Regular menu planning, I’ve found, also ensures that your family is given a variety of foods throughout the week: you see the week’s meals at a glance when making your menus and can plan ahead to ensure a variety instead of cooking with the same ingredients night after night.

Whether convenience, saving time, improving nutrition or adding variety is your goal, I’m glad you stopped by my blog.

The first step to menu planning is to determine which meals, and which days of the week, you or a family member will be cooking in any given week. Looking at your family’s schedule, you might find you need to menu plan for weekend brunches, week-day breakfasts and five dinners, for example. (I menu plan for 19 meals a week for our family; we’re almost always all home for three meals on the weekdays and two meals each on Saturdays and Sundays.)

You can use a menu list, such as this blank menu planning chart, to organize the menus for each week or month that you plan in advance.

Make a list of main dishes you’d like to try, as well as family favorites or stand-bys, and place them on your menu plan list or chart, ensuring variety throughout the week.

For example, if you plan beef fajitas as well as a beef tenderloin for dinners, make one on Tuesday and the other on Sunday and fill in with chicken-, fish-, or dairy-based main dishes throughout the other nights.

Note side dishes, salads and desserts for each main meal as well. Fill in lunches and breakfasts in a way that ensures the daily diet is varied and nutritious.

Menu planning takes a few weeks to become second nature, and along the way you can peek at other peoples’ weekly dinner menus as well as explore recipe books and sites to get ideas for improving your own menus.