MENU PLANNING 101

Over the last week I had three people ask for some help with menu planning. I typed up a little lesson for them, then shared it on Facebook. I'll post it here for any of my blog readers who need a little kick in the pants when it comes to making meal time less stressful and grocery shopping less impulsive.


Method #1

Check the store ads & make note of what's on sale. Plan your meals accordingly. I don't do this method, as I'm not good at making meals from random ingredients. My brain just doesn't work that way and WinCo, where I do my shopping, has low enough prices that I don't have to plan around sales. Mary Lou's brain works this way and she would be a good person to talk to if you prefer menu planning this way. She and I are total opposites with this stuff, but our methods work well for each of us.


Method #2

Make a menu. Buy the ingredients (at WinCo). Prepare the meals. Easy peasy.

I menu plan and shop twice a month, but doing one week of dinner menus is a great place to start. Baby steps, folks, baby steps. :)

There are two ways to do this. First is to assign meals to each day of the week. I used to do this, but then, being a little uptight about scheduling, would get all frazzled when life interfered and messed up my menu. The second way is to make a list of seven meals, assuming you're starting with a one week menu, then decide each morning which of those things you're going to make. It really doesn't matter which way you do it. The point is that you'll have all the ingredients for seven night's worth of dinners.

I like to make things as easy as possible, so I only plan for five nights a week. How? Sundays are always leftovers. That guarantees that I truly get the day off. That means I make our biggest meals Friday and Saturday to ensure that there will be leftovers on Sunday.

Tuesdays are always Taco Tuesday. I regularly make crockpot beans (the best beans in the world, by the way) and freeze three quart-sized bags at a time. I also freeze three pounds of taco meat at a time, one pound in each of three quart-sized bags. That makes Taco Tuesday really easy because I just have to pull two bags (meat & beans) out of the freezer in the morning, chops some olives, cilantro and limes, then pull the sour cream & salsa out of the fridge at dinner.

I'd really encourage you to plan on having leftovers one night a week. It gives you night off and keeps your fridge clean. I'd also encourage you to pick one night of the week that's always the same meal. It could be Taco Tuesday, spaghetti on Thursdays, baked potato bar on Mondays ... whatever would make your family happy and keep menu planning simple.

Go look at your calendar. Are there nights where you need to make special plans? Company coming? Potluck? A crazily busy day without much time to cook? Factor those details into your menu.

Ok, so now you know what's on your calendar, you've designated a night for leftovers, and you've picked a set meal for a particular night of the week. Now let's tackle the rest of the menu.

Time out. Big, honkin' detail to mention right now.

You need to be making your grocery list as you plan your menu! Now, don't actually look in your cupboards yet. Instead, make a shopping list of all the ingredients you need for each recipe/dish you'll be making *as soon as* you put that recipe on your menu.

As you may already know, I do my grocery list according to the floor plan of WinCo to make my shopping trip more efficient. So, in this part of menu planning I may write "flour" in the bulk department section of my grocery list. Then I'd make a little note of how many cups I needed for a particular recipe. Each time I needed more, then I'd add another number. Here's what it may look like once my menu is planned.

flour 1/3/2/2

That means I need a total of 8 cups of flour to make all the things on my menu. The numbers may stand for pounds, cups, or whatever unit of measurement for the item on my grocery list. Make sense?

So, back to the menu. Write down "leftovers". Write down your set meal. Put all the ingredients you need for the set meal on your grocery list (including quantities), even the ingredients you think or know you already have. Now pick another meal and repeat the shopping list process. Keep repeating until you have seven dinners planned. I try to include one new recipe each week, but you can do whatever floats your boat.

Now you should have seven dinners planned and a shopping list that includes all the ingredients you need for those meals. Is that done?

Ok, now we're going to pare down the grocery list. I know you're probably thinking I'm a little crazy for making you write down the ingredients you already know you have, but here's the deal. Sometimes you'll know you have sausage in the freezer, but you won't realize until cooking time that it's not enough for the two recipes you needed it for. Crisis. Or you'll think you had a ton of paprika, but it was actually cayenne. Crisis. Or, like me, you buy a lot of things in the bulk department and don't actually know how much flour you have. It's just a lot, but perhaps not enough for all the baking you're going to do. So, that's why I have you write down everything the recipe calls for.

Now you're going to check your grocery list against your cupboards. This only takes a couple minutes, I promise. If it's something you know you don't have any of, then put a little dot or check by that item on your grocery list. I just do a dot, which tells me that I've checked and know I absolutely need soy sauce (or whatever). Then I look at all the other items. Using the flour example from earlier, I'd check my pantry and estimate how much I have. If I already have about four cups, then I''d adjust the total of 8 on my grocery list to say 4. Or maybe 5, to err on the side of caution. Then I'd put a dot by the flour. Quickly go through your whole list and check what you need against what you already have, then dot those items so that you know you'll be buying the right amount.

Everything dotted? Great! Go shop. :)

Now you can wake up in the morning, scan your menu and decide what's for dinner that night, pull any necessary ingredients out of the freezer to start thawing, and pace the prep work so that dinner's served on time and without stress. If you have littles in the house, then do your prep work during afternoon naps/down time. I enjoy that time doing mindless work in a quiet house, though I sometimes opt to listen to a sermon online or some music on Pandora while I work. If you work outside the home, then do some of the following night's prep work after dinner and just wash the prep dishes with your dinner dishes.

I think that's Menu Planning 101, so I'll call it a wrap right here. I don't want to keep throwing out more little suggestions that make the whole thing seem overwhelming or like it's turned into Menu Planning 102. :)

Questions? Suggestions? Fire away!