I imagine if I lived in provincial France I would wake with the sun, and after milking my family cow and churning fresh butter, I would don my beret and poodle skirt and ride my bike over rustic dirt roads and cobblestone village streets to the marché. There I would select the freshest and localest produce for sale before continuing to the boulangerie for pain frais, the boucher for le veau, and finish out my morning outing with purchases at the fromagerie and the fleuriste.
I would load my brown-paper packages tied up with string into the basket of my bike, fresh flowers on top, and whistle my way home, winding through the countryside with the glittering Eiffel Tower winking on the horizon, reading to enjoy a simple, in-season dinner of only the finest artisan ingredients.
If any of my dear American readers experience grocery shopping and meal planning this way, you may skip this irrelevant post and try back tomorrow.
Here on my planet, feeding a family of six some semblance of a healthy diet without losing my mind requires a little more planning and efficiency.
6 Steps to Being a Rockstar Menu Planner
(Many thanks to Like Mother, Like Daughter for this general method of culinary sanity. Everything I know about meal planning I learned from my mother and Auntie Leila.)
The first thing you are going to do is brainstorm a list of every dinner you can think of that your family likes (we'll get to breakfast and lunch later). It's helpful if you have recipes on hand that you've enjoyed: in a 3x5 box, online, scribbled on scraps in a junk drawer somewhere. Find all those and list the names of the ones you actually like or think you might like. Don't bother including meal ideas your family doesn't like (finicky toddlers excepted).
Make this list in 3 columns: Main Dishes, Vegetable Sides, and Starch Sides. I aim for one protein (that's the main dish), one starch (bread, potatoes, rice, pasta), and two vegetables for each dinner. Sometimes, of course, a casserole combines several elements in one dish.
Also include in your list "concept recipes"--ideas that make a meal that are too simple to write down a recipe. For example, my list includes "spaghetti," "burritos," "dinner salad with chicken/hard-boiled eggs/ham."
Include respectable meals you toss together when you don't know what else to do. The goal here is not gourmet every day. The goal is reasonably varied, balanced meals without compromising your sanity or spending an inordinate amount of daily time thinking about the subject.
Be thorough with your brainstorming. Don't move on to Step 2 until you've really exhausted all your ideas. The point is to do all your thinking now, up front, preventing the need to think at the witching hour when the household is hungry and noisy and cranky.
2. Get real.
When you have compiled your thorough 3-columned list, it's time to honestly assess your life.
Maybe you work every day from 9 to 5. Maybe you have lots of free time in the afternoons. Maybe you have lots of free time until the afternoons, when your kids come home from school. Maybe you have a different schedule on different days of the week.
If you're me, you're busy, but home, early in the day, and wiped out and frazzled by 3. What this means is that I'm capable of putting something in the crockpot (that's Step 0, by the way: if you don't have a crockpot, buy one today) in the morning or at lunchtime, but I become incapable of productivity in the afternoon, regaining that capability after naptime.
Thus, any dish that requires more than half an hour but less than 6 hours got crossed off my list. It's just not realistic to think I'm going to spend precious quiet time putting together a casserole in the afternoon.
But! I've realized with a little finagling, more dishes than I originally thought can fit in my parameters. Meatloaf can be cooked in the crockpot; the oven temperature for many casseroles can be cranked up to cook in 30 minutes.
So if you, like me, have a time frame that just doesn't work, delete those entries that fall in that category.
Part of your life assessment should include picking a dinner time and sticking to it. Work or other requirements may necessitate occasional alterations, but a set time for dinner a) makes meal planning way simpler, b) is healthy for your biorhythm, c) helps your family know what to expect, which calms little ones, and helps big one know when to come in from playing.
We eat at 6:00, so I know what I need to be doing every day at 5:30. Rhythm is good for the body and good for the home. Plus I know I can eat a snack at 3:30.
3. Compile your Master Lists.
Using my handy-dandy and oh-so-high-tech printable below, or any other spreadsheet program you like, or the app that I'm sure my husband will make for this someday when we have approximately infinitely more free time than we do now, create 3 Master Lists: one for Main Dishes, one for Vegetable Sides, and one for Starch Sides.
(If the preview picture doesn't appear, click HERE for the printable.)
Use as many pages as necessary. I have about 6 pages of Main Dishes, stapled together into a packet. You don't need that many. If you only have one page, that's still a different meal every day for a couple of weeks.
I have significantly fewer side dishes listed. These are also stapled together into Vegetable and Starch packets.
How to fill out and use the chart:
Dish: Name only of the recipe or concept. Full recipes are located elsewhere, in my case, in a 3x5 box.
Timing: Since I only prepare my dinners early in the day or immediately before we eat, I simply write "AM" or "PM," or, for a few, "AM or PM."
If you are using more varied times of day to cook, then write the time the dish needs to be started in order to be ready at your designated dinner hour. Then when you're scanning your list every week, you don't choose a "3:00" recipe for a day you have karate until 4.
Type: Not as essential, but nice to have a few general categories so you don't inadvertently eat Mexican all week, or if you get a hankering for Indian food. My categories include Italian, Chinese, Casserole, Soup (handy when the weather turns cold), and Grill (handy round about Memorial Day).
Ingredients: This is not by any means an exhaustive list. Many of mine are blank. However, certain recipes of mine call for ingredients that I sometimes find I have on hand and don't know what to do with--things like sour cream, cooked chicken, leftover cooked vegetables, tomato paste, broth, or greens from the farm box.
Thus, if I make something that uses half of one of those little cans of tomato paste, I plan some other dish that needs the other half. Listing a few odd ingredients is very helpful in this regard.
4. Think about those other things.
The astounding and sometimes exasperating truth about the humans in your household is that they want to eat every day, multiple times a day!
So, the rockstar menu planner needs to consider breakfast, lunch, and possibly snacks too.
The good news is, these things are way simpler than dinner. And you can get away with fewer vegetables.
Mindy's easy peasy method of planning the Other Meals:
Think of what you like to eat for breakfast and what you can realistically prepare for breakfast. (If you want to make your mother proud, include a serving a fruit every day.) (hi Mom!)
Next, rank these breakfast menus in order of preference, alternate days, and bingo! You have a weekly breakfast menu. Thus, at our house:
Sunday: Reheated pancakes & fruit
Monday: Cereal & toast & fruit
Tuesday: Pancakes & fruit
Wednesday: Cereal & toast & fruit
Thursday: Scrambled eggs & sweet bread (or jelly on toast) & fruit
Friday: Cereal & toast & fruit
Saturday: Pancakes & fruit
I like pancakes. 4-year-olds can make cereal. Those are pretty much the driving principles behind our breakfast schedule.
Sleepy tummies don't notice that they're eating the same thing for breakfast every other day.
Now repeat the process for lunch. Thus,
Sunday: Jason's famous omelets & muffins
Monday: PBJ
Tuesday: Grilled cheese
Wednesday: PBJ
Thursday: Grilled cheese
Friday: PBJ
Saturday: Mindy's whim
(To impress your mother at lunch, also add a fruit AND vegetable every day. I find we usually have some leftover vegetables, or carrot sticks will do.)
Truly, although this lunch schedule is in my head (and you should write out your breakfast and lunch days until they become habit), it's really a fallback plan, because I prioritize eating leftovers from dinner. A definite perk of homeschooling is a homemade hot lunch.
At our house, cereal or fruit are the usual snacks (certainly never leftover birthday cake), which are things we have on hand for meals anyway. But in the past we had a child who couldn't survive without those tiny boxes of individual-serving raisins. If you have a special snack need, take note.
Which brings us to our next list, Weekly Staples.
4. Write out the usuals.
This is where you write out all the items you need to have every single week, as well as the quantities your family requires to get you through to the next shopping day. My system assumes once-a-week grocery trips. (A second mid-week quick trip for fresh perishables is not unreasonable, but it is more complicated. I don't do it.)
Unless you love going to the supermarket every day or live in provincial France, don't complicate your life by shopping less than thoroughly.
My Weekly Staple list is this:
4 gallons milk
3 big cartons eggs
3 loaves sandwich bread
Fruit
Shredded cheese
Tub margarine
3 packs bagels
Pull-Ups
Cereal
I don't always need to buy as much as is listed, but I make sure I buy enough so that I start out the week with the listed quantities.
By now you have:
1. Brainstormed all the meals you enjoy into one list.
2. Decided on a dinner time and realistically assessed your cooking capabilities during this season of your life.
3. Compiled master lists of main dishes and sides, including a few helpful planning notes.
4. Written out repeating breakfast and lunch schedules.
and
5. Made a Weekly Staples list.
The only thing left is to...
6. Commit to a weekly sit-down.
The day before or the day of your designated grocery day, sit down in the kitchen with
-Your master packets,
-Your box of recipes,
-Coupons if you have any,
-Pen and paper or high-tech list device, or both.
Start by making a very technical week outline, like so:
 |
| Decorative mini pumpkins not required. |
Archaic though it is, posting a physical list on the fridge of the week's menu means a) you can look at it without touching your phone with messy hands, and b) your kids can delight themselves in anticipating (/dreading) upcoming meals. Or at least they can gleefully brag that they know what's for dinner.
Then you check your calendar and mark days when dear friends or Grandma is feeding you, or when you're bringing something specific to a potluck. Thus:
"OYO" means "on your own," which is a nice way of saying that I'm going somewhere that evening and I'm not feeding my husband and children before I go.
That leaves 6 days to plan for. Through much trial and error, I have learned that two nights a week of leftovers works best for us. So pick your leftover nights and add that to the schedule:
Now we have 4 nights left. And this is where you taste the sweet fruit of all your labors in steps 1-5, which are time-consuming, but, after all, one-time investments, which are about to pay off!
Now you pick up your Master Main Dish Packet and start browsing, choosing anything that jumps out at you as particularly appetizing.
At this point, I do usually scribble some notes on the back of last week's menu sheet.
Burritos are so easy, which would be good this weekend... then the weather's getting colder so some more hearty or hot meals would be good... I had a craving this week for broccoli au gratin... and I went to a potluck recently where I didn't notice the tasty-looking raw cauliflower and dip until it was too late...
I usually decide on main dishes first, then sides that coordinate well with them, and then decide which day is best for which meal, at which point I can write it a little more neatly on my official schedule.
For example, I want to eat the salad--which doesn't keep well--early in the week. The rolls can be frozen until I need them. And I think it's supposed to be cold on Monday, so: soup.
(Note: I know at a glance whether a menu requires a crockpot preparation or not, but if you're planning a more complicated system of starting at various times, I suggest figuring out what time you need to start dinner each day and marking that time clearly next to each day on your meal schedule.)
Now you dig out any recipes you'll need. Then you carefully go down the schedule you just made, referring to recipes if needed, and make your grocery list. This is why you do this sitting in the kitchen, so you can check your fridge as you work down the list. Add every ingredient you need for every dish for the week to your list.
When you've finished that, walk back to the fridge, on the side of which you have posted your Weekly Staples list, and add as many staples to your grocery list as necessary (be sure to specify the quantity when you write it on your grocery list).
Lastly, flip through any coupons you have and see if you have anything that matches an item you just put on your grocery list. If you find one, walk it to your wallet right now and stick it on top of your credit card so you'll see it as you go to pay.
Voila! Done and done. Triumphantly post your week's meal plan on the front of the fridge and view it often. No more thought is required on this subject for a whole week. Every day you look at your plan and just do what it says. You won't be wondering if you can serve sweet potatoes with shepherd's pie at 5:45. You won't forget you bought squash blossoms to serve with your steak.
In a word, you will be.... a rockstar.
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