I got an email from a reader over the weekend asking for some real nuts and bolts advice on menu planning. I’ve done it a dozen different ways in an effort to find what worked for me. I’ll post my three favorite ways this week.

When work is play... by Christmas w/a K, on Flickr

My third-favorite way was really versatile and handy when I first started out. I had gift subscriptions to a several different magazines (Taste of Home, Gourmet and Cooks Illustrated) and I wanted to try everything each month! Our house was already knee-deep in tiny pieces of paper the little ones generated, so I didn’t want to risk clipping recipes. I kept the magazines whole instead and filed each in its own binder with these cool little plastic things that held the magazines securely.

As I found recipes that I thought I’d like, I’d make an index card for them. I color coded the index cards with different colors for different meals or courses. On the front, I’d note the name of the recipe, it’s location (Taste of Home March 2008 page 36) it’s cooking method (stove, crockpot, oven at 400°, etc.), the amount of time it took (prep: 40 minutes, 1 hour 30 minutes unwatched, 5 minutes intense stirring, etc.) and notes about what it would taste particularly good served with. I also ended up noting on the front if I served that particular dish to guests and when. On the back I noted all the ingredients (even staples) that were required for the dish. I found a used holder like this one for my index cards at a school’s rummage sale and I was off!

Each week I’d choose index cards for each meal, and make a shopping list from the items on the back of the cards. I’d separate out the cards into breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner in the holder. After the grocery shopping was done, I’d defrost whatever meat I wanted to use for the next day or two and freeze the rest. Each morning I’d get up and choose that day’s cards based on the prep time and activities for the day and put those cards on the top row of the holder.

Recipes could be rated by how easy they were to make, if any family members LOVED or HATED the dish, and how expensive it was to create. These were noted on the front of the card as well. Cards for unpopular or overly expensive dishes were thrown out.

When my magazines arrived, I always had fresh ideas to make cards for, and my card stack grew very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that eventually I had a hard time using this method because there were just too many cards to flip through each week!

PROS of the card system:

  • Keeping notes on each recipe freed up my memory. I didn’t have to try to remember if it was this version of meatloaf that we liked or if it was the other one.
  • Noting cooking times and methods on the cards made it easy to combine cooking for multiple dishes, saving electricity and energy (mine!)
  • Having each week’s cards all in one place and handy kept me from having to try to scramble at the last minute for what to cook each day. I knew I had the ingredients on hand and how early I’d have to start each dish.
  • Listing even the staples on the back of each card meant I never ran out of salt. If my supply was even starting to get low on a staple, I added it to the shopping list. It served as a kind of reminder to check everything each week.
  • Once a recipe was made, I could file its card in the back of the deck so we didn’t repeat the same meals over and over.

CONS of the card system:

  • While this method worked really well for me when I was first starting out, I outgrew it very quickly. Sorting through 20 or 30 cards took minutes. Sorting through 200 or 300 could take hours.
  • The cards would frequently be spilled either from their file box or the card holder.
  • Cards would mysteriously go missing. Others would mysteriously move to the front of the box. I always assumed it was my children’s way of “voting” thumbs up or down on a meal!

I hope I was able to describe this method well enough that you get the idea. Come back Thursday to read about the Silver Method of Menu Planning!

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