Food Planning Worksheets or Software?

[Pixel]

I'm in search of something that I can organize for our family. We are mostly creatures of habit, and he has his set breakfasts and his lunches are leftovers. My breakfasts are usually fruit, lunch a salad.

But dinner is where we kind of trip and stumble. We have our old favorites but we love trying new recipes all the time. And there's times I forget an old favorite and dig it back up again.

I'm trying to figure out a great system to be able to rotate meals we regularly love, and integrating new recipes. I want to be able to predict how much it will cost me at the grocery store to make "this meal, that and this meal" and be able to print it out and go.

Does that make sense? I was trying to figure something out in Excel, but it's the being able to rotate it part. I was kind of hoping there was software that could maybe store my favorites, along with prices (and maybe calorie counts?).

I think my place where I'm stuck is finding one where I can insert the costs.

[shoiji]

You might want to plan recipes seasonally. Meaning when produce or meat is the cheapest during the year. If I want to make something with apples I know that the fall and winter is the best time to do this. Around the holidays is also a great time to purchase turkey and hams for me.

[nuisance26]

~How about these: Meal Planner - Free Weekly Menu Planner Template ?~

[Pixel]

Perfect ideas.

I think some of those worksheets will help. I'm thinking of organizing recipes into "chicken" and "ground beef". That way whatever is on sale, I can flip through. I think it's having so many cook books, I can't remember half of what I've tried already.

I like the idea of paying attention to seasons. Yeah I'm stocking up a lot on turkeys.

[zakity]

I have a list of meals for ideas, well, really two, one for winter, one for summer. It is just a text document with meals listed. I keep it in the "recipe" folder on my computer. I pull it out when I am making up the meal plans to give myself ideas.