.  It’s made to be printed double-sided, then folded in half to make a booklet you can fit inside your purse.  Just go through your stash of the next few sizes of clothing up, and mark what you have on the sheet.  I even make things too complicated and have separate marks for “clothing I have which is ugly and I want to replace, but which I can live with if I don’t find a good deal.”

Anyway, I keep my inventory in my purse at all times–it’s got plenty of water stains from leaky water bottles, but it’s still legible.  You could keep it on a smartphone or note program like Evernote, but I find check boxes and a pen are easier to keep up to date.  Having this information at your fingertips can be a real money saver.  Not only do you not end up with duplicate clothing, but you also have the advantage of being able to shop end-of-season sales for 1-2 sizes ahead.  You can buy high-quality, brand name clothing for much cheaper if you plan ahead. This piece of paper has been a huge sanity saver for me as well.  Hope it helps you too!

Spreadsheet Wednesday: Coupon Lists

Click to view and download a copy

I’ve decided this month is food spreadsheet month (since I’ve already shared my Summer Menu and Pantry List), and although this one doesn’t have to do with cooking, it certainly has everything to do with my grocery shopping.  So this is my coupon planning spreadsheet. I know, it doesn’t look like much, but it saves me a lot of money and keeps my head on straight when shopping.  And once printed out, it’s much more portable than my massive coupon binder. :)