menus-all you never wanted to know

Entropy asks at my smallthingswithgreatlove blog

"Hey, so do you plan a menu ahead of time?"

Yes, I do. It is *so* necessary for me. On the weeks that I don't we are too often doomed to the fast food thing. Planning menus saves me so much time and money. I am still perfecting what works best for me though. I have subscribed to different menus, like menu mailer, I have tried using other mom's menus, I have done once a month cooking...nothing has fit just right, so like so many things in life I am left trying to tweak my own thing. Either the menus use too many foods that I consider unhealthy (convenience foods, cream of ____ soups, etc.), have too many meals that my husband won't like (too sprouty, too many soup/salad dinners), or take too much time to prepare, etc. Part of the issue is that we pretty much eat all meals from home. My kids are home, I'm home, even when John is at work he takes lunch from home. And with the exception of occasional "Mom needs a light week so we are going to subside on convenience foods" weeks, I make most meals from scratch. My husband is extremely spoiled rotten when it comes to meals. It's ok. He reads my blog, and he knows I think he is spoiled rotten. But, he is a wonderful guy and this is important to him. He will regularly pretend not to notice my slipshod housekeeping, but he can only take so many meals from a box, so I make an effort. I feel like I spend a *lot* of time on meals- planning them, shopping for them, cooking them, cleaning them up...it gets a little....old. :) And this is coming from someone that generally *does* like to cook! But cooking three meals a day, seven days a week, at least 75% of the time with a toddler wrapped around your knees...it does lose it's charm.

I like to use mostly actual ingredients with few convenience foods, fresh foods when possible, cook with the seasons, have quick and easy things for lunch and breakfast, have at least one crockpot recipe a week for crazy, crazy Monday, and the rest of the week have dinners that will not take me more than 45 minutes to prepare from start to finish. A tall order for any menu, yes? A few things I have accomplished-

--I have a list of just a few meals for breakfast- oatmeal, eggs, and muffins/breads, that I switch around depending on whether John will be getting breakfast on his own (he has to leave the house at 6:15 on days he works) or will be home to have breakfast with us. I pass around the fruit bowl and milk/juice/or yogurt with breakfast too.

--Snacks-- For morning snack we pass around the "green bowl", a large bowl I keep some packaged things in, like granola bars, fruit snacks, graham crackers, etc. For afternoon snack we have started having "tea time"- a bit of homemade goodie (when it's not Lent! right now it's usually toast or bagels), hot tea, and a passing around of the fruit bowl . For bedtime snack I encourage cold cereal- it is quick to make, quick to eat, and filling for the picky eater who didn't get much dinner. Sometimes the kids will want popcorn instead. On Sundays we have sundaes for dessert. :)

--Lunches-- Lunch needs to be quick---like, on the table in 15 minutes, although I can do a little prep in the morning if needed. A person can only eat so many sandwiches. I have tried, with varying success, to have a type of meal assigned to each day. This helps narrow down my planning and streamlines things a bit and avoids too much repetition. We generally have salads on Monday, sandwiches on Tuesday, soup on Wednesday, spaghetti or raviolis on Thursdays, fish sticks or mac and cheese on Friday, quesadillas on Saturday, and clean out the fridge leftovers on Sunday. I have been trying really hard to remember to put out a plate of raw veggies and dip with whatever we are having for lunch as well.

Dinners- My favorite cookbook by far is Saving Dinner. It has a great variety of healthy but not too sprouty, seasonal, and relatively quick to prepare meals. I am in the process of weeding out my favorite ones for each season and making my own collection of dinner meals that I can rotate through and change out each season. The menus in this book also give a meatless meal for each week, a crockpot meal for each week, and often have a soup, sandwich, or salad recipe I can try for lunch. So, dinner changes up a lot, but we do have a few things set down- Friday, of course, is meatless. Saturday is pizza night. I make my own, which sounds really impressive but is actually scary-easy. I make the crust in the bread maker and everyone just tops their own. Sunday is breakfast-for-dinner, or "brinner" as we call it around here- this is when I will make the more time-consuming breakfast stuff like pancakes, waffles, etc., and I try to make enough to have leftovers for Monday's breakfast. Monday is crazy, crazy co-op day and I usually have a crockpot meal for that night. I also keep a "meal in a box" of some kind up in the pantry for those "everything has gone horribly wrong" days.

So, that's it, all you never wanted to know about meal planning. I post all of this because it took me a long time to get this system down,,,,and maybe something here will be of use to someone.

And least you bop on over to smallthingswithgreatlove to check out tomorrow's menu with great anticipation, you should know that I couldn't make my regular grocery shopping trip yesterday with Jack being sick and John working all weekend, so it'll be a "scramble for food" day for sure. :)