Menu Planning – Part 1

Menu planning is one of the easiest ways to take a mountain of little stresses off of your back. Every day, that will be one less thing. You will no longer have to hassle with going to the refrigerator or pantry trying to figure out what you have available to cook. You will no longer get everything out only to realize you are missing something.

If you go through that several times a week (or day) only to throw your hand over to the phone and order takeout, I beg you to try planning your menus. Planning your menus leads to planning your grocery lists, planning your garden if you have or want one, making adjustments for healthier eating, and many other things you may not have thought of before. It will save you TONS of time and money.

So, are you interested in menu planning? It can be very easy to get started. If you tried before, and just could not get the hang of it, do not give up. Try it again with the rest of us.

What You Will Need

There are just a couple of things you need for the whole process. You may already have them on hand. Grab a pen and set of index cards. (If you do not have cards, use a notebook until you can get a set.) We will get to the other things later.

Our Objective for Today

Today, we are going to simply pick a few meal ideas and start organizing them so that they will work for you from this day forward to plan menus and grocery lists without having to give them much thought ever again.

PUT THE COOKBOOKS AWAY!  You do not need them yet. You are not even close to needing them yet. They will just overwhelm you and you will not be able to get the ball rolling fast enough to hang in there.

There is a MUCH easier way to come up with meal ideas to get started.  You are going to just use whatever you already have right there in your head. It may be easier if you only think about dinners until you get this down. You can always add breakfast, lunch and snacks later if you want. (I do not really bother with the other meals. I just use spare shopping to keep the same old stuff on hand, then occasionally mix it up.)

Start with a simple stack of 30 index cards. No more. Put the rest away.

Be a Kid Again

Remember when you were a kid and one of the first things you talked about with new friends were your favorite foods? Start there. What are your favorite meals now?

On the index card, either label the top line with a title you think of such as Spaghetti or start listing the major componenets in the body of the card such as steak and potatoes. Do not get any more detailed yet. We will get to that in a minute.

For each of these, interview your family and find out what their additions are and include them. I know you probably know what most of them are, but ask anyway. You could be surprised at some of the responses.

You may have enough by that alone to fill up your cards with meals ideas.

Memories and Comfort Foods

When you were growing up, what meals did you use to eat often? I bet there are several that you have not thought about in a long time. Add them to your meal ideas.

Also add your comfort foods from childhood and now.

Now think about the holidays throughout the year. Do not bother to get a calendar or get to serious about this one. Just start by thinking about New Years Day. What are meals that you have eaten on New Year’s Day that you have enjoyed? Think about the next holiday you can remember and go through the year in your mind until you get to New Year’s Eve.  Do not include the entire Thanksgiving feast. But turkey, stuffing, and green beans would make a reasonable any time of the year meal to add to the stack.

What other food memories do you have that could give you a meal idea?

In Stock

Go to your refrigerator and see what is in there. Just looking at individual items, do you get more meal ideas? Head to your pantry cabinets next.

These are the meals you want to start with, to make use of the things you already have available.

Dinner Tonight

If you feel you do not have the time to make your cards in one sitting, how about filling out a cards each night to include what was on your plate? Even if you eat out. Many times you could be making similar fare at home.

Finish The Card

You already have a great start. You could take what you have and plan a month’s worth of dinners. If you have put these meal ideas in a notebook, you are done for the day.

To take it to the second step, sit back down with your pen and look at each one of your meal cards. If you take a minute now to really fill up the card with everything you need for that meal, you will be able to make your grocery lists in less than five minutes without forgetting anything!

For example, typically when I fix spaghetti I need the pasta noodles, stuff for the sauce, mushrooms, onions, Italian sausage, parmesan cheese and bread with parmesan, butter, garlic salt and italian spices plus all the stuff for a side salad. So I add everything to the Spaghetti card. Now I do not have to think at all about what I will need from the grocery any other time I decide to make spaghetti for dinner.

If you need to use the back of the card, put an arrow in the lower corner to remind yourself later. Leave space on the back if you can. It is a great place to later write in variations like ‘instead of this use that’.

Just think about how many minutes of your life you will gift yourself by taking the time to think it out well this one time!

Plan the Week

Pick any seven cards. You have a week worth of home made meals AND your grocery list ready for the week! If you have done 30 cards, you have meal ideas to carry you for the entire month! Now you can leisurely add more cards to the stack.

image credit: top image and feature/teaser thumbnail: {239} menu planning by jen_maiser