Friday, October 16, 2009

Meal Planning

I have to admit, my biggest struggle with homemaking is meal planning. Anyone sympathize? It's not that I mind cooking, or even that I'm bad at it (I think I'm a decent cook), it's just I don't like to think about food until I'm hungry and by that time, well, it's just too late to plan. So, for all of those interested, I thought I'd share my plan of attack.

I came up with a general meal plan that gives me some structure, but allows for some creativity. I'll just talk about dinners for now. Here's my plan:
Sunday - crockpot
Monday - Italian
Tuesday - potatoes
Wednesday - beans
Thursday - leftovers
Friday - Mexican
Saturday - rice
Then, one day a week I pick out exactly what we'll be having for each night, write up my grocery list and go shopping. I think having a little structure to work with will help me think of things to make and yet still have options so we're not eating the same thing each week. Also, this helps me to see what types of things I can stock up on, seeing we'll be eating them each week (ie. rice, potatoes, etc.)

I started to put this plan into action... today. So, we'll see how it goes. :)

6 comments:

Lyd said...

I can sympathize on the planning part, though I have gotten much better. For me a hired chef would be fun. I just don't like cooking enough to spend so much time prepping, preparing, etc., to just quick eat it up. I started doing menus to help make my grocery shopping more productive. My challenge is healthy yet affordable yet tasty. We have trained our kids to not need "kid friendly" meals so thankfully don't have to worry about that.

You have a good idea going. That sounds similar to what Heidi B. does. I like organizingjunkie.com Monday Menu Plan. A bunch of people post their menus for the week. I get different ideas/recipes.

Anyways--Happy cooking!

Crystal Carr said...

Thanks - I'll check out that website. I also like www.allrecipes.com. You can look up any recipe and leave comments about what you liked about it or changed. You can see what others have written about it to help determine if you want to try it or not. I just found out today that you can type in the ingredients you have and it'll give you recipes using those ingredients - haven't tried that feature yet.

Yes, we've tried to feed our son "real" food, as much as he can handle. So far so good :)

Andrea said...

Hi Crystal,

glad to have found your blog! Sounds like you have a great plan going. This is a challenge for me too. I try to plan out one or two weeks ahead. I find some recipes on cooks.com or other places too. It gets harder when your kids get older and start to have 'preferences' or favorites.

Jill said...

Not to bombard you with another website, but have you heard of supercook.com? It's a neat website, where you type in every single ingredient you have in your kitchen, and it brings up thousands upon thousands of recipes that you can make with things you already have on hand! They feature recipes not only from allrecipes.com, but a whole slew of other websites as well. I've put in a few ingredients that I could remember off the top of my head, but I really hope to utilize that feature a lot more in the future.

I went through my freezer today searching for my sage sausage - it was, of course, waaay in the back. I was surprised to find some things in there that I didn't know I had! Like an 8 oz. bag of shredded cheese. How handy! I was all out of cheddar.

Anyway....I hope you're having a good weekend at your relatives!

Eva Lemmon..? said...

Wow, you guys have a lot of space going on. I'm glad you've all settled in. Hannah is so big!
all the best. :)

Evie

Crystal Carr said...

Hi Evie,

We're doing well - thanks! Enjoyed seeing your pics on fb!