March Monthly Menu

So many people ask me about my monthly menu's. Having 5 kids while working full time and being in school dictates that my husband and I have to be organized (or try to be!!). One of the ways that we try to simplify life, and avoid wasted time, is by making a monthly menu and shopping for everything for the month. We do weekly trips for fresh fruits and veggies and any needed dairy products. On any given day we know what is for dinner and this makes prep easy.

Below is our menu for March. We follow a few simple rules, although note that rules can and will be broken. Friday nights are "take out" night. Weekends tend to be more open and we will stray from the menu and sometimes make something else or eat out (depending on the days activities). We try to keep the menu basic with each day of the week having the same "main ingredient" every week, for example Monday is Chicken, Tuesday is Beef, Wednesday is Pasta, Thursday is Pork. This makes recipe searches easier because I know how many of each type of recipe I need.

All my recipes are kept online (in the old days I used to keep a folder of recipes for each month...thanks to Pinterest we don't have to do that anymore!). Anything that has a (P) next to it means it is on a Board for that month on my Pinterest account. You can find them here: http://pinterest.com/bratts29/march-2013/

Feel free to use my menu or create your own. The small amount of time once a month to make your menu will be worth it for the amount of free time you will get in the end!