Creating menus

For years my husband and I have planned a lunch menu. Lunch is mapped out for the entire week. No guessing on what we will be eating. We started planning a lunch menu because at one point we were eating out every day. Eating fast food or at restaurants everyday isn't healthy and it adds up to a lot of money spent. Our lunch menu works. There are some days were we have to switch things up. But it always works out.

Last week we decided to start creating dinner menus. We have been pretty good at eating dinner at home. Usually we only eat dinner at a restaurant once a week. Mostly on a Friday or Saturday. The dinner menu idea was created because my husband and I are trying to eat better. Our dinner ideas before were fine, but I like how I know what we are going to eat in advance. No more asking each other at 6 p.m. what we want to eat. Creating a menu with cookbooks gives us a chance to eat something new and not always resort to our same old favorites.

I sat down on Sunday and created the menu for this week. Recently we bought a couple of cookbooks and I'm finally putting them to use. I used three different cookbooks to plan our meals. I loved flipping the pages and looking at the pictures. The pictures were the reason most of the items made it on the menu. First it was the pictures, how easy it is to make and then finally the ingredients. After the menu was done. I created a grocery list. Most of the items we didn't have or had low quantities of. Maybe this will help us when we go grocery shopping to buy larger quantities of items that we will be using often.

I'm hoping my husband and I can stick to creating a dinner menu. If we can keep a lunch menu going for years, I'm hoping we can do the same with dinner.