What to Make for Supper: Menu Planning

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Is it just me or are you asking yourself what to make for supper all the time? Even worse, does cooking supper in the summer make you want to just fall over? For me, I just want to sit outside. Rocking in a rocking chair. Reading a good book while the kids play in the yard. I dread when 5:05pm rolls around and everyone is hungry, including the nursing baby! And there I am rummaging through the freezer, fridge, and pantry trying to see what I can throw together. I’m always missing a couple of main ingredients, back to square one of trying to figure out what to cook! But I’ve finally found the thing to get rid of the dread…menu planning!

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What Is Menu Planning?

Good ole search results brings this up from Wikiversity: Menu planning is the process to make the list of food items going to serve in any type of meal whether it is breakfast, lunch, brunch or dinner.

Keyword here is planning. It does take some planning but at least you can choose when to plan this. Best choice is when there aren’t hungry babies and toddlers begging you for food.

Steps For Menu Planning for Supper

So, here’s how I like to menu plan.

1. Gather whatever resources you like to use whether that’s recipe books, recipe cards, or I prefer to use Pinterest. If you’re super awesome and you have dishes that you made up, well just make a list of those.
2. Grab my FREE Menu & Grocery List PDF (at the bottom)
3. Fill in the days with whatever meals you want for the week.
4. Add the ingredients to the grocery list as you’re looking at the recipes.
5. TA-DA! You just completed menu planning! No wasting time at the store, you know exactly what you need for supper for the week!
6. If you go ahead and create four of these then you can rotate. Have week 1, week 2, etc! More time saved!

More Ways to Simplify What’s for Supper!

• One night a week we just have leftovers.
• One night is something really easy like DIY pizza
• Make the menu, but be flexible. If you’re rushed on Tuesday, switch it to the slow cooker meal you had for Thursday.
• I always have at least 2 slow cooker meals on the menu. Check out our family’s favorite slow cooker meals here! I’ve had this brand slow cooker since our wedding! It has so many settings on it and it’s still cooking up meals 11 years later!

Looking for another way to add a rhythm in your home? Check out this post!

So what are you waiting for? Just drop your e-mail to grab this FREE PDF and get to menu planning and stop asking yourself what’s for supper!