I implemented the lessons learned about menu planning today! Yonea shared many great ideas....some I already had in practice, but some of her ideas were new to me.
Here are some of Yonea's tips.
1. Shop every two weeks.
2. Use a four column page to plan your menus for two weeks. The headings of the columns are: Breakfast, Lunch, Supper, Your Schedule.
3. Fill out the Your Schedule column first. Make note of the days you will be out of the home and the times. That way you won't plan a meal that requires 1 hour of prep time on a day that you won't be home from some activity until 5:30 PM!
4. Make a list of the supper meals that your family likes to eat. Divide these into 3 categories--fast prep, budget friendly, time consuming. When you fill in the suppers on your planning sheet, you will have meals to choose from that fit your day.
5. Plan to serve the same type meals for breakfast and lunch each day. Yonea shared her plan...again the menus reflected the days that she needed to leave the home early for appointments, and days that needed a sack lunch (for co ops, etc.). She serves muffins on Mondays, cereal on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, eggs and toast on Thursdays, convenience foods (Pop Tarts, bars, etc.) on Fridays, a big breakfast on Saturdays, and pancakes, waffles or French Toast on Sundays. I looked at our daily schedule, and I made a breakfast and lunch plan for us as well. On the mornings that I run, I planned easy breakfasts like cereal and pop tarts, on the other mornings, I planned things that I need to cook. She suggested we make a similar meal schedule for lunch. Lunches are harder for me. I don't want to stop teaching school to fix lunch, and my girls don't want to stop their schoolwork either. I am planning pasta with sauce or Ranch dressing, leftovers, PBJ, quick pizzas made on bread, and tortilla roll-ups.
6. After you have made your list, shop in your pantry, freezer, and refrigerator first. This prevents you from buying items you already have, and reminds you of what meals you have previously frozen that you can put on your menu.
I had gotten out of the habit of posting my weekly menu for my family to see. I have been just writing it in my personal planner. Today, I made my two week menu plan, and I taped both pages inside our pantry door.
Now, I am off to Kroger!
I quit posting my menus after I never seemed to cook anything that was on the menu :( I'm working on coordinating better our activities with meals. I cooked a big pot of spaghetti sauce and meatballs tonight purposely cooking enough to freeze. I really need to put things together on the weekends, so that I can just remove them from the fridge and cook. Weeknights are nuts around here...and everybody's schedule is different.
ReplyDeleteI needed to hear the part about disciplining myself to exercise as well. I ordered Jillian Michaels' The Shred and my neighbor and I are supposed to start on Monday. I know how much better I will feel once I get back into the routine...but it's so hard to get started!!
Thanks for the menu planning tips. I need all the help I can get :)
Hey Roan, my bread recipe is from the Bread Machine Cookbook (1991) and it's called whole wheat oatmeal bread. I made the large loaf which really makes two loafs. 1&1/3 c water, 3 Tbs butter, 1 egg, 3 Tbs sugar, 1 tsp salt, 2/3 c oats, 1/3 c wheat germ, 1 c whole wheat flour, 3 c bread flour, 2&1/2 tsp yeast in that order. Dough cycle then separated into 2 loaf pans, let rise another hour then baked 30 min at 350. I'm sure it should work in the bread machine, I was just having trouble with it that way so am doing it this way for now.
ReplyDeleteWe will do Sonlight 3/4 next year. This year my 6 yr old was too young for Core 6 so I was trying to juggle her school with the others. I'm thrilled that all 3 school age kids will do the same core next year. We've also planned a trip to Washington DC and maybe Virginia in the spring around cherry blossom time. We'll do Core 5 the next year and go to China. I'm so excited about that I can hardly wait!