Menu Planning:

Save Time In The Kitchen

Posted November 4th, 2007 by Cynthia Townley Ewer
ORGANIZEDHOME.com
in the kitchen

What's for dinner?

It's the question of the hour. Too many home managers look for answers in the supermarket at 5 p.m. Harried, harassed by by hungry children, they rack their brains for an answer to the dinner-hour question.

Three meals a day. Seven dinners a week. From supermarket to pantry, refrigerator to table, sink to cupboard, the kitchen routine can get old, old, old.

No wonder we hide our heads like ostriches from the plain and simple fact: into each day, one dinner must fall.

What's the answer? A menu plan.

Menu planning doesn't have be complicated. A small investment of time can reap great rewards:

A menu plan saves money. Reducing trips to the supermarket, a menu plan reduces impulse spending. Using leftovers efficiently cuts food waste, while planned buying in bulk makes it easy to stockpile freezer meals at reduced prices.

A menu plan saves time. No dash to the neighbors for a missing ingredient, no frantic searches through the freezer for something, anything to thaw for dinner.

A menu plan improves nutrition. Without the daily dash to the supermarket, there's time to prepare side dishes and salads to complement the main dish, increasing the family's consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Follow these tips to put the power of menu and meal planning to work for you:

Dare to Do It
For too many of us, making a menu plan is something we intend to do . . . when we get around to it. Instead of seeing menu planning as an activity that adds to our quality of life, we dread sitting down to decide next Thursday's dinner. "I'll do that next week, when I'm more organized.

"Wrong! Menu planning is the first line of defense in the fight to an organized kitchen, not the cherry on the icing on the cake.

Take the vow. "I, [state your name], hereby promise not to visit the supermarket again until I've made a menu plan!"

Start Small and Simple

Still muttering, "But I don't wanna ..."? Break into menu planning easily by starting small and simple.

Think, "next week." Seven little dinners, one trip to the supermarket. Sure, it's fun to think about indexing your recipe collection, entering the data in a relational database and crunching menus till the year 2010, but resist the urge. Slow and steady builds menu planning skills and shows you the benefits of the exercise. Elaborate hoo-rah becomes just another failed exercise in home management overkill.

Where to start? The food flyers from your local newspaper. Try to make your menu plan and shopping list the day the food ads appear.

You'll use the ads to get a feel for the week's sales and bargains. Use that feeling to guide your menu plan.

This week in Eastern Washington, for instance, two local chain supermarkets are offering whole fryers for the low, low price of 59 cents a pound. Clearly, this is the week for Ginger Chicken and Fajitas, not a time to dream about Beef Stew and Grilled Pork Tenderloins.

Menu Planning Basics

Okay, it's food ad day. Ready? Time to rough out a simple menu plan. The goal is two-fold: shop efficiently to obtain food required for seven dinner meals, while minimizing expenditure, cooking, shopping and cleaning time.

Here's the overview of the process:

Printable Planners
*Scan the food ads for specials and sales. Rough out a draft menu plan: seven dinner entrees that can be made from weekly specials, side dishes and salads.
*Wander to pantry and refrigerator to check for any of last week's purchases that are languishing beneath wilting lettuce or hardening tortillas. Check for draft recipe ingredients. Review your shopping list and note needed items.
*Ready, set, shop--but shop with an open mind. That 59-cent fryer won't look like such a bargain next to a marked-down mega-pack of boneless chicken breasts at 89 cents a pound. Be ready to substitute if you find a great deal.
*Return from shopping. As you put away groceries, flesh out the menu plan. Match it up with the family's calendar, saving the oven roast for a lazy Sunday afternoon, the quick-fix pizza for soccer night.
*Post the menu plan on the refrigerator door. Refer to it during the coming week as you prepare meals.That's it! The bare bones of menu planning. You've made a draft plan, shopped from a list, retained flexibility in the marketplace, firmed up your plan and held yourself accountable.

The devil, however, is in the details. Here are some points to ponder as you bring menu planning under control:

Build A Personal Shopping List
Planner companies, gift shops and generous desktop publishers all compete to produce cute little shopping lists for all persuasions and occasions.

Printable Shopping List
Bear-shaped shopping lists. Long skinny shopping lists. Shopping lists with winsome graphics. Shopping lists with colored borders. Cute little freebies with kittycats and teddy bears. Awwwwww. [We even offer one, too, in the printable planner pages library .]

Only one problem: why aren't you using them?

Because they don't work, that's why. Teenaged sons play stuff-the-hoop with the empty cereal box and the trash can, but have you ever known one to neatly write "Cheerios" on the list? Pre-printed lists, moreover, fit about as well as one-size-fits-all stockings from the convenience store.

Solution? Build a family shopping list on the computer, listing all the foods and sundries your family consumes. Print 52 copies each year. Post them on the refrigerator. Boys who don't circle "Sugar Gaggers" on the list when they empty the box eat hot cereal for the rest of the week.

Making a personal shopping list can be interesting--and revealing. When my children were hungry teenagers, cereal, milk and cookies headed the list, along with the entry "nuclear waste"--family slang for thecheap, luridly-colored punch beverage sold in the dairy case.

Sigh. The good old days.

Now that we're back-to-two (and those two are both a touch too round) "broccoli" and "salmon" head the list.

Cheat Alert: next shopping trip, grab a hand-out supermarket map as you leave. Construct your personal shopping list according to the order you shop the store. You'll speed your way out the door in record time!

Coast in the Calm of a Routine
Printable Monthly Menu FormYes, there are some well-organized souls among us who don't make formal meal plans. Look close, and you'll discover that household meal service dances to a routine.

Sunday's a big dinner, and Tuesday gets the leftovers. Monday is burger night, and Wednesday sees spaghetti, year in and year out. Thursday's the day for a casserole, and Dad grills on Friday. Saturday night, it's take-out or pizza.

Create a routine around your menu planning. Sure, you can try new recipes--just don't let your enthusiasm for the glossy pages of the cookbook con you into doing so more than twice a month. Cooking tried-and-true speeds dinner preparation and streamlines menu planning.

To do it, look for cues in the family schedule. At-home days with more free time can handle a fancy meal--or can signal soup, sandwiches and Cook's Night Off. Running the evening kid carpool is a great time to plan for pick-up sandwiches. Make the routine yours, and it will serve you well.

Stay Flexible
Menu plans aren't written in stone. So you're dodging cramps on the "big" cooking day? Swap it out with Pizza Night and go to bed early with a cup of herb tea.

A posted menu plan promotes accountability, but family members will forgive you, as long as they get their postponed favorite a day or two later.

Build flexibility into your plan and serve the aims of thrift with Cook's Choice Night. Traditionally held the night before grocery shopping, you can slide a neglected dinner into Cook's Choice, or chop up the contents of the refrigerator for a clean-out stir-fry. Either way, you'll feel smug at your frugality and good planning.

Make It A Habit
Simple or not, a menu plan won't help you if you don't make one. Weekly menu planning is a good candidate for the Habit Patrol. Get into the habit of planning before you shop, and you'll get hooked--one addiction of great value.

Recycle Menu Plans
After you've made menu plans for a few weeks, the beauty of the activity shines through: recycle them! Your family won't mind, and you'll save even more time and energy.

Instead of an ambitious plan for 30-day menus, tuck completed menu plans in a file folder or envelope. Next time fryers are 59 cents a pound at the market, pull out the plan you made this week. Done!