Creating a Blanced Meal Plan for a Family
For a long fourth dimension, my married woman used a bare monthly calendar for planning our meals. Because she is good with Excel, I decided to create a uncomplicated weekly repast planner application that would let her to select from a list of meals and side dishes, and it got a thumbs up review. And then I went ahead and created a monthly version also every bit a selection of printable repast and menu planners that you can download. She as well wrote upwards some meal planning tips, that I've included below the downloads.
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Weekly Repast Planner
for Excel, OpenOffice, Google Sheets, and Word
"No installation, no macros - merely a simple spreadsheet" - by
Description
This spreadsheet makes it like shooting fish in a barrel to create and print your weekly meal plan. The workbook includes all three layouts shown in the screenshots in a higher place every bit dissever worksheet tabs. In addition to listing meals, these planners include a identify to list groceries and other notes.
Hands select meals from Excel drib downwards lists! For each main dish, side dish, breakfast, and luncheon entry, y'all tin can select an item from a driblet-down list within the jail cell.
Easily customize your repast lists! We all have our favorite foods, and it is a piece of cake (no pun intended) to edit the lists.
Update 4/4/2014: I accept updated the spreadsheet to piece of work in Excel for iPad. It would be dainty to edit (instead of just viewing) on the iPhone, simply the iPhone version of Excel does non yet accept the in-cell drop-downwards characteristic.
Update ten/11/2013: The paradigm shown in the main screenshot above is a new layout based on an thought provided by a helpful user named Karen, from New York.
Still using Excel 2003? You lot tin can still download the Excel 2003 version using the link listed nether "Other Versions." The images on the left are from the older Excel 2003 version.
Printable Meal and Carte Plans
If you merely desire a blank planner that you can impress right abroad, then try one of the printable meal and menu planners listed below. They are but PDF files.
Monthly Menu Planner
for Excel, OpenOffice, and Google Sheets
Description
This spreadsheet is great for longer-term planning. It contains lists for main dishes and side dishes and has the same type of drop-down listing selection as the weekly version. If yous prefer to write your meals out by manus, this template works well for printing blank monthly carte planners.
Important: When you modify the month, just the dates change. The menu items stay the aforementioned. So, if yous want to store different menus for dissimilar months, you'll need to create a re-create of the Menu worksheet (and rename information technology to January, Feb, etc.).
Monthly Menu Planner with Grocery List
for Excel and OpenOffice
Description
This is a new version of the monthly menu planner. Information technology lets you list ingredients for each repast so that you can create a grocery listing automatically. Information technology does unit conversions and includes a place to enter prices. If you think this looks as well complicated, you lot should have seen my first few attempts.
I received many requests and suggestions from people to add a grocery list adequacy to the monthly version. I spent many many hours on this version, so please be very diplomatic in your expressions of disappointment or criticism. :-)
See beneath for instructions on how to impress a condensed grocery list from the List worksheet.
Using the Meal Planning Templates
Both the weekly and monthly templates allow you to edit your lists of main dishes and side dishes. The weekly version also includes lists for breakfast and lunch. The screenshots below prove how these lists are used to populate the driblet-downwards boxes.
Screenshot showing the repast selection drop-down list within the planner.
Screenshot showing the editable list of principal dishes used to populate the drop-downward lists.
The items in the list like [==== Chicken ====] are used to make it easy to run into the different categories equally you are scrolling through the list.
Except for the version with the grocery listing, you can make copies of the worksheet. That volition let you store multiple weekly or monthly meal plans within the same file. Right-click on the Planner tab and select "Move or Copy" and select the "Create a Copy" checkbox.
I designed the lists to exist as easy to edit. You can delete and remove rows, sort, and practice pretty much whatever you lot desire as long every bit y'all don't delete cell A1. Doing so will mess up the formula used to create the dynamic named range which populates the drop-downwards lists.
Printing a Grocery List: When using the "Menu Planner with Grocery List" template, instead of printing all 3+ pages in the List worksheet, if you want to print a grocery list containing only the items you need, employ the Filter characteristic. Hither's how: Beginning, select the Qty column, beginning with the label "Qty" and ending with the terminal line of the list. Go to Data > Filter to add together a filter on this column. Click on the little filter arrow and uncheck the "-" option to temporarily hide the unneeded rows.
Meal Planning Tips
My wife has graciously provided the following tips meal planning tips, including ideas for how to employ the meal and menu planners.
- Brand a list of everything you like to cook or everything you have eaten in the last month. This will requite yous a first on your list of meals and yous tin can add together to it when you observe new things. The planner gives you lot a starter list that you lot tin can add to or amend to fit your needs.
- Your meal program can be reused from calendar month to month or week to week. You can make three months worth of planners and and so rotate them throughout the year. Or, at the stop of the month or calendar week, file the planner abroad until the next yr. And so, you tin bring it out a yr later and accept something to work from. I like this method, because and then I can comprise seasonal foods and my menus for July are distinctly different from the ones for December.
- Plan to use left-overs. You can vary the sides or the appearance, only left-overs save time and money. For instance, BBQ craven on Wednesday can become BBQ chicken pizza on Friday. Or Meatballs can be used for Sweetness and Sour and then later in the week for Hoagies. You lot can serve Lemon Craven twice, merely the 2d time, serve information technology with potatoes instead of rice pilaf.
- Add recipes that y'all want to attempt to your planner. I am constantly printing or fierce out pages of new recipes, but if I don't put them on my repast plan, I never make them.
- Put your card program where you lot volition run across information technology. Save it on your desktop or print it out and put it on the fridge or the inside of a cupboard.
- Be flexible. If y'all club pizza, move the planned meal to the first week of the next calendar month. If you don't feel like making Hamburgers, switch them with another dark. The purpose of a repast plan is to make the dinner decision time less disturbing and to help you with your grocery shopping.
- Create a recipe file. When yous create your planner, spend some time collecting the recipes or write down the folio numbers. That manner you don't spend all of your prep fourth dimension searching for that fabulous recipe.
- Involve your family unit. Ask for suggestions from your family for meals they want to eat for the month. There may exist fewer complaints if they know they had a say in a few of the meals.
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Source: https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/meal-planner.html
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