I found this web surfing late one night recently and was motivated to make it for us. Now that mom is here she needs to be able to contribute and meal preparation is a no-brainer. BUT one has to be able to PLAN the meals in order to share the preparation responsibilities. Well, problem solved forever! Yippee!
Ted has always wanted the result but I could never come up with the solution….until now. Thank you to all the sources I found and researched. There are definitely prettier menu boards people have made, but as always, function before form is my usual.
The sources all had their meals printed directly on colored card stock, cut apart and then “laminated”. That was going to take way too much organization of my recipes to accomplish. It was far easier to type anything I could think of, in any order it came to me, on labels that were then applied to the strips of colored card stock and then laminated with packing tape.
Instead of fancy print papers and fabric, I opted for the plain cork board at our stationer’s store and printed one sheet with the days of the week, “menu” and “leftovers”. After laminating and trimming them the days were attached to the clothes pins with double-backed tape. Menu and leftovers were hot-glued directly onto the board along with the clothes pins. Fast & easy like most of the meals I prepare.
It was a great exercise to have mom go through her recipe box and choose ones that she would enjoy making on Tuesdays, my away-from-home day.
The colors represent the different meat/food categories. One person ignored that aspect and their menu board was much prettier with just a few shades of one color as their scheme, but they lost the advantage of the instant recognition factor of the many color option.
Making up the shopping list for the week is now an easy step with the list of needed ingredients on the label on the back of each menu card. One may choose to note the source of the recipe, also, making it easier to find. Choosing the meals together is refreshing as opposed to my last minute decisions and frustrations.
Having the menu board next to the calendars facilitates recognizing the days that we will be eating out or require very simple meals or would be best for all-day crockpot meals.
We now have cards for 5 sides, 4 salads, 22 desserts, 4 casseroles, 10 soups / stews, 20 crock pot recipes, 4 any meat (ie, fajitas & tacos), 5 seafood, 10 pork, 10 chicken and 19 beef. That makes about 50 main dishes to rotate through. That should provide plenty of variety and we can add recipes as we please.
Here are the sites I researched: Ultimate Menu Board
and Another source
