How I Plan Dinners a Month Ahead of Time

The first thing I'll tell you is that it took a quite a bit a leg work in the beginning to set everything up, but once you have all your recipes in place, you can plan an entire months worth of meals in a matter of seconds. Hell, if I really wanted to, I could plan dinner for the next 5 years without blinking an eye.

When I tell people about my new adventures in cooking, the thing they're most interested in (and the thing they feel they could most use themselves) is my meal planning and freezer-meal cooking strategy. I talk to a lot of people who either because of work, or kids, or travel, or a reality TV addiction, feel they do the same stand-in-front-of-the-fridge-eating-peanut-butter-with-a-spoon routine for dinner every night.

So I decided to share the wealth and a) tell you how I do it and b) let you all in on a little downloadable meal planner that I developed.

I'm not going to lie, you'll need time to set this up, but once that's done, you'll be able to come home every night knowing what's for dinner and having it at least 90% prepared.

Do I have you interested yet?

The first thing you'll need to do is go through all your recipes and pick out what you're interested in. For us, I spent about 3 days sorting through the dozen or so cookbooks that have been gathering dust on our shelf, marking every recipe that was interesting and dairy-free.

Each tab or folded page has at least one marked recipe.

And then the nerdy fun began!

I developed an excel spreadsheet with every recipe I wanted to try. At the beginning of each month, I run the generator and create a menu for the month. It populates 31 cells with recipe names (with no repeats). From there, I sort through the recipes to make a shopping list, buy all the ingredients, and prepare the meals for the freezer.

There are definitely a few things I love about this system:

1. No guessing. The menu is planned. I mean we certainly stray sometimes, but generally, if it's on the menu, that's what we're eating that night. I never have to think about what I'm going to make for dinner.
2. It gets me to try new things. Since it's on the menu and the ingredients are already in the freezer, I'm going to eat it. That shit's not going to waste.
3. Dinner is already done (or nearly done) by the time I get home. I don't even need to prepare it most nights - just heat it up.
4. There are no repeat meals (aside from leftovers) in a single month. It took a while to figure out that excel formula to do that, but it's in there now so you don't have to worry about it.
5. It's quick. All you have to do is double-click and a full menu is generated. You could plan meals for a year in just a few seconds. Actually making a year's worth of food is a different story. 
6. It's cheaper. You're not stopping on the way home to pick up dinner or making "quick" trips to the grocery store. Also, it makes a lot of food (for two people at least). We finished January's meals half-way through February and now it's April and we're still eating meals prepared in mid-February. That HAS to be saving us money.

So if I've finally convinced you that having Microsoft Excel decide what you're going to eat for the next month is awesome, a full tutorial on how to download and use the meal planner is provided below!

Enjoy!

Generator Tutorial

Step 1

Download the spreadsheet

p.s. This file is hosted at my other website. Just click the link and the file will download. No registration, no names, no viruses. I don't even know how to tell who's downloaded the file - if you're concerned about that stuff.

p.p.s The template does not have recipes in it. All the tables are developed, all the links are in place, but you're going to have to fill in your recipes. This is because a) I don't want to violate any copyrights; and b) how should I know what you like to eat :).

Step 2

(I'm assuming you figured out how to save it and open it)

This is the first page you'll see:

There really isn't anything to do on this page. Everything will fill in automatically from the recipe pages - where you fill in the information.

There are a series of tab across the bottom: Menu, Cookbook 1, Cookbook 2, Cookbook 3, Online 1, Online 2, and Magazine 1. These are just filler names. I recommend changing them to the books or websites from which the recipe comes.

I've left spaces for 20 recipes from each source. If you have more or less just insert or delete, but watch that the formulas adjust appropriately.

Column A is for the recipe source (this does not fill in automatically - you'll need to edit these).

Column B is the name of each recipe (don't type anything in these cells - they'll fill in automatically when you enter the recipes on the cookbook tabs). Each recipe name is linked so if you click on a name, it will take you to that recipe on the appropriate tab.

Column D is a number for each day, 1-31.

and, Column E is where the random recipes are listed.

Step 3

This is where you come in.

Click on the tabs across the bottom and you'll find sheets like this one. This is where you're going to enter your recipes. The is a space for recipe name, location (i.e., page number or website address), prep time, whether it can be made as a freezer meal, ingredients, and notes. Notes can be recipe adjustments, reviews, or directions.

Here's an example of how I filled in a recipe.

Then, if you go back to the Menu tab, you'll see that the name has automatically fill into the first spot. And, if it's one of pre-filled random selections, you'll see it in Column F too (see Day 12 in the photo below). Again, each name under "Main Course" is linked to the recipe. So when day 12 comes around, find Beef Stroganoff on the list, click it, and it will take you to the recipe tab.

Step 4

Once you enter all your recipe information, you're menu tab will be fully functional.

In order to get the random meals list to regenerate: double-click on the meal next to Day 1 and hit enter. The whole column will pick random means from your list in the Main Course column (which fills in from all your recipes) See how that works!

The random meals list is really sensitive will regenerate anytime you format a cell so I usually copy the list and paste it as values in the column labeled "Menu"

If you're not familiar with "paste special," highlight the cells in the Random Meals column, copy, and right-click on the cell you want to paste the information. Select "Paste Special" and choose "values." This will give you the names of the recipes, but they won't change.

When you're ready to cook, find your day, see what's for dinner, find that meal on the Main Course list, click and it will take you right to the recipe.

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So that's it for the meal planning portion. Like I said, it's going to take time filling in all your recipes, but once it's done, your whole menu for the next 31 days is planned with a double-click.

I also added a shopping list page that you can print out when you're ready to start cooking.

When I finally run out of last month's meals, I'll make a big shopping list based on all the meals picked out for that month.

It really takes a full day of cooking, chopping, bagging, etc. but then I'm done! No more cooking dinner for a month! Totally worth it! Highly recommended!

I can't really give specifics on freezing meals as each one is dependant on what you make, but as I post recipes here I'll try to give my tips. Basically, I'll chop veggies, marinate meat, combine ingredients, and put them all in freezer bags; label each one with the contents, source, and page number; and put them all in the freezer.

When it's time to cook, I'll take the meal out the night before and let it defrost. The next evening I just have to reheat, or grill, or saute the veggies, or whatever.

Hope you're able to get some use out of this and let me know if you have any questions!

If anyone actually tries this, I would love to know your thoughts, if it worked for you, and what can be done to improve it!