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• Scan the food ads for specials and sales. Rough out a draft menu plan: seven dinner entrees that can be made from weekly specials, side dishes and salads.
• Wander to pantry and refrigerator to check for any of last week's purchases that are languishing beneath wilting lettuce or hardening tortillas. Check for draft recipe ingredients. Review your shopping list and note needed items.
• Ready, set, shop--but shop with an open mind. That 59-cent fryer won't look like such a bargain next to a marked-down mega-pack of boneless chicken breasts at 89 cents a pound. Be ready to substitute if you find a great deal.
• Return from shopping. As you put away groceries, flesh out the menu plan. Match it up with the family's calendar, saving the oven roast for a lazy Sunday afternoon, the quick-fix pizza for soccer night.
• Post the menu plan on the refrigerator door. Refer to it during the coming week as you prepare meals.

That's it! The bare bones of menu planning. You've made a draft plan, shopped from a list, retained flexibility in the marketplace, firmed up your plan and held yourself accountable.

The devil, however, is in the details. Here are some points to ponder as you bring menu planning under control:

Build A Personal Shopping List

Planner companies, gift shops and generous desktop publishers all compete to produce cute little shopping lists for all persuasions and occasions.

Bear-shaped shopping lists. Long skinny shopping lists. Shopping lists with winsome graphics. Shopping lists with colored borders. Cute little freebies with kittycats and teddy bears. Awwwwww. [We even offer some, too, in the printable planner pages library .]

Only one problem: why aren't you using them?

Because they don't work, that's why. Teenaged sons play stuff-the-hoop with the empty cereal box and the trash can, but have you ever known one to neatly write "Cheerios" on the list? Pre-printed lists, moreover, fit about as well as one-size-fits-all stockings from the convenience store.

Solution? Build a family shopping list on the computer, listing all the foods and sundries your family consumes. Print 52 copies each year. Post them on the refrigerator. Boys who don't circle "Sugar Gaggers" on the list when they empty the box eat hot cereal for the rest of the week.

Making a personal shopping list can be interesting--and revealing. When my children were hungry teenagers, cereal, milk and cookies headed the list, along with the entry "nuclear waste"--family slang for cheap, luridly-colored punch beverages sold in the dairy case.

Sigh. The good old days.

Now that we're back-to-two (and those two are both a touch too round) "broccoli" and "salmon" head the list.

Cheat Alert: next shopping trip, grab a hand-out supermarket map as you leave. Construct your personal shopping list according to the order you shop the store. You'll speed your way out the door in record time!

Coast in the Calm of a Routine

Yes, there are some well-organized souls among us who don't make formal meal plans. Look close, and you'll discover that household meal service dances to a routine.

Sunday's a big dinner, and Tuesday gets the leftovers. Monday is burger night, and Wednesday sees spaghetti, year in and year out. Thursday's the day for a casserole, and Dad grills on Friday. Saturday night, it's take-out or pizza.

Create a routine around your menu planning. Sure, you can try new recipes--just don't let your enthusiasm for the glossy pages of the cookbook con you into doing so more than twice a month. Cooking tried-and-true speeds dinner preparation and streamlines menu planning.

To do it, look for cues in the family schedule. At-home days with more free time can handle a fancy meal--or can signal soup, sandwiches and Cook's Night Off. Running the evening kid carpool is a great time to plan for pick-up sandwiches. Make the routine yours, and it will serve you well.

Stay Flexible

Menu plans aren't written in stone. So you're dodging cramps on the "big" cooking day? Swap it out with Pizza Night and go to bed early with a cup of herb tea.

A posted menu plan promotes accountability, but family members will forgive you, as long as they get their postponed favorite a day or two later.