Menus

I've finally come up with some menus that I think my family will (mostly) eat, and that I can rotate rarely enough that I'm not sick of eating the same thing over and over again. The purpose of having it all written down is to be able to plan my grocery store sales shopping/couponing into a purposeful trip rather than my usual way of wandering up and down the aisles at the store waiting for something to jump into my cart and say, "Cook me! Cook me!".

I've decided that 25 meal plans per month is enough because it gives me a handful of days every month to eat leftovers or take out. There are other things we have for dinner, but for the purposes of building our food storage these 25 meals X 10 will be our "year's supply". I've set it up so that there is a type of food that we will eat for the five nights in a week but there is lots of flexibility to allow for busy days and seasonal appetites (Beef stew in the middle of summer? Maybe not.):

• baked
• stove-top
• sandwiches
• soup
• Tex-Mex

Wanna see?
Baked:
Roasted chicken and veg
Chicken casserole
Lasagna
Quiche
Chicken alfredo pasta and veg

Stove-top:
dirty rice
tuna tetrazzini
pork fried rice with stir-fry veggies
beef stroganoff
spaghetti
Cincinnati-style chili

Sandwiches:
salmon patties
sloppy joes
bbq beef on a bun
chili dogs or chili fries

Soup:
Chicken noodle or rice
Vegetable
Sausage/spinach/white bean
Chunky tomato
Beef stew

Tex Mex:
Tacos
Bean and cheese nachos
Carnitas
Chicken fajitas
Beef enchiladas
Chicken enchiladas

Like I said, there are other meals we regularly eat like various kinds of homemade pizza, baked or pan-fried tilapia, and of course there's the occasional breakfast for dinner, but this is the menu plan I'll be working my shopping list around.

What do you think?

My next job is to create an ingredients list that contains all the things I will need to make these 25 meals then multiply it by ten!

So far, I am loving having my pressure canner. I've canned beef, chicken, and pork and I can tell you that it is a cinch to make dinner when your meat is already thawed and cooked! I've been looking through cookbooks for recipes and can see that a lot of recipes start with "cut the meat into 1 inch cubes and cook." Sweet!