Menu Time

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. It's been really stressful and hectic in the 7under1roof household lately.
But I really wanted to post today because I'm working on my menu.
After all these years of making menus, there is still something I struggle with.

Here's how I do my menu.
I browse through my cook books (cause I have a LOT) and pull out a few that sound interesting or have the themes that I am looking for (Crock pot, poultry, casseroles, etc). I also scour the internet (my favorite site is www.allrecipes.com, but I will many times just google and look around at blogs and other random websites) for recipes as well- but usually I don't have much trouble with those- I will print out recipes most of the time. Unless it's on allrecipes.com, then I tend to just save the recipe in my recipe box and forget to print it out. BUT I'm just going to focus this post on my cook books/magazines.

So I'll have this stack of books and magazines I go through for my 2 week or 4 week menu. I scour through and pick out several recipes that I want to put on my menu.
Here is where I struggle.



I have tried writing out a calendar (or using one premade for writing a lot of information in) with the amount of days that I am making my menu for, and writing the recipe name, book, and page in on the date I want to make it.


When I first started doing this method, I just used a separate piece of paper and wrote a list of items that I would need that I didn't already have.

After doing that for a while I realized that I wasn't buying enough of each item to cover all of the recipes, or I would forget what recipe the item was for and if I can't find it, I'd try and substitute it and screw up the recipe.







 So I actually started writing down the recipe next to the ingredients OR the amount required in the recipe to make sure I got enough.




So then when I get home and start working through my menu, MOST of the time the menu works out good at least for the first week. But once I get into the second week, or GOD FORBID I lose that menu sheet, I am screwed up. I either lose track of what books I am supposed to be using, or run out of ingredients prematurely.

I'm considering actually copying the recipe out of the book on my printer and filing them into sheet protectors into a binder. But OHMYGOSH how much MORE work would that be? UGH I really think it would wind up doing me a lot of good, but I then have to weigh the extra time and cost of the menu binder, and I haven't decided if it is worth it.

So I now pose a question to you-
What are your methods to writing out your menu? How do you coordinate your recipes and grocery list?