Meal Planner

MarieRich

Bought groceries last night and really want to have a meal planner, grocery inventory list. Anyone use a great one? Easy spreadsheet?

GingerLolita

I made my own Excel spreadsheet for meal planning a while ago, but now I log in advance directly on MFP to make sure all my goals will be met. I do this before I buy groceries so I don't buy anything I won't end up eating.

I'm thinking of doing a grocery inventory list though, just not sure how to set it up. Not sure if it'd be a waste of time or a good way to make sure I use all the food I have.

mortuseon

?? As much as I love my spreadsheets, I just tend to have a notepad. Rather than keeping an inventory list and deciding what I eat from that, I choose my meals for the week and then buy the ingredients to suit. Works pretty well although I will have some storecupboard essentials which I always 'top up' e.g. pasta, oats.

MarieRich

I understand shopping from a plan, but my house is already stocked with so much. I want to start with what I have. When I have used a majority of it up, then I will start shopping from the plan.

2aycocks

That is what I need! A meal planner of some kind. but I dont know where to start! I just fly by the seat of my pants and that's not good.

What is a good way to start? Any help would be great!!!

BikerGirlElaine

I really love the Out of Milk app. It has a pantry feature that you could use.

What I tend to do, instead of planning meals out really specifically, is cook a couple of meals that I feel like having this week, but I double or triple or quadruple the recipe. I freeze the extra in pre-portioned meal sizes. After a few weeks of doing that, I have a stockpile of good food so that I won't be caught flatfooted in an emergency, and/or I don't have to cook if I don't want to.

Since you said that you already have a lot of foods stocked up, this might be a fun way to convert it into good meals that are ready to grab-and-go.

Wendy__D

Search for Menu Planner Printables and then search for Grocery List Printables. Then print one on each side. :-) I worked at this this week and I wound up making my own printable in Word for the menu planner and using a template from Office (Excel) for the Grocery list but there are a lot of options if you want to search around. :-)

Hope that helps! :-)

(If you want an entirely digital solution consider doing a spreadsheet on Google Docs you can set up on your computer and access from your phone later... like inside the grocery store.)