Menu Planning

I've mentioned Flylady a few times, I think. I'm sure I'll write a post eventually dedicated only to Flylady stuff, but this one is specifically about one part of my life that has changed as a direct result of becoming a Flybaby. I used to just write a general grocery list of the basics, not worrying about what I was going to make. I figured I had most of the ingredients to make a few good meals, and it usually worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, we'd end up running to the store quite often because we were still missing one or two ingredients. So, starting to plan my meals ahead of time has been awesome.

I actually started doing this after I saw Leanne Ely's Saving Dinner sample menu's, and realizing that would help me tremendously. I have a couple of menu's written up and saved in my documents, but it proved to be too much work to keep making those great big ol' lists over and over again, and I never wanted the same one twice (especially since I'm always experimenting with something, and if I try to add an experimental meal to the list and it turns out disgusting, I have to find something to replace it with...and it's just more trouble than it's worth).

So, I came up with a system half way in between the big, elaborate meal plan and the fly by the seat of my pants (and make a few extra runs to the grocery store in between shopping trips) systems. I'm going to walk you through my little system, just in case it helps. Actually, I'm going to walk you through what I did last time, since it changes a little every time, and I liked the most recent grocery shopping trip so much.

The first thing I did was peek around in the cupboards to see what we already have that could make meals we both like. For example, we have tons of leftover tuna and cream of mushroom soup, along with a few bags of pasta. Viola, quick and easy tuna casserole. We have plenty of kidney beans and some cornmeal. So, chili and cornbread would be a great meal to have. I went through like this, adding the name of each meal until I had 30 meals (but as I mentioned in my earlier post, I usually only do 14 meals).

For each meal, I then write down how much of each ingredient we need. It looks like this:
Most of the meals are pretty self explanatory (for instance, we bought those taco meal kits that have everything in them except meat and produce, so I didn't break those out into ingredients). I usually only write down the ones where I'm changing the menu to conserve (like, corn chowder usually uses 2 cans of cream of potato soup and 2 cans of evaporated milk, but I figured we could cut it in half and have sandwiches with it this time). I wouldn't do this if I were the only one cooking, but if Jason decides to cook (like he did tonight...well, I kinda decided for him, but he could have said no), he needs to know what ingredients I planned for him to use. Sometimes he'll grab twice as much of an ingredient than he needs, and we don't have enough for another meal.

Anyway, I don't necessarily write down every ingredient for every meal, but I at least mentally make this list for each meal. While I'm doing this, I make my grocery list (I'd been working on it the whole time, actually, but this is the step where I double and triple check that I have everything on the list). Then I check my master grocery list (another flylady suggestion), and I'm done.

Before dinner that night, I make sure the list of ingredients, and a complete list of all the meals I have planned for that [month, bi-week, or week] are on the fridge. I'm pretty new still to the coupon thing, but so far, this is the part where I grab coupons, and I'll add any good coupons to my grocery list, and grab any coupons I think might come in handy while I'm out. Then I'm off to the store!