Small Slice

First of all, I wish you all could come to dinner, since my children are rarely as excited as you guys over my menu ;)

I get a lot of comments from people who can't seem to get a weekly menu going.  There are a couple of ways to approach this, all of which I have tried.  These ideas have all been borrowed from friends and experts, and since my brain is pretty much mush these days, I can't remember who told me what.  Speak up if I'm using one of your ideas, so I can give you appropriate credit!

1) Write your dinner down on a calendar, every day for a month (or six weeks) - at the end of the month, you will have a weekly plan already created.  You can just go back to the first week and repeat the sequence of dinners.  This is great if your family likes to have the same foods over and over, and you don't have a lot of time.

2) Have a general plan for your week, and then fill in the blanks.  For example: Monday, pasta.  Tuesday, chicken.  Wednesday, breakfast for dinner.  Thursday, crockpot.  Friday, ethnic night.  Saturday, pizza.  Sunday, casserole.  Use this same format every week, just changing out the dishes.  This works really well, because you can plan your shopping pretty easily.  It also works because you can plan around your schedule.  My Wednesdays and Fridays are hectic, so those days I try to keep dinner simple (or use the crockpot). 

3) Invest in a service like Leanne Ely's SavingDinner.com, and let someone else do the planning.  I enjoyed Leanne's recipes, but her menus didn't really meet my needs - I understand that she's added all sorts of new menus... worth a look-see.

4) Spend an hour and make a spreadsheet of all the foods you typically buy.  Put all the dairy together, all the frozen stuff, all the dry stuff, the produce, etc.  Okay, then you print it out, and put it in a sleeve protector and put it on your fridge.  As you are making up your menu, you use a highlighter pen on the sleeve, and mark off ingredients you will need.  Write in any special purchases, and off you go.  When you are done shopping, wipe the highlighter off with a damp cloth, and you can reuse your list again and again. 

5) Keep your budget in mind when planning - a large roast can be turned into sandwiches later in the week - barbecued chicken makes great chicken salad.  Steamed rice from one dinner can become fried rice the next day.  If you don't know what you're making from one night to the next, it can be hard to make your ingredients stretch, and get the most out of every purchase. 

By the way, I'm totally guilty of buying food and leaving it to rot, because it was an impulse purchase.  I would love to have all those dollars back, and it makes me angry every time I clean out my crisper and see wilted lettuce, soggy tomatoes, limp squash... if only I had planned better, there wouldn't be this waste.

Finally, it is only a good deal if you are going to actually eat it.  Those bargins on the end aisle of the store are often a great deal, price wise.  If you are anything like me, you will toss those cans of cranberry sauce and canned pumpkin into the cart on principle.  And then sometime in June, you will find those same cans in the pantry, because you never got around to using them.  Plan ahead, buy what you need, and you'll never be stuck holding a giant can of mushed pumpkin.