Food prices going up? Free menu planning (that doesn’t feel like jail!)
Food prices, gas prices, and inflation have us tightening our budget around here, and I’m going back to some of the things we did when we were broke with three young kids. I dug out my old More with Less cookbook, and today I’m going to share how we used to menu plan in a way that gave me a plan, but didn’t leave me feeling stuck in jail, eating the gruel that Past Me (she can be very strict and mean at times) thought would be a good idea, and left room to flex meals around as needed.
I call it: a menu skelet (pronounced skell-ette, it’s a skeleton, but without the “on”, because it’s way more fun to say, try it!) So today, I present to you another tool to combat inflation and rising food costs…
The Menu Skelet
There are lots of fun ways to do this, and I’m going to present to you different menu skelet ideas. You choose what works for you or completely change it and make it your personal skelet. You can change weekly, monthly, or according to the season, but the key is to keep it simple and practical and easy to plug in the ideas and be done.
Flexing with the seasons or schedule
For example, if it’s summer, I love a plan that includes grilling at least once a week. If it’s the cold of winter, I’m swapping grilling out for soups. If it’s sports season for kids, those nights are going to be grab and go meals that don’t need to be reheated (wraps, sandwiches, salads, crackers/cheese). If it’s tax season and we’re broke, it’s going to have a lot of cheap meals and casseroles. If I have a busy week or long days and I’ve got freezer room, my plan is going to include a M1F1 meal where I double the recipe so I can make one for tonight (M1) and freeze one for later (F1). These are meals that I’ve collected that freeze and reheat well.
Tons of options!
With that in mind, here are some skelets that I (and friends) have tried and had success with. Each skelet is for 7 nights. This is my current one that I repeat each week and plug different recipes into according to the general category for that day.
Night 1: Tortilla night (this can be tacos, burritos, quesadillas, tostadas, or cold or hot wraps)
Night 2: Soup (or in the summer GRILL) This can be soups, stews, or chowders. Serve with salad sandwiches or bread.
Night 3: Meatless (because we’re still learning to wean ourselves off meat for every dinner, this is sometimes a sad affair, so if it’s meatless night, there’s usually a dessert on these nights. Do any of you have any good recipes to share?)
Night 4: Crockpot meal (On my super full days, it’s crockpot night.)
Night 5: Pizza night (this used to be a mini-celebration for making it through the homeschool week and no one being hauled off to jail. We celebrated with the boys’ favorite food: pizza–usually homemade. Currently it has changed to pizza or Italian night, depending on my mood and if I want to make crust that week.)
Night 6: Make 1, Freeze 1 (double the recipe, make one for tonight freeze one for later. This is also an excellent way to stack up meals to share with someone when there’s a need!)
Night 7: Leftover Buffet (Or if we’ve eaten all the leftovers, this would be sandwiches or easy meals from pantry staples we usually have on hand.)
Another Skelet:
Night 1: Easy/Cheap (this has meant in the past roasted sausages/hot dogs or grilled cheese and soup, etc.)
Night 2: Instant pot meal (Having an IP night has helped me start to build up recipes that we like, please share you favorites! We’re new to this.)
Night 3: Breakfast (Yum!)
Night 4: Meatballs (Meatball subs, Spaghetti and meatballs, Swedish meatballs, sweet n sour meatballs, etc)
Night 5: Pasta (any type, made any style that suits your fancy that week)
Night 6: One pan meals (can be sheet pan meals, or one pot type of meals)
Night 7: Take out or dine out! (or if that’s not in the budget, this reverts to leftovers or a simple meal like Costco rotisserie chicken or frozen pizza. Plus, this can be a reward if I’ve followed my plan or stuck to my budget!)
How ’bout another?
Night 1: Mexican (Yum!)
Night 2: Italian (also Yum!)
Night 3: Something from a cookbook (like the More with Less cookbook)
Night 4: Asian (also Yum too!)
Night 5: Something tried and true (comfort food, or long standing family recipes–I have a recipe box that was my grandmas, then my mom’s and now mine)
Night 6: Kids cook (great for teaching basic skills and recipes–I usually let the boys choose what they wanted to make, and we alternated who was the chef each week to guard against The Hunger Games rising up in the kitchen because everybody was hungry and grumpy.)
Night 7: On Your Own (Warning: Sometimes this also leads to the Kitchen Hunger Games because someone got what someone else wanted and how come he always gets that!?)
One more?
Night 1: Beef
Night 2: Chicken
Night 3: Fish or Seafood
Night 4: Meatless
Night 5: Pork
Night 6: Beans and Rice
Night 7: Takeout/Leftovers/Dine somewhere else
So you get the idea. Having a skelet to be the framework helps so much because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each week. I just get my binder out and run through all the pasta recipes and plug them in for the month, then all the chicken recipes, etc.
What about when I don’t want to cook that?
Now what about those nights that you don’t want what you planned for that day? Just swap it. If it’s a taco night and I just had tacos with a friend for lunch, then I would swap taco night and do a different nights plan instead.
If I’m super tired from a crazy day, maybe I have the frozen pizza or takeout that day instead. I have the freedom to do that because I have all the ingredients for the week because I planned it before I went to the store.
What about Breakfasts and Lunches?
Lunches are usually leftovers. I also like to marinate and grill whatever protein is on sale that week, so we can add it to salads, wraps, or sandwiches for easy lunches.
I also have a generic skelet for breakfasts too:
Day 1: Oatmeal or cream of wheat or cereal
Day 2: eggs and meat and toast
Day 3: Pancakes or waffles (I usually make a double batch and have this for more than one meal)
Day 4: Yogurt and granola or smoothie
Day 5: Potatoes and meat
What does shopping look like?
I usually go to the store once a week now. In the past it has been every 2 weeks. So however often you go, plan out your meals for that length of time and get all the groceries in one trip. That way you are saving yourself from the insane prices at the gas pump too.
What about you?
I’d love to hear if you do this sort of planning, and what your themes/skelets are! Share in the comments!
These are so awesome!!! I love bean salad as a meatless option –
A can of beans (pinto or black – or both!) rinse and drain
Tomato chopped
Onion chopped
Limes squeezed over
Cilantro
1/2 of an avocado
If we have it we have also sprinkled cheese on the top and sometimes used green peppers and sometime jalapeño
– we dip into it with tortilla chips or sometimes eaten just the bean salad – oh and sometime put it on cold rice
yum! thank you!! That’ll be especially delicious when the garden starts producing!
I have sort of a “skellet” that I’ve come up with naturally on my own, but didn’t know it. You mentioned asking for Instant Pot recipes. I got an Instant Pot this past summer and am loving it. I can share some of my favorites with you if you want, but most of them have just come from https://www.sixsistersstuff.com. Honestly, they are the queens of the Instant Pot.
I have sort of a “skelet” that I’ve come up with naturally on my own based on our weekly schedule, but didn’t know it. You mentioned asking for Instant Pot recipes. I got an Instant Pot this past summer and am loving it. I can share some of my favorites with you if you want, but most of them have just come from https://www.sixsistersstuff.com. Honestly, they are the queens of the Instant Pot.
My “skelet” goes like this:
Monday: Meatless Monday (inspired by you)
Tuesday: Chicken meal (could be Instant Pot or casserole or grill) (In the winter this is soup night)
Wednesday: Pasta meal (usually something with red sauce) – Italian night?
Thursday: Mustgo night – Everything “Must Go” – Leftovers
Friday: Fun night – either Pizza, Mexican or Chinese (we rotate week by week) or something special
Saturday: Leftovers again – kids are off to evening Bible studies so it’s just the hubs and me
Sunday: Family meal (usually crockpot meal because of church)
Thanks for the link on SixSisters! Your skelet is GREAT!
My kids are grown, but I still cook almost all of our meals. I plan for leftovers for a few nights during the week since I have some health issues that affect my energy. I love cooking, but it is nice to not have to worry about it every night.
Love these ideas. I will have to incorporate a few in order to help me get past the seasonal funk.
As far as IP goes, I really like pressureluckcooking.com. He has a few cookbooks. Some of them can be time intensive, but he walks you through each step. His cookbooks are step by step pictures, and all of his recipes are on his website. His meatloaf and mashed potatoes is one of our favorite recipes. I change it a little to use what I have on hand, but it is AMAZING!!!!
Thanks for the link! I’ll check it out! (I LOVE meatloaf!)
I have had a mix-mux of all your skelets over the years (been married 43+ yrs). We also homeschooled & around mid-November pulled out the old set of “Christmas is X-Country” books–a library discard set–the kids would each pick one country to “report” on (country culture, holiday traditions, carols, cookies, plus a full meal menu that they’d make during one of the weeks of Advent. I’ll never forget the Australian meal my oldest made one year: “Carpetbagger’s Stew” which called for a kangaroo steak–we used beef!
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Prior to kids in the family, I took one of those give-away calendars from the bank & plopped the meats on various days of the weeks for the month: beef, chicken, pork, etc…so I’d remember to take out SOME KIND of meat from the freezer. I had purchased one of those subscription recipe cards sets, so ALWAYS had “good ones” in a To-Try pile. I LOVED having the picture on the front of the card–helped me know what it “should” or “might” look like. Eventually I graduated from needing a picture, to starting to READ (and enjoy reading) cookbooks.
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I recently started sub teaching; some days I don’t know if/where I’ll be, so my menu/meals are pretty fluid. I generally make enough to have leftovers/reruns or planned overs for another meal. I use pretty note pads (like a to-do list skinny pad) slapped up on the fridge door where hub & 30yo son can see it; some days I’m home by 3:15 & lots of energy to have a good meal; other days get home later, less time to putz. Then the guys can see what’s for dinner & I can text them “prep xyz for supper.” So I put SOMETHING skeleton-ish on for each day:
Mon – leftovers from weekend
Tue – fish** taco salad (or pregnant burritos or nachos)
Wed – crockpot something
Thur – casserole or freezer meal (M1F1)
Fri – pizza or fish fry
Sat – whatever, whatever, whatever
Sun – chicken dinner*
If I know ahead of time that I’ll be working that day, or when we have something going on that day/evening . . . I jot that on my weekly menu too.
* Back in the day we raised pastured poultry so had chix more often during the week.
** sometimes we splurge on popcorn shrimp & it’s so tasty!!
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When the kids were at home, we had “slower” breakfasts; here’s my skelet; NOTE: we raised laying hens so we always had eggs of some kind (scrambled, fried, omlettes, hard/soft boiled, egg sammies)
Mon – muffins
Tue – cereal (hot in winter malt-o-meal or homemade oatmeal packets; otherwise cold)
Wed – waffles or panks
Thu – leftover waffles or panks
Fri – fried eggs
Sat – fussy breakfast
Sun – “Sunday cereal” (cereals that had higher sugar content)
……
I now follow an intermittent fasting plan, so eat breakfast a LOT later each day, I take it with me to my teaching jobs (three thick slices of summer sausage, string cheese & nine grapes). But on SATURDAY!? I do a “Saturday Scramble” for me & the hubster with whatever veggies are leftover from the week (asparagus, onions, peppers PLUS lots of cheese, pepperoni coarsely chopped or ham dice). Also a fave is “keto waffles” (with mini-choc chips!!). Oh yum.
I love this! Can you elaborate on what a “fussy breakfast” might have been?
We do something similar for suppers and breakfast.
For homeschool days, I’ve found the easiest way to handle lunch is to predetermine the method of cooking, and then the ”what” falls into place pretty easily (I do have a list of possibilities if I’m really tired and can’t think straight!)
Monday: panini press (grilled cheese,quesadillas, paninis…lots of options)
Tuesday: something from the freezer (chicken strips, hot pockets—homemade or otherwise, wontons, ravioli)
Wednesday: sandwiches
Thursday: assembly ( salads, cheese and crackers)
Friday: stovetop (ramen, pasta, soup, etc)
This has worked amazingly well and saves so much brain power!
Okay, I LOVE that way of planning lunches! I’m going to have to steal that!