Month meal planning

When looking to simplify our lives the first thing I looked at was our grocery shopping. Meal planning each week and then doing weekly grocery shopping was taking up way to much of my time and was leaving my entire family crabby. In a attempt to simplify the process we decided to try monthly meal planning and then doing one large shopping trip per month (with a few small shops for dairy and fruit thorughout the month).

As I prepared for my first once a month shopping trip I worked up a menu for the month of December. One that has cheap, big, simple, healthy meals that when able can be turned into a meal for the second day as well

December's meals (all meals are in the order they were served):

1 Spaghetti
2 Pot Roast
3 Beef and Barley soup (leftovers from day 2)
4 Beef and Barley soup
5 Roast chicken
6 Chicken noodle soup (leftovers from day 5)
7 Mexican Casserole
8 Pizza rolls
9 Taco's
10 Leftovers
11 Sloppy Joes
12 Spaghetti
13 Chicken and rice
14 Pizza
15 Leftovers
16 Roast chicken
17 Chicken noodle soup (leftovers from day 16)
18 Lasagna
19 Hamburgers
20 Taco's
21 Pot roast
22 Beef and barley soup (leftovers from day 21)
23 Beef and barley soup
24 Leftovers
25 Chicken and rice
26 Pizza rolls
27 Mexican Casserole
28 Sloppy Joes
29 Pizza
30 Spaghetti
31 Leftovers

There you go a whole month planned out!

There was also muffins, pancakes, baked oatmeal, scrambled eggs and fruit for breakfast. And Leftovers, PB&J sandwiches, lunch meat sandwiches, and hot dogs for lunch. Plus as much fresh baked bread as my family could eat.