Help me start meal planning

rumpunch21

I am soo inept and clueless when it comes to meal planning. How do you all do it? Where do I start? I've found hundreds of templates online, but I get overwhelmed so fast and go right back to "winging it" every week. But now with 2 kids I need to get it together before October when I go back to work!

Please help a meal planning rookie get her act together!!!

~Kat~

I use Google Calendar and plug in a meal per day of the month and it repeats every month. I don't necessarily do exactly what it says every day. Some nights we might eat out or eat leftovers or something, but it gives me an idea of what kind of groceries I should buy that week. Sometimes I get sick of stuff. We were doing breakfast for dinner every third Wednesday, and I just couldn't get excited about it. So I switched it out and now we have pork roast instead. It's easy and I can switch up what sides we have.

Ciarrai

When I first got started, I was using menus4moms.  I would substitute days when I didn't like their meals, but I followed it pretty closely for the first few months.  It was nice b/c it took the thinking out of it and even included a grocery list.  They now have a number of menus, most of which you pay for, but the basic one is still free.  I also like the "What's for Dinner" blog.  She also does a weekly meal plan with ideas.  Now that I've been doing it a while, I put my meals on my google calendar.  They usually depend on my days and if I'm home for dinner since I work a lot of nights and weekends.  I do know that I tend to cook more and healthier (and cheaper) when I plan out the week than on the weeks that I just wing it.  That's helped a ton both with our budget and just keeping the girls' meals fairly balanced.  I say fairly balanced b/c they don't always eat what I cook, of course.  That would be too easy.