Recipe Binder – Meal Planning Made Easy!

Meal planning made easy using a Recipe Binder!

I love finding new recipes off the Internet for several reasons! First I really don’t ‘enjoy’ cooking, I cook because we need to eat ;p So I’m always on the look out for new quick & easy recipes! If it takes longer than 30 mins, I’m out! LOL! Also I get tired of eating and making the same things over and over! Sure we have our favorites but after eating them a gazillion times they get old too!

I started printing out the recipes that I found online and quickly realized sheets of paper lying around was not going to work so well. I decided to throw them into a binder to help make meal planning super easy!

First off I also do not enjoy grocery shopping, so I shop and meal plan for a 2 week period until the next payday, when I start all over again. I’ve been asked many times how I do this. I start by looking at the calendar and counting the days that we’ll need meals for until the next pay period, normally around 15. Then I make a list like this:

1. a
2. b
3. c
4. ……

To 15 or however many needed. Then I look and see what days we ‘really’ need meals for, often less than 15. And if there is something going on for a day we don’t need a meal I put the date by it so I can remember. When I make my list of 15 I do NOT pick what day I will make it, I just go to the list everyday and decide what looks easiest to make 😉 I also include at least 4 crockpot meals, so I can have 2 each week.

Here is a sample of a recent list of ours:

1. Labor Day 9/2 – Grill (meaning Mr. B will grill something, although that didn’t go as planned this time!)
2. Football game – OUT 9/6 (Mr. B & the kids eat at the concessions, I can’t eat on game nights with Boo playing)
3. Football game – OUT 9/13
4. Bacon Chicken Ranch C (the C stands for crockpot meal)
5. Freezer Meal (Meal I have frozen in freezer that I just have to warm up)
6. Spaghetti
7. Cereal Sunday (we were at a small group when a family told us they did this, I LOVED the idea and we’ve been doing it ever since! It helps that we all love cereal and it’s 1 night I don’t have to cook!)
8. Cereal Sunday (Because there are always 2 Sundays in our 2 week meal planning period)
9. Baked Potatoes C (Yep, in crockpot!)
10. Fend for Self Night (We normally have at least one of these, and everyone can choose what they want to make/eat that night)
11. OUT – Either Pizza or eating out somewhere, we try to limit it to once every 2 weeks.
12. And so on down the list until I get to 15

So now that you get the idea of HOW I plan here is how I figure out what to put on the list, because truthfully I dread having to make the meal list BUT feel so much better after it’s done, LOL! Even more so knowing I don’t have to think about what we’re going to eat for another 2 weeks!

In the front inside pocket of my binder is any new recipes I’ve printed out but haven’t put on the ‘to make’ list yet, I keep them here so I won’t forget about them. I print them off as I find them so I don’t have to go back later to sites (like Pinterest) and hunt them down again. I look through these first to see I want to try any during this meal period, if so I add to my meal list and add the ingredients to my shopping list. I then put it in the back of the binder…more on that later.

Next I use my handy dandy ‘cheat sheet,’ where I have all the meals we eat listed by type. The front page has chicken, pork, beef, other, etc. These are all recipes NOT using the crockpot. If I get them from a recipe book like Quick Cooking (which I adore!) I list the volume and page # to help me find them quickly.

The back of the sheet has crackpot meals listed by type, as well as freezer meals. I add with pen as we find ‘keepers’ and go back and occasionally update my word file.

Side shot of my ever growing binder & recipe collection!

The binder is divided out into sections, the first section is Non-Crockpot Meals:

If I find one that our whole family loves, I often note it on the sheet in the upper corner. I also make notes for changes & modifications that I need to make for us. Like this Pizza Casserole one that I’ve made into a Spaghetti Casserole for us. I also noted that I need to make half the recipe because if I make the whole thing we have tons of leftovers that don’t get ate. Or I’ll make the full one and freeze the other half of it.

The next section is Crockpot Meals:

I’m a very visual person and prefer the recipes that have at least 1 picture! These Crockpot Chicken Tacos are amazing!

The next section is Desserts & Misc:

We love this Sticky Bun Ring! Hummm…think I need to make it very soon!

The final section is where I put all the New Recipes that I’m going to try:

Like this Crock Pot Bacon Ranch Chicken that we tried last night, it’s a keeper!

After I make the meal we vote if it’s a keeper or not (majority rules), if it is then I file it where it belongs. If not I take it out and throw it again. No point in keeping something I won’t make again.

This has really helped me to stay organized and become much faster when making my meal list! I can easily flip through it and find what I want to add to the list. Sometimes I’ll even let the kids flip through and choose what they’d like too!

Besides a Recipe Binder, what are your tips for Meal Planning Made Easy?