Meal Planning 101: So Now What???

So...I'm sure you read my last two posts on meal planning and may be thinking at this point "Okay - so you have your hoity-toity plan and are going to run with it but where does this leave me!?"

It leaves you in a perfect place to start!!!

Disclaimer: (aka - Carol gets off track!!)
I am NOT the queen of organization that you might think I am. Maybe I shouldn't remove that impression - you may lose faith in me. But my reality is that I am the single mother of two VERY BUSY toddlers. My daughter is far more adventurous than most 2 year old girls i've seen. While other girls her age are playing Pretty-Pretty-Princess and babies and cooking and reading my girl is doing something different. She is climbing the stairs on the WRONG side of the bannister, then standing on the top step till she has her balance and securing herself there by holding onto the ceiling with one hand and waving the other hand around to taunt me....or jumping from the top of her Little Tykes Car bed to the floor while holding scissors she just scaled the dresser to get....or she is standing on the tray of the high chair trying to reach the mantle so she can dangle from it....oh and defeating child safety locks.

Her little brother spends his days imitating. Trying to figure out how to do everything she does. This leaves no time for organization since my kids only nap in the car. Short of parking my car IN my living room to blog (And I think my dad would frown upon the GIANT car shaped hole that would cause...) I have to write most posts at night while they are sleeping.

Wow I am so off topic!!! See - No organization :) I promise!!

Tips for making meal planning manageable: (aka - Back to the subject at hand!)

*Try to meal plan at the same time each week. If this isn't possible then try to at least do it in the same way each week so that you can kind of make it routine. Don't they say you have to do something 7 times to make it habit? Or is it 70? If it's 70 I am in such sad shape!!

*Create a system and stick to it for at least a few weeks to see if it works for you. If it doesn't or you hate it, dump it and start over or revise the parts you hate. Like Francesca Battistelli says "It's your life, What you gonna do? The World is watching you." If not the world - at least your children are watching you. No kids? YOU are watching you. :)

*If you have older kids, age 5 and older, you might want to start giving each child a dinner night. Let the child plan that night, choose a recipe & handle all cooking & preparation and clean up (or you can farm the clean up out to another child) This accomplishes a few things...
--It's less work for you.
--It teaches responsibility.
--It teaches Independance
--It allows your child the chance to learn something NEW.
I plan to start this with the girl when she turns 5. I already let her cook with me sometimes. Depending on how adventurous she is.

*Try to create a system so that each week isn't a rebuilding of everything from the bottom up. Don't try to re-engineer the mouse trap. If you have a system then there is very little work involved each week.

Steps to Creating a system:

1. Decide what is important to you. Do you want to have nutritionally balanced meals? Do you want to try to expose your kids to cuisine from other countries once a week? For me - it was important to increase our nutrition and diversity of eating as well as to build memories. That is why I want to cook one fancy meal a month so my kids can say "Growing up our mom really worked hard at least once a month to make us a REAL Feast!" It's a memory - a small sacrifice of just a few extra hours - I'm weird that way.

2. Write it down. I hate to write. I type everything. I write painfully slow and messy. I type 140 wpm and typewritten text is NORMALLY legible unless you choose an ugly font. I typed it up in Excel.

3. Try to figure out some categories. PERSONALLY I would limit it to 7-10 categories, MAYBE 14 if you want a fancy rotation...
Here are some to get you started:
*Make Ahead Meals
*Crockpot Creations (what? C'mon - you gotta have creativity ;) )
*Sandwich night
*Make your own night (mini pizza, taco, burrito, salad, potato, sandwich, Pasta)
*Beef
*Chicken
*Pork
*Meatless
*Pizza
*Seafood/Fish
*Brinner
*Make your own Takeout
*Movie Night
*Salad
*Soup
*Leftover roulette
*Pre-packaged night. (Wanchai Ferry, Stouffer, Birdseye, Pizza Rolls, Bagel Bites. These are our friends)
*Ethnic Night (Try a dish from a new cuisine - Mexican, Italian, French, Ethiopian, Argentinian, Chilean, Brasilian, Portuguese etc)
*Geography night - This is borrowed from a friend of mine who did this with her son when she was homeschooling. When she taught him American Geography they covered 3-4 states a weekish. They learned all about the state, drew the flag, etc. etc. and also learned about the culture in each state. Her son was 4th grade at the time. Part of learning about the culture was learning one recipe that was native to that state or consumed a lot in that state. Ex. - Chess Pie originated in TN. - Nebraska could be a corn dish, Idaho could be potato dish, etc. There are 52 weeks in the year and 50 states. You could easily have the last two weeks as weeks to redo your favorites. As an added bonus - if you homeschool or just want to enrich your child's learning you could have them research a little about the state and then you could have a fun quiz type game of Alabama trivia after dinner. Could be fun!!! Please let me know if you try it :)

4. Remember you don't have to do it all at once. Figure out your categories then find recipes, or let it rest a bit. Avoid becoming overwhelmed :) If you are overwhelmed - you won't finish it!

5. Find your recipes or write them down. Try finding recipes that fit each category you chose and sticking links to them in an excel spreadsheet or a google docs spreadsheet. (docs.google.com) !!! You can add to it gradually. - - If you have lists of recipes then you don't have to pull them out of your brain when you plan for the week. You can just go to the spreadsheet and say "Hmm what sounds good this week??" then copy & paste into a word document or something before you print it :)

6. Try making some test menus - here are some of mine:

Week 1:
Brinner - Pancakes & Sausage
Salad - Beef & orange salad
Chicken - Creamy Crunchy Strawberry Chicken
Pork - Pomegranate-citrus glazed pork chops
Beef - Chili Burgers with Guacamole
Meatless - Morning Star Farms
Pizza - Homemade 1/2 Buffalo Chicken & 1/2 BBQ Chicken Pizza

Week 2:
Brinner - French Toast, bacon, fruit salad
Salad - Chicken Fajita salad
Chicken - Crockpot cranberry chicken
Chicken - salsa chicken
Beef - pot roast
Meatless - beans & rice
Seafood - Shrimp Linguini

These are not my actual meal plans. The first one sounds pretty good though. I might go with that.
If you use a spreadsheet you could use the fill option to change the background color of each cell once you've used the recipe. Or maybe you want to denote "Hey - i really LOVED that recipe - let's do it again in a few weeks!" You don't have to have 52 chicken recipes or 52 beef recipes. You could do 12 of each or 4 of each and rotate. The important thing is that it's planned.

Chicken is $1.99 a lb at Kroger in my area this week - feasibly you could just do chicken 7 nights a week since it's cheap!!!

Does this help? SO sorry it got so long. :/ Opinions?

Meal Planning 101: The Why's

Welcome back to another Meal Planning 101. I have been in deep thought about meal planning for several weeks and after flying by the seat of my pants for the past few weeks I just can't do it anymore! I LOVE having my meals totally planned out so I have decided that drastic times call for drastic measures.

I want to plan my meals for an entire year.


No, no, don't run away from my post.

Come back here! It's not that scary I promise!

If you think about it then it will make a whole lot of sense!! Please bear with the crazy lady for just a few minutes while I explain to you how I came up with this...

and I'm not going to try to sit down with a calender and write out 365 meals in a row and be able to tell you that on September 22nd we will be eating Pizza. Give me a break! I'm weird, not insane ;)

I realized that our diet lacks diversity...I have realized that some weeks I end up serving a lot of pasta or a lot of rice or a lot of red meat etc. and my kids are sort of picky about some things. The girl doesn't like rice but does like pasta. Doesn't really like sauce - she wants to dip her pasta in her own sauce like you would with dressing and carrots. The boy HATES pasta. He will eat it RARELY.
He's okay with rice.


*I need to eat healthier. I want to be sure I set a good example for my kids of what to eat.
*I'd like to ensure i'm eating 1 salad a week.
*I'd like to ensure we are eating 1 meatless meal a week.
*I'd like to be sure we are not having red meat more than once a week
*I want to COOK a fanci-fied meal (Turkey & dressing and such) once a month for my babies.
*I want my kids to learn to appreciate a diverse spread of food.
*I want to be able to plan well in advance what i'm having.
*I don't want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen.
*I want to try new stuff.



I hardly EVER eat salad and I am tired of feeling horrible all the time from carrying around excess weight. I want to make it clear here that I am NOT going on a diet, I do not diet. I change my eating habits. If I want candy then I will eat candy! Is it really gonna hurt anyone for me to start eating better? Do I care what others think about this? Conditionally yes. I care what you think :) Because I love you :) I don't care what random people on the street think ;)


SO that sounds overwhelming but here is what I did.


I listed out all categories that I wanted to serve food from.
At first I had categories like this:

Casseroles
Crockpot
special family stuff (Like my upcoming princess & the frog movie night with my princess and frog)

Then I decided that still didn't help me so I ditched it...I put down what was actually important to me...and how often I wanted to have them.

When I was thinking about it I decided on these categories and frequencies:
Fancy Meals - 12 a year. (could be ham, turkey, whatever, just a NICE fancy, elaborate FEAST)
Salads - 1 a week. (52 a year)
Meatless meal - 1 a week (52 a year)
Brinner (Breakfast for Dinner!) 1 a week (52 a year)
Beef - 1 a week (52 a year)
Seafood - 2x monthly (26 a year) (I have problems with ecologically irresponsible fisherpeople & am VERY picky about seafood)
Pizza - 2x monthly (26 a year)
Pork - 30x a year (roughly 1 x weekly for 70% of the year...Not a huge pork fan)
Chicken - 63x a year (1x weekly but 11 weeks I will have it twice...this also includes turkey/poultry)


I know there is some overlap. Pizza might have chicken on it or hamburger or the salad might be meatless and you know what? It's my dinner! It's OKAY to have two meatless nights :) And it's okay if I have salad two nights in a week etc. :) Because I am queen of this here castle!!!!

I realized something. If I have breakfast for dinner once a week (it's cheaper than regular food ya'll) That's always going to have a spot on my menu! so I stuck him in my chart under Day 1.

If I have one salad a week, he always has a placemat too - BAM! Day 2!!
Same with meatless, Beef and chicken.

I know fish is recommended once a week but I worry about ecofriendly fishing and sustainability and mercury levels so I halved that. Sue me ;) We also love love love pizza but it's not healthy to eat pizza twice a week like we do when mommy is in a rut! well, that means that I can alternate them or if I want pizza two weeks in a row that's fine but that means i'll have seafood two weeks in a row some other time.

Everything else takes up the last day. The last day of the week will EITHER be a chicken, pork or fancy dinner....

If I fill in a sample week this is what it looks like:

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5	Day 6	Day 7
Brinner	Salad	Meatless	Beef	Chicken	seafood/pizza	fancy/chicken/pork
Pancakes	Chicken Caesar	Red Beans & Rice	Burgers	Grilled Chicken	Tuna Burgers	Caramel Apple Pork Chops

HTML Tables

Will I eat this in that order? Likely not. But that gives me 7 days worth.
Also - Chicken really represents poultry since I might have turkey Meat loaf instead of chicken on one of those days ;)

So I can come up with everything one at a time OR I can come up with meals in advance.

I am working on a listing of recipes that i'll be pulling from throughout the year for my charts and will hopefully have at least a months worth ready.

One of the other nice things about this will be being able to surf the meat sales. Whatever meat is on sale..I can just go to my list, and buy it and use it.

Please tell me what you think of this. I just LOVE this idea - it makes things SO EASY for me, like a plug & play kinda deal - you know? The really awesome thing is you could just adapt it to your families needs. If you have a family that is vegetarian then maybe you still do Morningstar Farms burgers so you could designate one night a burger night, one night an international night and try recipes from all different countries! (ooo that sounds exciting!) one night a pasta night (Is there vegan pasta?)

I am sure that some folks will see this as too rigid, but maybe if you have 14 categories you can rotate every two weeks or something.

The beauty of this is...I don't have to have 52 different Brinner recipes. I could have 10 and rotate those.

I actually have around 20 in my list that I will be posting to help you guys out with meal planning.

What are your favorite RESOURCES for meal planning? Where do you get your recipes?

Meal Planning 101

When it comes to planning meals do you feel like Betty Crocker or Amelia Bedelia? Honey, the Amelia Bedelia corner is right over here, I am FAR from Betty Crocker!!!


One of the things I struggle with in a VERY real way is meal planning!! I can cook and make delicious food and I can bake and I can make candy (I have a side business selling homemade marshmallows for crying out loud!) but if I have to actually sit down and plan what meals we are going to eat I become panicked and sweaty and start looking for a way out!!

IF I actually make a meal plan I NORMALLY stick to it and will do okay for a few weeks but then something happens and I quit meal planning. Oh sure I SAY It's just for that week but we all know the truth - it will be 4 months later and i'll be sitting there on top of Mount Unprepared (it's in the country Not-organized-at-all-ia)



I tried to do things like Crystal over at money saving mom. (She plans breakfasts, lunches, snacks, dinners, EVERYTHING!) I have discovered that I don't have ....SQUIRREL.......





... the attention span :D

(If you don't get the Squirrel reference - go to your nearest Redbox and rent UP by Pixar with a free code from the left sidebar of my blog :) You'll get it then!)

So I've done some thinking about why I think I have a hard time meal planning....


I get overwhelmed
I'm stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut!!
I can't focus
I'm stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut!!

I am bad at organization
I'm stuck in a rut...er okay ;) you get that picture.
I don't have a lot of time
I have two small children.


What are your reasons meal planning doesn't work? You can share them here or just think about them on your own....



So taking all of that into consideration I can look at that list as a lot of excuses OR I can look at that list as a lot of reasons WHY I SHOULD plan my meals better. Right? Let's look at a few...


I am overwhelmed when I have to whirl about at 3:55 every day to try to figure out what i'm going to cook.


I am stuck in a rut nutritionally and i'm being a bad mother by not providing the awesome array of foods that my children should be privledge to!

I might not be able to focus due to lack of a vitamin because i haven't eaten a variety of food!

I should PRACTICE organization to get better at it instead of never learning!

I'm short on time...Well then i SURELY should plan - right?

I have two small children who i'm sure would appreciate a calmer mother at meal time.



As I said...I'd love to say that when I plan meals that I plan breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks etc. Oh heavens no, my friends!! I ONLY plan dinner because breakfast is always on the fly - i ALWAYS have breakfast food in the house (25 boxes of cereal and still going strong ya'll) I could have an entire elementary school over for snacks and have some left over....and lunch is left overs so.....dinner is all that needs planning!!


Breakfast is pretty standard around here, we have either:
eggs , toast, fruit and yogurt (once a week maybe bacon)
dry cereal and fruit with milk in our sippy cups...(you don't use sippy cups? I do...i'm super messy ;) )
Pancakes and fruit and milk
french toast, fruit and milk (french toast for the kids is eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, whole wheat whole grain bread.... no syrup. then they get a fruit cup with it. They eat it all ;)
etc.

So I am going to start a mini-series about meal planning. I hope you will stick around if you have the same problem I do - I think I have this problem licked and I am super excited to share what I thought of with you!

Suuuuuuure I could stick this all in one post...but then YOU would be the one who is overwhelmed! I promise! :)

So do you struggle with planning meals or are you an ace at it? If you struggle can you share with me WHY you struggle? If you are Aces can you tell us HOW??? :)

Menu Plan Monday (The real edition!!)

Okay this is my real edition of menu plan Monday! I plan to actually legitimately plan my meals at the very least for my dinners - this is my first REAL attempt - i posted this earlier this week at least some of it so we'll see if i'm willing to stick to what i put before :)

Dinners:
Sunday - We had baked pasta (Rotini & spaghetti sauce, ricotta and mozzerella cheeses)
Monday - Peanut Butter Stir Fried Chicken , I'll be modifying it and adding brocolli and red peppers. I will also include brown rice with this.
Tuesday - Chicken caesar salad & some sort of canned soup
Wednesday - Black Beans & Rice
Thursday - morningstar farms burritos or nachos
Friday - Veggie Burgers
Saturday - Stuffed Mushrooms

Alternate meals for lunches or in case i decide to forgo my plan above:
left over pasta bake
Red beans & Rice
Extra Soup
Sandwiches
Linguini with home made alfredo sauce
BBQ Pizza

The really awesome thing is that this is just cooking out of my fridge, freezer and stockpile. I could forgo shopping for a very long time if I wanted to because I only cook for myself and my 1 year old picky toddler. FYI i always pick sides while i'm cooking. I am commitment phobic. :)

This is my first post on Menu Plan Monday with orgjunkie.com and hopefully I can keep it up and streamline at least a little piece of my life. :) More meal ideas are located here.

Edited to add in what i've actually had :)
Sunday - We had baked pasta (Rotini & spaghetti sauce, ricotta and mozzerella cheeses)
Monday - Left over baked pasta
Tuesday - Canned soup because I was getting sick.
Wednesday - Peanut Butter Stir Fried Chicken (YUM!)
Thursday - morningstar farms burritos or nachos
Friday - Veggie Burgers
Saturday - Stuffed Mushrooms
So thus far i've not stuck to even one day :)

I need to make a list of my recipes somewhere:
creamy crunchy strawberry chicken
pecan coated stuffed chicken
spinach stuffed chicken
chili rice nachos
chili
red beans and rice
stew
pot roast
bbq pork loin