Writing a Food Menu

One of the steps towards budgeting and being more organized has been writing out a food menu each week. It really helps us keep on budget for the food shopping. Usually on a Saturday morning JD and I will decide what we'll have for the week and write up the menu. Lately, since the kids have also been making a meal a week they've been helping pick things out too. Erin made Chicken satay this week and Leigh made Rancheros Pie for tonight (in the slow cooker). JD made a vegetable curry and I made Draniki from Belarus for my food blog.

When we've decided what we're having all week we then make up the shopping list sticking to what we need for each meal. When we go shopping we sometimes get good deals and then incorporate whatever we've bought into the next week's menu.

We have less food waste this way because everything we buy is to be used in a meal. That means when one of us goes to the fridge in search of a snack there's not much around that isn't already being used elsewhere. Which is a simultaneous bad and good thing :D

We can plan healthier meals when we write a food menu because we eat what's been planned for that day and not what we feel like eating right then (which is usually pizza or something equally delicious/unhealthy).

We're quite flexible with it though and sometimes switch days around to suit what we're all doing. Like this week we had the Greek salad on the Monday and swapped the Chicken and Bacon salad to Sunday because we'll have more time to prepare the chicken etc then. Here's the Greek salad in all it's glory:

 An added side benefit is that the kids never ask what's for tea anymore, they just consult the menu and go straight to complaining it's something they don't like, haha! Actually we've made some surprising progress with the kids trying new foods this week. They both ate the potato pancakes for my blog, they both ate the vegetable curry JD made and Erin tried our homemade muesli for breakfast this morning and almost ate it all. Long may it last :)