Help with Meal-Planning

When I was doing the Eat From the Pantry Challenge last month, I really had to stretch my creativity when it came to cooking. Since I was barely shopping, I had to look into my pantry and just make it work!

I decided to help myself along in the process by creating dinner-time lists. I've seen this idea in its most basic form in books and around blog-land (as I'm sure you have too), but never quite like this. It totally works for me and I thought I'd share it in case it helps one of you!

In the front of my recipe binder, I've made lists of every major "meat" category and the standard ways I like to cook those meats for dinner. The list only includes tried-and-true favorites - things I know that I can turn to. As I try new recipes (and we approve of them), they get added to the list.

This has been really helpful in preventing that 5:00 burnout!

My categories are currently:

- Chicken

- Beef (multiple forms)

- Pork/Ham/Bacon

- Turkey {for my recipes that taste better with or call for ground turkey}

- Seafood

- Meatless

Some of the recipes are in two categories - for instance, "Mac 'n' Cheese" is under meatless and the ham category because I usually put chopped ham in it but it stands alone fine as a vegetarian meal.

I put a dot by the recipes that need to be put in the crockpot, so I can easily see that option at a glance.

I'm loving this system and I don't see any reason why I'll ever stop using it!