Planning your dinner menu for four weeks may seem like a daunting task. It's easy, just cheat!
Start with your calendar, a piece of paper broken down into seven columns and four rows, or better yet, an excel spreadsheet, you have to love the cut and paste option. Next you'll need your cookbook, recipe box, and/or the good old Internet. Third, pour a glass of wine. Who doesn't need a glass of wine after the kids go to bed and you're taking on the challenge of figuring out 28 meals?
The key is to standardize your week. This is where the cheating comes in to play. Make every Friday pizza night. Saturdays are for leftovers and snacks (chicken nuggets, taco dip, veggie platter with ranch, etc.), basically a clean out the fridge night. Don't forget there is nothing like big pasta dinners on Sunday. You now have 12 dinners out of the way. Get creative with crock pot Mondays, ethnic Tuesdays, kid's choice Wednesdays, vegetarian Thursdays. You can also make it as simple as pork Mondays, chicken Tuesdays. Once you have your categories, it's just a matter of filling in the blanks (examples ethnic Tuesday: week 1 Mexican tacos with rice and beans, week 2 Greek pork souvlaki with lemon broccoli, week 3 American meatloaf with macaroni and cheese and peas). Get your recipes out and start plugging them in, or find new recipes on one of the great sites like AllRecipes.com or Cooks.com, and you know Rachel Ray has those 30 Minute Meals.
One of the nice things is that you can switch days around depending on what's on sale that week, or what you have time for. Regardless, you now have 28 meals to play with and you don't have to plan another dinner menu for a month. It's time to celebrate, have another glass of wine...or two.
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