Meal Plan Review

***********READ THIS POST IN ITS ENTIRETY BEFORE  DUPLICATING FOR
YOURSELF***********   I don't want any hate comments, don't say I didn't warn you...Lol

On my quest for better meal/food/money/sanity management, I thought I'd look on *interest (yes, it is now considered a swear word in our house!) for some fresh ideas. He,he. If only I could go back and tell that poor, little, unsuspecting me what lay ahead. I came across this woman's post/pin: http://thecreativemama.com/?s=menu+board
  All fine and dandy. I thought "Gee, I could make that. It doesn't look too complicated." *snicker*
I bought a frame. I bought lovely colored paper and stickers from the craft store (which, by the way, is about 65-70 MILES away from my home!) Over the span of about one week, I jotted down recipes I wanted to use, where to find them, what category they belonged in and then color coded them. Then, I had to figure out how to make the menu cards on the computer. Glued the fronts and backs together, ''laminated" them with packing tape. Painted the clothes pins in coordinating colors. Used a hole punch to make little circles. Wrote the first letter of the days of the week on the little circles. Glued them to the clothes pins. Decorated a background for the frame. Cut up crayon boxes and covered them with contact paper. Glued them to the frame.
 Darlin' glued the clothespins on for me, using Gorilla glue and clamps. Drying time was up. Took the clamps off. Three or four clothespins came off. Glued them again. Clamps and clothespins came off. "Roughed up" the surface of the frame with an emery board. Glued them once more. Drying time almost through. By this time the kitchen table was awash in papers, stickers, cookbooks, all manner of tape, glue, pens, markers and crayons.
      Darlin' was sitting at the table reading. I took his coffee cup (with about 1/4 cup of coffee in the bottom) to refill along with mine. And then, before I got to the counter, the-dog-walked-under-the-table, bumping a clamp with her back. OOOOHHHH YYEESSSSS..... that's right. In a panic, I lunged for the frame (which was only about 8in away) It hit the chair, coffee spilled all over it. Clothespins went flying.

  I just stood there, dumbfounded. I set the coffee cup on the table and just...walked away. I can't remember what I did next. But when I came back, Darlin' had sopped up the coffee, glued those dang clothespins, once again, back on the dang frame, and was playing in my paper stash. You see, I didn't have any pretty paper left in the colors I picked for my project, and if you remember, the closest place to get scrapbook paper like that was 65-70 miles away. I was done. Who cares anymore! I thought. I will eat PBJ and Ramen noodles for the rest of my life! I poured a cup of coffee and sat next to him. He showed me the new background he made. It was way better than the one I originally made! I LOVED it! *side note-Joe is quite secure in his masculinity, 100% lol*

 And finally, here it is:

The stickers above the type writer read "Acts 2:46" which says "And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,"

 Yellow meals/dishes are Mexican, pink is American, green Italian, and brown 'home/country style'

 On the front, is the 'menu'

 And on the back are ingredients that I might not normally have on hand, and usually have to add to my grocery list. On the bottom left corner I have the reference of where to find the recipe. Shown here, it is in my big binder, under tab four.

 Some cards do not have any special recipe I follow. This one I just cook the brown rice (about 45-60 minutes) and follow the directions for the fillets on the box. Boiling/steaming broccoli is nothing special. This is an example of a simple-to-put-together meal for busy nights.

 Others have several 'special' key ingredients I want to be sure to add to my grocery list.

 Cards like this one here have vague descriptions because of the flexibility of the side dishes. You could have mashed potatoes and green beans one night, the next time brown rice, glazed carrots with onions, etc. you can even switch between roasting in the oven, rotisserie (if you have one) or crock pot (my favorite!)
  The recipe for the bread is under tab two in the binder, and the cooking temperatures and times are in another cook book I have.

 This is what it looks like with the menu for the week planned out.

 Once I have used a card, I put it in the right box, until I've used nearly all of them. Then I put them back in the left one and start over.

What I have learned:  *Do not paint the bottom of your clothespins, the paint will stick to the glue and not to it.
* Use a wooden frame. The plastic one was so smooth the glue didn't stick to it well, we had to scratch texture into it. Also, Gorilla glue won't stick to some types of plastic because of what it is in it, and that must have been what my frame was made of. My frame was 11''x14''

* Choose a frame with a flat edge. Darlin' had to use pencils to help hold the clothespins flat on the frame because it is rounded. A couple of times the glue stuck to the pencils too, and when we tried to get the pencils off, off came the clothespins too.
*Keep this project away from animals prone to ''gomminess".
*Have a very talented, loving and patient husband with an artistic flare help you out :)
*Drink chamomile tea and take yoga classes afterwards. Okay, maybe not. But it wouldn't be a bad idea. lol.

After all the aggravation, it is my favorite menu planning system so far. All the planning work is done ahead. I only need to choose which meals we will eat the following week, and flip the card over to add ingredients to my shopping list. I have more paper for the cards, and plan to add more meals when I have time. Right now there are 14 suppers, enough for two weeks and that doesn't count leftover days. I switch it up so we don't always have the same meal on the same day (pizza every Monday, etc) but you can certainly do that if you wish. I like to look ahead that week and see which nights would be better for easier dishes, and which ones I will have time to make more detailed ones.
   I also tried having 7 baskets ($1 each from Dollar Tree) and after coming home from grocery shopping I put the ingredients for each meal in their own basket and labeled it with an index card. Then, when I was ready to prepare supper, I simply took out the basket for that meal and got started. This was so I wasn't digging for cans of sauce and green chilies that went M.I.A under the deep, dark cabinets. The concept of it worked wonderfully, however, I have limited space to store our food, and when one or two baskets only had a couple items in them, I couldn't justify the waste of space. Everything else was so crammed that it defeated the purpose. If I had an actual pantry with better use of space, it would probably work fine. So for now, in this season of my life, that doesn't work for me. (The idea is from *interest too.)
  So for those of you crazy brave enough to follow suit and try it, I wish you the best of luck. For all the others, you may be wiser than you think lol.