I have been menu planning for a long long time. I just looked back and the answer is since 2010. I actually love menu planning but it does become somewhat mandate but after 15 years most things do. Over the years I have changed up my menu planning and a week at a time works well for our purposes.  Now moving forward,  I have less than two weeks until I return to work full time. My goal for this school year is to use up as much as possible from our pantries and freezers. This should allow me to cut our grocery budget by half, less than $450 a month.  I am also looking ahead to needing to purchase another cow by next summer as well so I would like to start saving for this expense so that it does not hit so hard.  But I have to be able to plan and make meal quickly due to our busy schedule.  I recently saw on line where a person had a list of thirty meals and then they rotated through them. I am going to adapt that just a bit. I am in the process of making a list of all the possible meals that we have in the house. From that list I am going to pick a list of thirty at the beginning of each month. Then I will look at each week and rotate to make things not so boring. But before that I also have a huge collection of different recipes that I want to try. So for the next two weeks, I am not using any familiar and favorite recipes, all these will be new recipes that I can decide to include in the rotation or simply leave out. I will likely also plan to include at least one new to us recipe a month just to keep things interesting.  This is going to take a little planning but I hope that it will make meal prepping less stress and expensive in the near future.

Breakfast- Saturday-Pancakes and sausage   Sunday- Dutch/German pancakes   Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday– find it (oatmeal, omelets, cereal and milk ,sausage, pop-tarts, grits and eggs.  I am planning to make a baked oatmeal for one breakfast this week.

Lunch- Saturday-Chinese from yard sale profits Sunday-Christo’s  Monday and Tuesday, I am having a salad from Sunday lunch Wednesday -Friday  Left-overs or what ever you find most days.

Dinner- Saturday-Left-over Chinese   Sunday- More Left-overs    Monday-BBQ ribs, squash casserole and cream corn. Tuesday-Beef enchilada  casserole . Wednesday- Pork Chops  Thursday-Chicken Parmesan casserole Friday-Sloppy joe cheeseburger pasta.

Here is to a new adventure!