Construct a full months planner of meals and reusable shopping lists.
A few weeks ago, I came to the conclusion that if I could just plan out about three months of meals and rotate them, I would make my life a lot easier. It took a good full day to get just one month organized and get the shopping lists created through AllRecipes.com, but it has been very worth it. Here's what I did:
Purchase a cheap photo flip book that can hold 3x5 recipe cards. Divide the book out into sections: 3 pages for intro of meals in the book, and add tabs for breakfasts and breads, and 4 individual weeks. Each week contains 4 popular meals plus one type of fruit salad and one appetizer. Load the flip book with recipes on hand or those printed from your favorite cooking web sites, dividing things out so that the family gets a nice variety in the week of meats and pastas. Then using AllRecipes.com, create and save 4 pantries and 4 shopping lists to accomodate a full week of meals. (The pantries are needed to add ingredients from any of your own recipes that AllRecipes.com doesn't have.
The results have been a dream. I can hand the book to my husband and say, "Pick a week of meals", he picks his week, I print the shopping list off, and head to the kitchen to spend 3 minutes crossing anything off the list that we already have in stock.
I still have 2 more recipe flip books to create that would bring me to a full 3 months of meals. But having just one flip book has been SO convenient and helpful. I have found that I didn't need to shop on the third week, as we still seemed to have enough on hand. It is also a nice compact way of protecting the recipes, carrying them into the grocery store if needed, and having them on the counter as I cook.
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