Make Ahead Meals: Bye bye Pizza Night

The Set Up

A long, long time ago, I used to plan all of our suppers for the month. This was so I could shop for all of the meat and pantry items we needed during Safeway's Customer Appreciation Day. We would get 10% off the entire grocery bill. Now it's 15% and I'm even more interested in saving money than I was then, so I sat down earlier this week and planned two weeks plus everything we needed for the Make Ahead Meals. (All of our other shopping trips will be at other grocery stores so I can compare prices.)

The Rationale

It's summer. And while I normally love to cook, I am not a fan of spending any more time than absolutely necessary near hot things--like a stove--when it's summertime.

Eating out--or, more likely in our case, ordering out is expensive. And it doesn't help my waistline, either! So, the only way to beat the heat, save time (and money) and stay mean and lean--is--you guessed it--to make meals I can re-heat quickly or throw in the crockpot.

Because I am an excessive planner, I sat down with my work schedule and figured out how many of these meals I'd actually need--and then I doubled it (sort of).

The Recipes

Lentil Butternut Squash Curry x2
Cilantro Lime Chicken x2
Slow Cooker Turkey and Black Bean Chili x2
Mediterranean Eggplant x1
Spicy Peanut Chicken x2
8 hamburger patties

We've eaten all but the Spicy Peanut Chicken before. That one is from a recipe I found in a book from the library. Any Peanut Chicken recipe would do, really, as it is essentially cooking the meal and the freezing it, just as you would left-overs. The rest of the MAMs are all assembled, frozen, and then thawed and dumped into a slow cooker. Easy peasy.

The Assembly

"I made thirty meals in four hours--and then I didn't dread dinner-time any more."
Most blogs are full of cheerful statements like this one.
Not this one.

I may never set foot in my kitchen again.

I set everything up (well, what I thought was everything) and began. I honestly expected I would be able to chop and assemble everything the same day. I had only one small problem--I needed black beans-- but I hadn't cooked them yet. And then I realised I didn't have enough spices for everything. I had to make a late night run to Walmart for paprika, chili powder, and parsley flakes. Of all the stupid things.

This shows them after they'd soaked for a couple of hours. I put them on the boil while I chopped the squash.

The squash nearly killed me. It seemed I chopped forever. And of course, I had to make dinner, too.
At the end of Day 1, I'd made only two of my recipes. Just before bed, I realised I needed to cook even more black beans.

On Day 2, I was pretty anxious to get the meat based meals out of the fridge and into the freezer. I took the beans I'd soaked overnight and started cooking them. As I had to leave for work at 5pm, I'd also planned a crock pot meal for supper with some really old chicken backs I'd found while doing my freezer inventory. Thawing and deboning those took a solid hour. So, after about three hours in the kitchen...with temperatures rising by the hour.... I'd managed to make only one of my Make Ahead Meals, the slow cooker Turkey and Black Bean Chili (which is awesome, by the way).


The third Day I was desperate to get the remaining chicken breasts and ground beef into the freezer. The Spicy peanut stir fry was time consuming, but very simple.

The burgers were messy--but also simple. Apparently, the key to homemade burgers is not to man handle the ground meat too much--and to dimple the center of each patty. My husband was quite disappointed we weren't having any for dinner that night.

Finally, finally, late today I made the Mediterranean Eggplant.

So, now I am all set for those night's when I am not home to cook--and the morning's are too rushed to make anything.

Bye bye, pizza night.


More MAM's:

New Leaf Wellness has several recipes and free batch cooking/assembly instructions.

5 Dinners 1 Hour is a batch cooking meal plan site. There are some recipes for free.

Thirty Handmade Days has quite a few original recipes. Looking forward to trying them.

Once a Month Meals is another meal plan site. All the meals are freezable, though. I tried a few of their free plans but didn't really like it. I also found the way they constructed the prep lists confusing.

Happy Money Saver Mom has many different kinds of Make Ahead Freezer meals, including some that can go into the crock pot.

Self Magazine has some really delish looking MAMs for the crockpot.

eta from the comments: Living Well Spending Less has an 11 part series, each one with five recipes made twice for freezer to crockpot cooking. I'm linking to Part 11 as it has all the previous parts linked on the page. (Thanks Marie!)

Menu Planning 2.0

I do up our menu plans each week, now. I find it easier to catch the sales that way!

My menu planning process is dead simple, really.

1) What's on Sale?

 I look through the weekly flyer to find out what is on sale. You could do this with multiple flyers if you shop at more than one store.

The store I shop at has a digital flyer where I can click on the item I want to buy--and when I am done, it generates a shopping list I can print.

I have a ceiling for how much I will pay for meat "on sale." This week, only the chicken breasts met my price point. Fortunately, I have other meat stockpiled in the freezer purchased throughout the month when it was on sale.

2) What Do we Have?

Clipboard and pen in hand, I go downstairs to the freezer and check on what we have.
Turns out, there's lots.

So, so far I have two lists--what's on sale and what we have.

The third piece of information I need is my work schedule. You may need to take other activities into account. I like to know when the kids are working, too.


2) When Am I Working?

If I am not going to be home to make supper--then I either plan something the kids or Chris can make--or I plan a crock pot meal. Turns out I have one shift next week that's from 1:15pm to 8:15 pm. Definitely a crockpot night!

Another night, I work until 4pm--so that is going to be something dead simple.

3) A Source for Recipes.

Recently, I have been using skinnytaste.com to find yummy calorie conscious recipes. I also have my trusty recipe binder. A pinterest board is another option: but if I used it to sort recipes, then I would probably have separate boards for each category: chicken, beef, fish, crockpot, vegetarian. Given the rising cost of meat, I now plan at least two vegetarian meals per week.

4) My Menu Planner.

I use a word document with a place for my schedule, dinner, and notes on the top half and a place for a shopping list on the bottom half. The shopping list is divided into categories, like so:

sorry, we print everything on scrap paper: you can see the other side bleeding through.

Whenever I choose a recipe, I type it next to the night I want to make it and then look it over for ingredients we need and type them into the appropriate category.

I will also add the sale items in a different colour so I don't have to flip through pages of stuff. (I do bring my print out for back up and clarification.)

Ta Da!

Here's my completed menu plan (and shopping list) for the coming week.  As you can see, this late in the month, all I really need is fresh food (and the sale items).

All set for grocery shopping this afternoon!

If you'd like a squeaky clean copy of my menu planning form, you can download it from Google Docs in two formats:

1) a WORD document:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-_zTxY8ozUVRWJ6VENkY3hfVTA

2) a PDF document: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-_zTxY8ozUVQ1c3TUEtejdyQm8


Do you menu plan? Would it be better if you did, or are you fine with deciding that day?

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Day 5: Decluttering the Recipe Binder and a Few Words about Menu Planning

Read the previous entry in this series:  Day 4: The Freezer or start at the beginning with the introduction: 5 Ways Clutter Costs.


This recipe binder represents fourteen years of learning to cook. Seriously.
I did not learn to cook until my daughter was born.

This is at capacity. Any more recipes would be annoying.

I mean, I cooked. I knew how to make spaghetti sauce from scratch. I knew how to make muffins and how to make lentil soup. I could make anything--as long as I followed a recipe. The trick was making dinner--night after night after night.

When I had my daughter 15 years ago, I realised I had no idea how to cook and clean for four people, two of whom could not control their bowels. Somehow, I found fly lady--and through her, Leanne Ely.

Leanne Ely has written a series of cookbooks called Saving Dinner. (There is now a website of the same name, I see.) In each cookbook, she divided the year into seasons and then further subdivided the seasons into weeks. Every week had six recipes--and an accompanying grocery list. (This was fifteen years ago, remember. Revolutionary.)

In time, I learned to make a menu plan for myself. I would plan seven dinners and then make up a shopping list. Sometimes we'd have Monday's dinner on Wednesday--it really didn't matter. I knew I had all the ingredients. For a long time, I even planned a month's worth of meals at a time.

Over time, I collected recipes. Some of them arefrom Leanne Ely's books: I used them somuch the pages fell out--so I just popped them into a page protector and into a binder and away I went.
I consult the binder first when I'm planning the week.

What I do now--and I don't do it the "best" way--not at all--is I look at Safeway's on-line flyer and see what's on sale. I plan whatever meat we're going to eat from what's on sale.

Then, I go down to the freezer and see what meat we have on hand. I make a quick list. (I tell ya, a voice-activated inventory app on the freezer would be so handy.) It could go something like this:

Me: "Suri, I'm taking out the chicken legs."
Suri: "With back attached or without?"

Me: "Suri, I'm putting in some ground beef."
Suri: "Expiry date?"

Me, upstairs at the computer: "Suri, show me all the fish I have in the freezer and rank by expiry date, soonest to latest."

Wouldn't that be great?

As I went through the book, I asked myself:
"Will we ever eat this again?"
"If I've never made it, would I want to try it?"

There were even some duplicates!

Now, I can menu plan more easily. (Bonus: I found the recipes for the dishes I cook at Thanksgiving. I'd thought they were somewhere else! Good thing--Thanksgiving is next weekend!)

For meal planning, I use a form based on one I got in a Simplify 101 course. (They also have an e-book on menu planning.) My menu planning form has room only for dinners. It's what I need.

On the left, there's room to record the expected temperature--and my work hours. That helps me plan whether we want something BBQ'd or cooked in the crock pot, for example.

At the bottom of the form is the place to record my groceries.

I find it so handy to have my menu plan with me when I'm shopping for groceries.

Here is a downloadable printable of it, if you wish to have it. My menu planning form.

(Now, I know there are apps which do all this for you--but I don't have a phone.)

When I have done the shopping, I take my menu planning form and the recipes for the week--and clip them all together on the fridge. That way, I can ask one of those two children, both teenagers now, and learning other life skills, to make dinner--and the information about what to make and the recipe are right there. No excuses! That, to me, is the biggest benefit of menu planning--I can hand off making dinner.

Do you menu plan? Have you got a recipe binder (or something similar)?

 Read the next entry in this series Day 6: Food Storage Containers, or Don't Declutter Just to Declutter

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What Matters

Part of the grocery shopping I did today.

Were you expecting me to say dishes and laundry?

They are important.

In the Tightwad Gazette, years ago, I once read that dishes and laundry were the two most important chores to stay on top of. It makes sense. They are always needed and it's a lot of work to catch up all at once. It is much less stressful to stay caught up by doing a little at a time, a lot of the time. I have since learned, though, that dishes and laundry are always needed--and that means they do get done. You really can't ignore them for too long, even when they pile up, it is always possible to do a load and get what you need.

And, hopefully, as we go along in this process, I will get these chores done before we need clean dishes and clothes.

But, for now, while we begin again, we have to figure out what's important. What, given the limited amount of time available, really needs to be done?

For me, there are two other chores essential for running a home and they are all but invisible. They aren't even related to cleaning! These magical stress-busting chores? Meal planning and keeping track of our expenses.

Planning our meals (and then shopping for the ingredients) makes life immeasurably easier. I have gone a few weeks without meal planning in the years I have been doing it--and I always feel anxious and unsettled. After work, I am much too tired to even think of standing at the stove and cooking, never mind trying to figure out what to eat and whether we have the ingredients on hand. (And then, of course, there are all those dishes to wash before I can even start!)

When I make my menu plan, I like to take into account what's on sale, whether I am home or not and who needs to prepare it, and especially in summer, the weather (too hot and we don't use the oven). In the winter, I also take into account our evening activities so I can plan something quick if the window for preparing and eating is narrow.

As for keeping track of our expenses, it is essential for paying down our debt--for if I don't know how much I have to work with, I can't send a payment. I have tried to "wing it" in the past. I would look at the balance in the bank account, roughly figure out the expected expenses coming up before the next pay cheque and send off something. Inevitably, I would send off too much and wound up using the credit card to buy groceries or something stupid. So, a detailed plan is essential. But there's no "trigger" for this activity. We could happily ignore knowing what we spend on what and just pay the minimums on our debt--many people do. But we decided we wanted to be debt-free, so paying attention is essential.

Gretchen Rubin has written a book about habits (in the process of being published) --and even better, she has distilled it into 21 sentences.

One of the pillars of forming habits is (as she writes),

Monitoring: You manage what you monitor, so find a way to monitor whatever matters.

The power of keeping track is truly amazing. We really do spend less--all across the board--whenever I record our expenses every single week.

So, two things. These two things take priority over all else as I endeavour to pick up the running of our lives and become intentional again.

How about you? Do you have essential tasks? Are they close to invisible, too?

Menu Plan with Links

I know, today is Tuesday, which means we've already eaten Monday's meal! Usually I do the menu plan (which is really more of a supper plan) on Sundays and shop on Mondays, but this week is 10% Tuesday--that first Tuesday of the month when Safeway takes 10% off the total bill. So, either I'm late--or just in time. I'm going to post this and then go shopping.

As well, I am continuing with the Whole30 I started on January 2nd, so I have done my best to find whole 30 compliant meals. That means, no sugar, no soy, no dairy, no legumes, no grains, and no artificial additives. Just great tasting food! If you're interested, there's more info at the new Whole 30 web-site.


On sale at Safeway this week:

Lean Ground Beef  2.99/lb (or $6.59/kg)
Boneless Cross Rib Roast  3.99/lb (or $8.80/kg)
Chicken Breasts  2.99/lb (or $6.59/kg)
Frying Chicken (I roast it.) 2.99/lb (or $6.59/kg)
Wild Pink Salmon portions 680g for $7.77

The Menu Plan

Monday:
Sautéed Chicken w/thyme, roasted root veggies (carrots, parsnips, rutabaga), steamed spinach, boiled sweet potato

Tuesday:
Roasted Chicken w/vegetables (parsnips, carrots, sweet potato, rutabaga) right in the roaster

Wednesday:
 Pad Thai* (if I can find sesame seed butter that is whole30 compliant)

Thursday:
Cinnamon Beef Stew,* cauliflower "rice"

Friday:
(working 10:00 to 4:30pm)
Italian Ground Beef* (ground beef sautéed with onions, tomatoes, zucchini, black olives and seasoned with Pizza spice mix), spaghetti squash

Saturday:
(working 9:15 to 4:45pm)
Crock Pot Balsamic Roast, (omit white wine) roasted butternut squash, steamed broccoli

Sunday:
Many Herbed Roasted Salmon** (place salmon in baking dish that has been primed with about a tablespoon each of olive oil and coconut oil, top with chopped onions, thyme and basil, bake at 475 about 10-15 minutes or until it is done), roasted acorn squash, spinach salad.

To make the meals non-paleo or "family friendly," I may add potatoes, rice or noodles as sides.


*From Well Fed, by Melissa Joulwen
**From  Saving Dinner the Low-Carb Way, by Leanne Ely.

Day 15: Tweaking a System: Meal Planning

Note: For those of you with apps and smart phones, this is going to seem quite archaic. But as you read through, see if you can think of any systems you have with "unusual" containers--which may or may not be working.

 

 

 

In the middle of planning our meals.

A system can break down in one of two ways:

1) you stop using it, or
2) the way you have it set up doesn't work for you.

Yesterday we talked about how I changed the way I stored my budgeting materials: a folder didn't allow me to separate the different pieces of paper I needed to access to pay my bills and keep track of my spending. That was a very clear example of changing the way it was set up for me by changing the storage container.

But meal planning? Other than talking about my cook books and how I have them on a shelf, there's not much else to say, is there?

Well, maybe. But meal planning is essentially pulling together all sorts of different kinds of information in order to decide what to eat for a set period of time. (FYI: Simplify 101 offers a menu planning course. I have not taken it.) Then, you take your meal plan and break it down into a shopping list.

I love forms. I see them as "storage containers" for information. So, a change in meal planning requires a change in forms. (For me, anyway. I think I'm probably a little strange in this regard.)

I used to plan by the month--so I needed one form  to capture all the meals for the month. I used a monthly calendar which I printed from the computer.

I used that for a while, but it was a lot of wasted space.

Then, I was thinking about starting work. I wanted a way to take my schedule into account: so I fished out an old form Aby had provided for us. I forget in which course it was originally offered. (Time Management, maybe?)

I tweaked it and made it my own, but the essential idea is hers: meals on top with a place to record activities to the side of each day, and a place for the shopping list below with items grouped by category. I added a place for notes on the right hand side.

Now, the form can completely capture the entire procedure of meal planning, for me. As well, all I need to take to the store is this one form: before, if I wanted to know what meals we were having, I had to take along the shopping list and the menu plan. I used to do my grocery shopping with a clipboard.

Looks like I need to change the heading for produce with frozen foods--I need more room to write!

Tomorrow we'll move on to the other side of this equation: habits!

ETA: You can catch all the posts in the series here.

Menus and Today's Photo

Being able to post my monthly menu means not only did I get it done (whew), but it also means I have successfully installed the drivers for the printer and scanner onto the new laptop. Go me!

 

Today's photo prompt is "something far away."

 

 



Being able to ride my bike seems very fay away.

#FMSphotoaday

The Food Project

I have spent the last two weeks making up my menu for March.

(green = meatless; blue = pork or beef; orange = chicken; teal = seafood = only on sale!)

It's all part of the effort to spend less money wherever we can-- shaving down the food budget to as little as possible. It was a challenge, too.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I did research and found all sorts of new recipes. I consulted as many Mark Bittman tomes as my husband would cart home from the library for me and Leanne Ely's Saving Dinner the Vegetarian Way. (I credit Ely with teaching me to cook!) I looked things up in google and I started buying bags of beans, then soaking, cooking and freezing them. I found out legumes, peas and lentils are also called pulses and that they are grown right here and in the province next door--yet the grocery store labels say they come all the way from China. Why? I've discovered how ruddy cheap cabbage is and I'm trying to cook with it more often, but not too often.



I decided, as a way of ritualizing our new way of eating, to clean out my so-called pantry.



So-called because it is really a shelving unit in my basement with a long and noble family history: it used to hold record albums in my parent's living room when I was fourteen. That should also explain its colour blocked colour scheme.

So, I washed all the cubies: it was really dusty. I removed two binders. They were full of magzine pages, carefully and patiently removed from years of Canadian Living Magazine and put into page protectors. I've never looked at them since I did that. It's overwhelming to think about them now.

I rearranged everything: but I didn't label the cubbies, though I thought about it. Things are changing. I'm not sure labels would be that useful.



Linking to The William Morris Project at Pancakes and French Fries. Thanks for stopping by-- I look forward to reading about your projects.

Monday Night Check-In

Wompf.

That's the sound of me sitting down in my office chair after fetching my 14th cup of coffee.

Wompf.

That's the sound of everything I thought I'd get done hitting me up the side of the head.

Oh well.

I focused on the important, so I'm happy.

Done! 1. -- take an inventory of the pantry and freezer, plan all of our dinners for January and make a shopping list.

Done! 2. --Finish running off the duplicates of the calendar I made for my Mom.

Done! 3. --Take the calendars Staples to be bound. Mail them.

uh, no. 4. Write up my Statement of Intent for Cathy Zielske's Big Picture Class: Move More, Eat Well (MMEW).

nope, not done, either 5. Finish my pre-class assignment for MMEW.

eeew. Not done. 6. Vacuum the stairs.

in progress. 7. Work on my goals for 2012. Create a list of specific ones to work on for January, specifically. In other words, get specific!

not going to do. Too late. 7b: Finish post of top 11 accomplishments in 2011.

in progress. 8. Create my project list for January.

Done! 9. Get out to a scrapbook store and buy kraft coloured cardstock.

1/2 done. 10. Find a hair salon we can afford and within walking distance and make hair appointments for my daughter and I. (I found a place in B.C. which will accept 9" pony tail of my grey hair to make into a wig for Cancer patients.)

I made some calls. The one nearest me charges $50 (average $60) for a women's cut. If I want the epynonymous owner, however, I have to pay $85.00 (yikes!) A child's cut is $25 to 30. These folks are not open on Mondays (the only day I have the vehicle). They are, however, within 10 minutes walking distance.

The least expensive place is a little farther away, (maybe 15-20 minutes?) at $40.00 for a woman's cut and $20.00 for a child's.

By the by, I am aware that there are "chains" --like Supercuts-- which will hack off my hair for $20 or so--but my experience with places like that is what drove me to grow my hair out in the first place!

Oh and MOST important--I'm 2 for 2 for exercise! Two sessions in two days--yay! AND, I signed up for a class called "women on weights" which starts next Sunday.

I'm feeling super anxious and excited about everything I want to do this year, this month, this week. But I really can't think about it until we get out and shop, get home and put it all away. Tomorrow. Then, I'll breathe again.

Menu plan for November

Thank goodness that's done!


blue: seafood
yellow: pork
green: vegetarian
red: beef
purple: chicken

We'll also be eating at my Mom's on Friday nights this week except for November 11th (Remembrance Day.) It should be interesting. She turned 65 this summer and she decided to learn to cook. Go Mom!

She says she needs folks to feed.

Menu Plan: October

click to enlarge, if you wish.

This is not really a part of the 31 days series, just a post I do sometimes to celebrate the fact that the menus are done!

This week:

Monday: Chicken Noodle Casserole (from All Recipes)

Tuesday: Crock-Pot Beef Stew, Roasted Butternut Squash.
(From Saving Dinner, by Leanne Ely)

Wednesday: Shrimp Stir Fry w/rice and zucchini.
(From The Food Matters Cookbook, by Mark Bittman)

Thursday: Pork w/Apple Cider Sauce, Oven-fried Turnips, Rice.
(From Saving Dinner the Low-Carbohydrate Way, by Leanne Ely)

Friday: Chicken with Honey Mustard Mayo, mashed potatoes and broccoli.
(From Saving Dinner the Low-Carbohydrate Way, by Leanne Ely)

Saturday: leftovers.

I'm not sure whether we're having Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday or Monday yet.

Linking up with the other menu planners at Organizing Junkie.

Menu Plan Monday

I have made up my menu plan for dinner for the month, as usual, but there have to be some last minute adjustments.

Our oven isn't working.

Add to that the fact that I've been wanting to plan our breakfast and lunches, too--especially before I head off to Safeway for the weekly "fresh food" shop!

Plus, our weather continues to be unseasonably warm this week (hooray!) which is really throwing me for a loop!

So, I need to sit down and write it all out. It will seem odd, but I'm at home with my son during the day (he's homeschooled) my daughter packs her own lunch for school and my husband always takes something he can heat in the microwave at work.

Weekly soup (for Hubby's lunches)

Brody's Lentil Soup.

Monday: (Today's high: 18C)
Breakfast:
cottage cheese, cantaloupe, toast (mine)
cereal (kids)
eggs, bacon and fried mashed potatoes. (hubby)

Lunch:
Ham & Cheese sandwiches/wraps
Poached salmon
cucumber and tomato salad

Dinner:
Hamburgers on the grill with Basil Mayonnaise
Purple cabbage and carrot salad.

Tuesday: (Today's high: 18C)
Breakfast
cottage cheese, cantaloupe, toast (me)
cereal

Lunch:
Ham and cheese sandwiches/wraps
left over cabbage and carrot salad

Dinner: (at 5pm)
Pork & Squash
(use fresh tomatoes from the garden instead of canned!)
mashed potatoes

Activity: Guides. Leave at 6:15

Wednesday: (14C)
Breakfast:
Boiled egg, toast, cantaloupe
cereal

Lunch:
Swedish meatballs and rice (son)
Ham and cheese sandwich (daughter)
Lentil soup (me)

Dinner:
Chicken fried rice, spinach.
Egg rolls (if oven is working).

Thursday: (15C)
Breakfast:
Boiled egg, cantaloupe, toast (me)
cereal

Lunch:
Swedish meatballs and rice (son)
Hot lunch at school (daughter)
Tuna salad on crackers
cucumber and red pepper strips

Dinner:
Apricot Dijon Pork chops
carrots, green & yellow beans,
rice.

Friday: (15C)
Breakfast:
Yogurt, fruit, toast
cereal
fried egg

Lunch:
Tuna and cucumber sandwich (me)
Ham and cheese sandwich (daughter)
Swedish meatballs and rice (son)

Dinner:
(if oven is not fixed: Rotisserie Chicken from Safeway) If it is fixed, then we'll have oven fried chicken nuggets.
Potato salad
Spinach and tomato salad
Buns.

Saturday: (13C)
I never plan Saturday but I think I'd like to make Chicken corn chowder (in the crockpot) and finish up the buns with it.

Man, that was exhausting!

Linking to Menu Plan Mondays at Org. Junkie.

Menu Plan for June

I am hoping this is the last time I do my menu planning this way.


Apparently, there are now a number of programs which will let you import your recipes and then they will organize the ingredients and generate a list for you. I'd still have to cross check it against the pantry inventory, but it should still be much easier than sitting at the table for most of the afternoon!

As I have to create a new list every week for produce, I may just be able to try one program out per week this month.

Hey, that's a plan!

Here is the menu plan for June:


I even managed to sneak in five new recipes for us to try! I'm getting so tired of the same old 30 recipes or so.

Menu Planning Time

And so here we are.

An explanation of how I plan my menus for the month is here.

I didn't time how long it took to do my pantry and freezer inventory. I did those when I was cleaning the pantry, but they really didn't take that long.

I used menu plans from Nov 2009 and last month to create this month's plan. It really saved time: it took only 30 minutes to come up with all the meals we'll be eating this month.

It took another hour and a half to look up each recipe and mark down what I needed on all my various forms. I even added an extra step: in the Time Management course, Aby hands out a weekly menu plan and shopping list combined. I filled it out (by hand) for each week and then wrote in the produce and other fresh food items I would want to buy that week for those dinners.


I filed each sheet in my Tickler/planner behind the corresponding Sunday (the day I like to do my weekly shopping). I will plan what we'll do for lunch then.

Then, I typed up my dinner plans onto the calendar (above). That took 23 minutes (and allowed me to add any items I may have missed to my various forms).

So, all in all, it took me less than 2 1/2 hours to plan my meals (and shopping list) for the month.

The ladies in my Time Management course are all raving about Ziplist, though, so maybe, next month, I'll have all the recipes inputted into my computer--and it will take even less time.

Here's hoping. I do not enjoy this task one bit.

August Menu

Thank goodness that's done!
Big Shop is today!

Preparing for the Monthly Shop

(What the freezer inventory looked like before I went all high tech and made it into a table!)

I'm sorry, this post sat in the "edit" queue a bit too long. Obviously, the first Tuesday of April has come and gone. However--over at simplify 101, there's another brave soul who wants to attempt planning her menus for the month--and so--here's my process--typed up and ready to go-- just for you Megan. ;)

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Well, the first Tuesday in April is coming up quickly. And so it is that time again to do the Monthly Menus. Some have expressed interest in how I have done this: so, since I'm still fairly immobile, now seems like a good time to hobble through the process with you.

I feed a family of four. My kids are home during the day: so lunch is always a hassle. Nonetheless, these menus I make up are for dinners only--oh--and I make a pot of soup once a week (as well as a batch of muffins) for my husband to take to work for his lunch.

My system has evolved over many years. I started with just the "Master Grocery List." For that, I simply kept and collected of all the grocery lists I'd made in a month and then entered them into the computer. Some advise making the list in the same order as the aisles of the store where you shop--but I did not do that: instead I grouped things in categories which made sense to me.

I used to use it weekly: I don't anymore. Here it is as it stands now.

It is one of the last sheets of paper we will use in this process.

First, I take inventory of the freezer and pantry. This is a fairly recent evolution of the process: and it was born out of the need to save every penny I could a while ago. I just go to my pantry in the basement and note what kinds of items I have. I have a one out, one in kind of rule. In other words, if there's ketchup in the fridge, but none in the pantry, we need ketchup. (Really, it's just a way of saving me worrying about what's in the fridge!)

That form looks like this:

You realize, of course, that neither of these forms are essential to meal planning. They are essential to shopping. I say that because you can just figure out what to eat when without them--that's a meal plan.

So, to the Nitty Gritty.

Sundays we have either Roast Ham or Roast Chicken.
Mondays are for leftovers. (Chicken corn Chowder soup and Chicken pot pie for the Roast Chicken, Hoppin' John soup for the Ham)

This month the rest of week breaks down like this:
Tuesdays: Pork or Poultry.
Wednesdays: Vegetarian
Thursday: Pork or Poultry
Friday: Beef (usually of the lean ground variety)
Saturday: Soup. (These are for the husband to take to work during the week. I actually make them up on Mondays along with the weekly muffins).

Going through the cookbooks, I write them all down on a calendar with side dishes. I record the cookbook and page number where I can find the recipe.

THEN--and this is where it saves us money--I go through the handwritten copy and type it out onto the computer. How does this save money? Well, as I do this, I look up each recipe again and write down what I need on my pantry inventory list. For example, tomorrow night we're going to have Turkey Pot Pie. I'm going to use the Campbell soup version of this: so I write down "can of cream of celery soup" on my inventory list. I put "1" under the category "plan to use."

For the next item, Italian Pasta and Bean bake, I record on my pantry list that I need
1 can 14 1/2 oz tomatoes
1 can kidney beans
1 jar of pasta sauce
8 oz (226g) mozzarella cheese.

The first three ingredients are merely tick marks on the pantry inventory form, the last is recorded on the shopping list.

And so on and so forth. After I've tallied everything up, I do some simple 'rithmetic. So, for example, let's say I'd noticed (and recorded) that we have 2 cans of 14 1/2 oz tomatoes in the pantry already--and my menu plan indicates I need five. So, on the pantry list, next to the listing for tomatoes, small can, I record 3 in the "NEED" column.

My system has some redundancy in it: the grocery list also includes "tomatoes, small can" where I may or may not write "3" beside it. I usually do, the goal being to take one piece of paper to the market and not 3 or 4, but I tend to bring everything--especially as I like having the meat detailed. Here's the shopping list ready for shopping:


And so, here it is, the star of our show. You've seen it before: the colour coded monthly menu plan.


But she certainly wouldn't work well at all with out her supporting players:

• the grocery list with everything we buy regularly
• and it's supporting actor: the pantry and freezer inventory.

Hope this helps, Megan.
Happy Shopping!