I have been asked how I menu plan and if I would show an example. Before starting low carb we focused on Paleo and still like a lot of Paleo recipes some of which we have to tweak to make lower carb, which is just fine. Our kids all have an assigned evening for cooking dinner. They used to have to pick the recipes they wanted to make and they will eventually get back to that as we start to make a list of our favorites. Mr. Low Carb has the rule to not have the same recipe within two weeks of each other which kind of bums the kids out that they can’t make the same thing over and over again. We also have a left over night and a Crock Pot night which each kid has a week for that as well, so each child will have the crockpot meal once every 7 weeks. So how do I keep everything straight? I print out a calendar for each month, write the meal down for the date and on the back of calendar I write the date and the website or book its from. In my favorites I make a folder for each month with the meals bookmarked. Sometimes this means moving from one month to another to keep it straight. I wish I could have things book marked in multiple folders. So lets just see how this looks.
Sorry, my chicken scratch is hard to read. This gets hung up in the kitchen cupboard and at the beginning of each week I print the recipes for each day and pin those in the cabinet as well. We have a corkboard on the inside of the door. I go grocery shopping typically on Saturday for the coming week. Breakfast is usually eggs, eggs muffins, greek yogurt, etc. Lunch is usually left overs, sandwiches with low carb bread I made, or something pretty easy to eat. So as you can see Friday the 8th is Meat Pie, the 9th is Bacon Cheese Burger soup. There are always veggies or salad served even if it’s not on the calendar. I do not have all of Feb done just yet.
This is the back of the calendar. I do this incase the printed recipe gets lost or I forget to bookmark it in the month folder. It really comes in handy.
Here’s my book mark folder for February. This is where I come to print the recipes at the beginning of the week.
And that folks is how we menu plan here at the Reif Oasis. It’s not perfect and some months are better than others at planning. Some months I fall off the planning wagon completely and then we are miserable because we are scrambling the morning of the meal which is no fun for anyone! So I really try hard to stick with it, totally worth the effort. I hope this helps give others some ideas for menu planning.
