Menu Day! Part 3-Selecting Recipes

Yesterday I discussed categorizing the menu.
Before, I would have taken my categories and searched for recipes to match those.
For Slow Cooker Sunday I would have dove into my slow cooker book and chosen 2 recipes, then written down the book, recipe, and page number on my calendar.
Then for Mexican Monday I would have searched specifically for Mexican dishes... and so on and so forth.
What winds up happening is I get myself confused. And God help me if I lose my calendar/recipe list (cause that NEVER happens...) then I'm totally up a creek. So far I haven't bought a 2013 wall calendar... shame on me. So I keep writing/printing out month by month and trying to use that, and it's just not the same. Yes, I need to just get me a new wall calendar. This is my old one--->
I lerved it so much.

So this time I'm doing something WAY different. And instead of just using a calendar, I'm also using my Home Management Binder. I've had a section in there for meal planning since I made it and haven't ever really used it to its potential.

I decided to go through one binder and choose my recipes out of there. If I can't find a slow cooker recipe I like or have ingredients for, then I will take out my slow cooker cook books and pick something from there. Then I will copy the page I want so that it's actually out of my book. Same for other recipe categories.

After each recipe is chosen, I will put it in a plastic sleeve and into my Home Management Binder in the "Meal Planning" section, in the order they are on the calendar. Fortunately for me, I'm very flexible with myself, but it will help me find the recipes easier/quicker in the event I want to do a Fancy Friday meal on what should be Mexican Monday!

So here are the recipes I selected:

Chili

Noni's Potato Pie

Chicken Posole

Enchiladas Raquel

Stuffed Peppers

Tacos

Green Chili Casserole

Ashford salad, potato salad, and Spinach Supreme

Chicken salad w/flair

Lasagna

Chicken n dumplings

Tamale pie

And how I put them into the calendar (Saturday is not included on purpose)

I also have pizza as a backup. If 7 doesn't eat all the pepperonis first.
I have my menu calendar set up this way because we get paid on Mondays, so Monday is grocery shopping day.  I love how perfectly my grocery schedule works out.
Based on this calendar, Bountiful Baskets comes in on Saturday the 26th, so I will spend that day updating my inventory. Then Sunday the 27th (Chicken n Dumplings day) I will write out my menu and grocery list for Tuesday the 29th-Monday, February 11th. Monday the 28th we get paid, so I will go shopping then. It all just falls into place so beautifully!

As I make each dish I will be putting it up here on my blog and coming back to this page to connect links.
Stay tuned!