What's for Dinner? (Part 1)

A Master Menu

As mentioned in the June 28 post on the Family Notebook, one of the main pages I still use today is the Master Menu page. This is a single page listing various main-dish meals under the following category headings:

Ground beef/ground turkey
Chicken
Beef (steak or roast)
Ham
Sausage
Meatless
Breakfast for dinner
Soups and stews

Under the ground beef heading, I have listed main dishes like spaghetti, Border Bowl, porcupine meatballs, beef enchiladas, etc. I list every recipe I can think of using ground beef. Then I do the same thing with the other categories.

Maybe you are feeding so many that you need to include a breakfast and lunch plan. I have a friend that used to put her menus for the week on her refrigerator – all 3 meals of the day!

Years ago, when I was fixing meals for nine people, we grocery shopped at Crest Foods in Midwest City once a month! (It took two carts and no, we didn’t take the kids with us.) We would fill in with milk and produce from another local store as needed. In fact, there came a time when my husband, Dirk, did all the shopping. That’s when this page came in really handy. I came up with menus for nightly meals for the whole month using this list as a guide. Now, I usually cook for 4-6 and I shop once a week. I still use this master menu list. It helps me quickly think of ideas of what to fix for dinner!