How to Create A Seasonal, Rotating Meal Plan

In this post, I’m going to walk you through how I created a Seasonal Rotating Meal Plan. Creating your own Meal Plan is going to save you SO MUCH TIME and energy, and will take the thinking out of what your family is going to eat each week.

I normally really enjoy meal planning. I love trying new recipes and making new meals for my family. However lately, I’ve been in a funk and haven’t been very chipper when it comes to meal planning…

A while back I listened to a Podcast by Katie Wells from Wellness Mama. She talked about creating a rotating meal plan, so I looked it up on her website and came across “The Ultimate Guide to Meal Planning (for Families).” In this blog post, she gives her seasonal menu, with links included. A GREAT resource!

I decided that in order to simplify things for my family, I would create a rotating menu as well. I’ve done this in the past with rotating, weekly, meals throughout the month, but this time I was ready to go ALL IN and create my seasonal meal plan.

Here are the steps I took…

How To Create a Seasonal Meal Plan:

Break your seasons up into months

Your meal plan will be broken up into the four seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. Each Meal Plan will include 3 months. You can break this up however you choose, but here is how I did it:

Fall: September, October, November

Winter: December, January, February

Spring: March, April, May

Summer: June, July, August

Create a Meal Planning Outline

Before you choose your meals, consider the following-

Establish how many meals you want rotated. For my family, I choose to do 21 meals, so after 21 dinners, the meal plan would repeat. This way, it still feels like we are eating a variety of meals without getting sick of the recipes.

Look at your states seasonal produce list. I live in Tennessee, so I usually look at this chart on Pick Tennessee’s Website. Another resource is the USDA”s seasonal produce guide. You will want to know which produce is in-season before starting your meal list, so you can ensure you are getting the most nutritious and budget friendly produce each season.

Include a flexible night each week. This night may be where you eat up leftovers, make breakfast for dinner, order in, go out to eat, etc.

Add a “try something new” night each week. This is optional, but fun to do if you enjoy trying new recipes.

Choose Your Meals

Now time for the fun part! =)

Before creating my meal list, I looked through past recipes, and compiled a list of my families favorites. Once I had a list, I separated the meals into season. (Click below to download the Favorite Recipes list).

From here, I was able to see what was still needed, and began plugging meals into the calendar, including a “flexible night” and a “try something new” night each week.

Each night of the week has a different theme, making planning easier. For example, one night may be “taco night” another “soup” and another “fish.” This keeps consistent all season long. Each season’s themes will change.

I have not created my seasonal menu for all seasons yet. I am starting with the current fall season, and will create the winter menu soon. Here is an example of my Fall Meal Plan.

Don’t expect perfection when you create this meal calendar. You will most likely need to tweak some things as you go. See how the meals flow together in a week and fix as needed.

If you like paper copies (like I do), I found it helpful to print the meal plan out, as well as the recipes for that season. I put everything in page protectors and made a Meal Planning Binder to keep things organized.

If you prefer to pull up recipes as you cook (rather than printing them out), I’d suggest making a note on your seasonal meal plan where the recipes are coming from, so you don’t’ forget.

Simplifying Meal Planning:

I chose to give Real Plans a shot after reading Wellness Mama’s blog post on How to Meal Plan. Real Plans is a meal planning website where you can create customized meal plans. It has recipes for you to try, or you can plug in your own recipes, or recipes you find online.

Real Plans also allows you to add dietary preferences and adjust family size. It then takes your meals and creates a meal plan for you, or you can pick and choose your own meals, creating your own plan.

I chose to create my own plan. It took some time plugging in my families favorite recipes, but once the recipes are imported, it is super easy to use. You can print off a shopping list for the week and it compiles all of the ingredients you will need. You can print off the meal plans for the week and all of the recipes will be attached, in a compiled version which is super easy to read.

So far I am liking it. I purchased the 3 month period and will decide at the end of the 3 months if I will renew or not. So far, I plan to renew.

Here is what a compiled recipe looks like when you go to print. It fits as many recipes to a page as possible.

I hope you find this helpful and helps to simplify your life!

Don’t forget to Pin this to your Pinterest board for later!