Creating menu plans has become increasingly popular.  There are many services out there that provide you a means to a week filled with homemade meals that are said to be simple, quick to make, and good for you.

Many people that create their own menu’s for the week or subscribe to a menu plan service find out right away that a written plan is the key to saving money on food for the week since you’ll be cooking at home from scratch.

Learn how to cook! That’s the way to save money. You don’t save it buying hamburger
helpers, and prepared foods; you save it by buying fresh foods in season or in large supply, when they are cheapest and usually best, and you prepare them from scratch at home.
– Julia Child

Since My Humble Kitchen has a menu plan service and an eBook, Nourishing Menu Plan’s on a Budget: A Month of Meals from My Humble Kitchen to Yours, I’m aware of different ways that people plan out their menu’s.

Some hop on over to Pinterest and find tasty recipes they save to a favorite board while others follow blogs and incorporate seasonal fare from their favorite foodie website.  I’ve even seen some strategies that scour the internet looking for simple, quick recipes that promise cooking during the week will only take 15 minutes.

I’m not writing to discredit any method you may use, however, I wanted to share how I plan my menu for the week so that you may be able to incorporate many of the same philosophies and techniques I use.

When I plan my menu’s, I do many of the same things as I wrote about above.  I love to go through Pinterest and my favorite food websites and blogs.  I pin and save tasty recipes that I’d like to try and adapt.  For the sake of learning to become a better cook at home, I also read many, many cookbooks that teach me technique and common practices in the kitchen.

With this knowledge I then incorporate it with nourishing and traditional practices to create a menu plan for the week.

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