My 21 Meals...

In lieu of posting my actual menu plan for this week (because it's a little late for that) I am posting this little nugget...

Today, while Google-ing ways to make my menu planning as effortless as possible, I ran across a really cool resource! If you are like me and live and die by your To-Do-List, this is a must have! It's a site called ListPlanIt.com and when you sign up, you gain access to loads of pre-made lists that help make managing your time super fun...that is if your idea of fun is crossing things off a list :) It's only ten dollars for 3 months and all the lists are pdf's so you can save the ones you like to a file on your desktop and print them as you need them. I still swear by the Daily Docket on SimpleMom.net as far as everyday schedules go, but these people over at ListPlanIt.com have made lists for everything under the sun which requires my brain to do less thinking and I like that! Today, I printed the list for "My 21 Meals" and filled in 21 of our favorite dinners, what cookbook they are in and what page they are on, and what side dishes go with them. I whole punched it and put it in my recipe binder so now when I go to meal plan, I can pick dinner recipes from that list knowing they are tried and true favorites instead of thumbing through my cookbooks every week trying to decide what makes it on to the weekly menu. A lot our favorite things are just random recipes I have acquired over the years, but I also use 2 cookbooks very regularly and they are "Fix it and Forget it: 5 Ingredients or Less" and Southern Livings "Easy Weeknight Favorites". I am hoping that my new favorite list will save on my grocery bill as well as my time because I won't be buying obscure ingredients for a recipe I will make once and hate. Lastly, I got another tip from SimpleMom and that is to load your favorite recipes into your Google calendar and put them on a 3-4 week rotation. I am going to try that this week so I will let you know how it goes. Happy cooking friends!