July Meal Plan

Hey, remember me? No? I'm not surprised.  Things have been a little crazy around here recently.  I often didn't have the opportunity to post and when I did have the opportunity, I didn't seem to have the inclination.  It's a good thing this is just a hobby and not a job or I'd have been booted a long time ago.

I think that a large part of the reason I've been absent is that since we eliminated wheat from our diet I've been a little bummed.  I love how much better I feel and do not miss the effects that wheat was having on my system, but it doesn't make a baker happy to find out that 95% (or more!) of their recipes are now off limits.  So...I moped.  And I got a bit cranky about all the meals that I've made previously who are just waiting to jump to the head of the line and appear here and now I don't want to post them because I'm in a tiff.

I'm sure that I will eventually post them, just like I will eventually post the new wheat free recipes I've been creating to replace them.  The problem with my replacement recipes is that they aren't fully tested and I don't feel right posting something I created off the top of my head until I'm certain that it works more than once, several times would be better.  As I work out the kinks I'll try to be better about posting the results, but until then things are going to be slim pickings.

As you will be able to see below, this month is pretty much ALL about grilling.  I have no desire to heat up my kitchen so we are taking it all outdoors to appreciate the summer. Also, you might notice that most of the sides are rather up in the air.  I am hoping to be able to fill in those blanks with various fresh veggies from my garden, but at the moment I have NO idea was they will be (and no promise that they will produce!)  Enjoy!

July
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
				Slow Cooker Red Beans & Rice	Chicken Spiedies, Grilled Veggies	Hamburgers, Baked Beans, Salad
Hot Dogs, Baked Beans	Greek Chicken Kebabs	Grilled Lemon Pepper Salmon	Tex-Mex Dry Rub- Steak	Bean Burritoes	BBQ Rub- Pork	Salad w/Deviled Eggs
Hamburgers, Beans, Salad	Ham & Pineapple Kebabs	Grilled Salmon Patties, Grilled Sweet Potatoes	Chicken & Spicy Wing Sauce	Black Bean Salad, Chips?	Kefta & Zucchini Kebab	Chicken Caesar Salad
Indian Dry Rub- Chicken	Steak & Pepper Kebab	Grilled Mustard Salmon	Hot Dogs & Baked Beans	Grilled Turkey Breast	Party	Taco Salad
Grilled Steak, Grilled Veggies	Teriyaki Chicken & Pineapple Kebab	Grilled Salmon Patties, Grilled Sweet Potatoes	Pancakes (Wheat Free!)	Zucchini Parm	Cajun Rub- Chicken	Cobb Salad

June Meal Plan

May was an interesting month.  We got our garden planted in the beginning, the middle hit us up with some birthdays, a graduation, and Mothers Day and then the last weekend had us missing Hey, Babe as he went to Texas for his first (and can I hope last?) business trip which happened to coincide with our sixth anniversary.  I'm still recovering from May, which is partly why I'm a bit tardy posting our menu. 

The other reason is because I was rather hard pressed to plan a wheat free menu that I'd be interested in cooking and eating in this weather. In our un-air conditioned house I want to do as much of our cooking outside.  That should be simple except for the fact that most things want to be slapped on a bun after you grill them.  I have discovered that it is very possible that I should not eat wheat for health reasons and so I'm trying harder to stick to that.  Here is what we have come up with, our wheat free (the hot dogs and hamburgers will be bunless), hot weather friendly dinner plan. Enjoy!

June
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
		Leftovers	Lemon Chicken, Potato Salad	Potluck Game Night	Party	Waldorf Chicken Salad
Hot Dogs & Beans	BBQ Chicken, Grilled Sweet Potatoes	Taco Salad	Dry Rub Steak, Grilled Potatoes, Peas	Bean Burritos	Party	Grill Roasted Turkey Breast, Asparagus
Salmon Patties, Spinach Salad	Chicken Scampi over Veggies	Chicken Caesar Salad	Pepper Steak, Brown Rice	Greek Chicken Kebabs, Tzatziki	Party	Black Bean Salad
Grilled Sausages & Potato Hobo Packs	Grilled Rosemary Chicken w/Fresh Greens	Cobb Salad	Kefta and Zucchini Kebabs	Taco Dip	Barbecue Ribs, Corn, Cole Slaw	Huli Huli Chicken, Broccoli Salad
Cream Cheese & Parmesan Grilled Tilapia, Spinach	Dry Rub Chicken, Grilled Summer Squash	Chef Salad	Hamburgers, Baked Beans, Salad

How To Make a Monthly Meal Plan, part 5

Yesterday I wrote about the first three problems I thought of that can interfere with successful meal planning, today I follow up with the last three.

-I don’t like cooking or I don’t have time for it and with this plan I’m finding myself chained to the kitchen all the time and I can’t take it!

So plan differently.  No one said you have to make a gourmet meal every night, or even that you have to make a from scratch meal every night.  You are the one who is deciding what kind of meals your are making and how complicated they are, and how often you need to make them.  One woman I know cooks three nights a week and makes enough for two meals each time.  After eating those three meals once, they eat them a second time and then either go out or order pizza on Saturdays.  This works wonderfully for their family and might be something that would work for yours. 

If your family (or you!) don’t care for leftovers then just plan simpler things. It is your plan.  No one is grading it and critiquing it.  I don’t eat or buy most processed foods (often) but that is how my family works.  Your family eats and likes different things than mine and each of our menus will reflect that.

Another tip to cut down on prep is to do some things ahead.  Chop all your peppers/onions/etc. for the week on Monday and put them in containers.  Each night you will use only what you need for the day and you won’t be pulling out the knife and cutting board every night.  If you rely on convenience foods, eating at restaurants and ordering takeout for 95% of your family’s dinners it might be better to start small and gradually increase your nights of cooking.  Who knows? You might discover that having a plan in place with all of the necessary groceries eliminates the part of making dinner that you truly hate and actually cooking doesn’t bother you at all!

If possible enlist help.  If your spouse isn’t home to be any use preparing dinner on a week night, try preparing a few meals in advance on a weekend, or after the kids go to bed one night.  If your kids are old enough to be of any use in the kitchen, use dinner prep as a teachable moment.  I was taken aback when I got to college and discovered how many students were there who had no idea how to do things like cook for themselves or do laundry.  When/if your kids are old enough maybe they can be in charge of planning and cooking dinner one night a week.

-blah! We all got hit with the stomach bug!  We have a house full of food but none of us are well enough to prepare it OR to go and get anything else to replace it with that we might be able to keep down:

This happened to us a few months ago and I learned a very valuable lesson.  Keep sick people food on hand at all times and put it in an emergency place so that you don’t just dip into it when you are feeling lazy.  We now have in a crate in the garage a few cans of chicken noodle soup, a box of saltines, a few boxes of jello, a six pack of little bottles of ginger ale, a few serving size bottles (not the big ones) of pedialyte, and a container of Gatorade powder.  And we aren’t going to touch it.  Most of that stuff can keep for a looong time, but we are going to replace it at the beginning of flu season every year just to make sure none of it is ever expired.

Keep a couple of emergency, totally from the pantry meals on hand so that you won’t feel forced to order pizza when life doesn’t go your way because it is going to happen.  Rather than always keep the same emergency meal on hand in the pantry I sometimes try to plan a couple of new ones for the end of the month.  If I need to use them earlier in the month it is not as big of a deal and I can back cycle whatever meal I’ve skipped.

-I thought this was supposed to save money, why is my grocery bill so much higher?

Well, first off I’d like to ask if you are including your takeout/restaurant spending (including tips!) in that total.  I’m going to pull some random numbers out of the air here but if you used to spend $75 a week at the grocery store and then another $125 a week eating out, then your grocery bill all of a sudden doubling to $150 is not too surprising, as long as your eating out bill is either equally reduced or completely eliminated.  Double check but you are probably spending less. 

However, if you aren’t then what the heck are you making for dinner?  Really, I’d like to know because it is probably fabulous and I’d like to invite myself over.  Are you still buying a lot of convenience items (pre-made pizza crusts instead of a bag of flour and jar of yeast)?  By making some things from scratch instead of buying them premade you will save a little money and usually be eating a little healthier. 

Another option is to surround a spendy item will cheaper items.  Make a nice piece of salmon and serve it with a pile of cheap bulk rice or frozen green beans instead of the costlier asparagus (which you can serve instead with a cheaper cut of beef or some chicken).  It helps to spread out your “gourmet” without making you feel like you are depriving yourself by rotating between rice & beans and beans & rice. 

You are the one making the plan, so if you are choosing expensive things it will understandably cost more.  Think about what your family was already eating on a regular basis. Was it costing you less when you were scrambling around? That's okay because you can still throw some of those options back into the mix (or options in a similar cost bracket) but this time do it without the scramble. 

Also, keep in mind the sales.  If you planned on making steaks and got to the store to discover the price was astronomically more than you had expected, check to see what kind of substitutions you can make.  If there isn’t anything in a similar vein then scrap the meal for a different idea entirely or be prepared to shell out for the steaks.  I find that this is why it sometimes helps to bring your meal plan along with your grocery list to the store, it can help you remember why you put certain items on the list and whether or not they are crucial to any given dish.

If you missed the beginning of this meal planning series, please start here.

How To Make A Monthly Meal Plan, part 4

For some people, making a monthly meal plan (or even a weekly one) is fraught with peril.  There are several pitfalls that people come across when they attempt meal planning on a larger scale for the first time.  There are six big ones that I can think of and I'll share with you, half today and half tomorrow, how they can be addressed or avoided.

MEAL PLANNING PITFALLS

So now you have spent valuable time and planned out your meals, written your grocery lists, bought your food and gotten it all put away.  You are all set for a week/month of stress free dinner prep, except:

  

- Someone (your kids, your husband, perhaps even yourself) always says they don’t want that for dinner.  Can’t we have/go to _____ instead?

Sure you can.  Sometimes things just don’t go as planned and you have to roll with the punches and consider that the important thing is that everyone was fed a relatively healthy (hopefully) meal.  However, if it is happening often perhaps you might think about why this isn’t working to see if there is a theme. 

Does it happen regularly on specific days?  For me it happened every Monday.  After having Hey, Babe home during dinner prep on Sat and Sun, I dreaded starting it up again solo on Monday nights.  Now I make sure I’m planning things that I will look forward to eating and be more willing to prep like my favorite homemade pizza.   Another option is to plan something that can be totally assembled earlier in the day while the kids are napping that just needs to be popped into the oven at the correct time. 

Does it happen for specific meals?  Tell it to me straight, you don’t like my chili do you?  You never feel like eating it, though you have before said you like it, and now when it comes up on the rotation we always seem to waffle around it and eat something else.  Since you never actually eat it, stop planning on eating it.  It is a waste in more ways then one.  Maybe leaving it off the rotation for a while will make it more appealing in the future.  Or maybe you can plan it for the night that whoever it is that hates it is not going to be home for dinner. 

Is it always the same person?  I have two separate suggestions here.  First off, maybe they just need to learn to live with it.  Pickiness, especially when it comes to food, is never welcome.  You are allowed to have things you prefer to eat and prefer not to eat, but if a meal is made for you, you eat it or you go hungry (ESPECIALLY if you are an adult/teenager).  I’m sure that as with any rule, there are exceptions (allergies, intolerances, etc.) but generally speaking this should hold true.  For some households there is always an alternate option to have (pb sandwich, hummus, etc.) for other households that just means you say, “Okay, the next time we are eating is at __ o’clock, see you then.”  It is up to you to decide which method will work better for your family.

Another solution would be to have the unsatisfied person contribute more to the meal plan.  If they are asking for blueberry pancakes for dinner instead of the spaghetti and meatballs you are making tell them “Ooh, what a great idea! Why don’t we write that down and have that ___ (tomorrow for breakfast/lunch, next week for dinner, etc.).  When you are making the next meal plan, have them come up with a list of foods that they want to eat and maybe make them a part of the preparation process for “their” meals.  You might want to make a note of which of the meals were their ideas so you can point out to them that they are the reason it is tonight’s dinner if their pickiness comes into play anyway.

In our household, I know that I am the most likely reason that dinner isn’t following the menu.  Not the kids, not Hey, Babe, not any other factor.  Just me.  I need to remember to suck it up and just make whatever is on the plan because I KNOW that when I don’t it makes the last few days of the month rather hairy and takes away the peace that meal planning is supposed to bring me.  I have to keep in mind when I am meal planning that what I have planned may not be exactly what I am in the mood food, but it is still tasty, nutritious food.  If I am going to tell my kids, “tough, that’s what is for dinner,” than I have to do the same for myself. 

-I just bought AAAAALLLLLL this stuff to make ONE MEAL, and it costs so much money, and now whatever isn't used in that one meal is either going to spoil or get pushed to the back of the cupboard and lost forever:

You may need to tweak how you are planning slightly.  There are four things I can think of to fix this: 

1.      Choose less complicated meals, or at least do so for some of them.

2.      Freeze leftover ingredients (granted, some things don’t freeze well.)

3.      Make twice as much of whatever the meal is and freeze half for a bonus meal next week/month! (yeah, some things still don’t freeze well).

4.      Plan another, different meal that will incorporate those extra ingredients for a night or two later.  Leftover ricotta cheese? Make some lasagna, stuffed shells, or cheese blintzes.  Use it up somehow.  Some of my tastiest creations came from adding odds and ends together so that none of them went to waste.

- Similar to the last complaint, I made dinner every night this week and we have a ton of totally prepared food in the fridge and yet another new meal planned for tonight:

I had this trouble a lot myself and started planning fewer meals for a while until Little Man started eating more.  You can go a few routes with this one:

1.      Eat leftovers for lunch and stop buying so many other lunch options.

2.      Plan fewer meals for the week, make one night leftover night and free up some time where you would have otherwise been in the kitchen.  Maybe make a nice dessert on leftover night since you didn’t have to cook dinner.

3.      Make smaller quantities so that there aren’t leftovers.  Scale recipes down, cut portion sizes in half, and have some extra salad to fill people up instead.

4.      Reinvent leftovers.  Make a roast on Sunday and plan on using the leftover meat on Monday for Pulled Pork Sandwiches or soup or a casserole.  Or if you think your picky family might catch on to the fact that it is similar to yesterday’s dinner, plan on using it Wednesday or pop it in the freezer and use it next week.

5.      Intentionally make enough that there is a whole second meal and freeze one of them for a bonus meal!

If you missed the beginning of this meal planning series please start here.  Tomorrow, three more pitfalls with suggestions how to resolve them.

How To Make A Monthly Meal Plan, part 3

Making a monthly meal plan is such a valuable way to gain control of what for many people is the most stressful part of their day, the pre-dinner chaos that leads to fast food (and tears!).  Many people have heard of the Flylady who discusses getting your homes in order and keeping them that way.  I like what she has to say about meal planning:

"You can't eat what you don't have in the house. Just the simple act of sitting down and thinking about what to fix for the next week then going to the grocery store and purchasing the food will give you more freedom than almost anything. This will save you time and money and put good food in your pantry. When you have nutritious food in your home you will feel better about what you and your family are eating." Flylady

I happen to like cooking and experimenting with new recipes so we have a new plan for every month but that doesn't mean you have to.  If you are the opposite of me or if your family is less adventurous you could make one 30 day plan and just repeat it over and over again.  After all, that means you would only be repeating things a dozen times a year (providing of course that there were no repeats already scheduled).  The beauty of a set monthly plan is that once it and the accompanying grocery list are written, you will spend a lot of time each month not thinking about dinner.  When making your plan you can keep any number of days either "set" or "changeable".  You can keep one day a week or a month free for changes, or maybe you will keep only one meal the same each month.  It is completely up to you!

Your meal plan does not have to be gourmet or complicated or expensive.  It is not supposed to make your life more complicated.  For some people, making out a plan might make them over ambitious and I'd just like to remind you to be realistic.  If giving up takeout and restaurants will be tough, schedule some nights that allow for it.  If you don't like being in the kitchen, plan for quick and simple foods like hot dogs or macaroni and cheese.  Or perhaps you will only plan on cooking only three or four nights a week, either because you know you don't want to do more than that ever or just to start as you are easing into a new concept.  If a month seems daunting, plan for a week or two.  You can always use those meal ideas again if they work and scrap the ideas that don't.  I included the following steps in my handout at the meeting but for those of you who weren't there or didn't get one here is a good way to create your first monthly meal plan.

1. Get a calendar, paper for list making, a pen and some recipe sources (magazines, internet, cookbooks- by the way, most public libraries have a surprisingly large cooking section). I use a computer spreadsheet, but you can use an actual paper calendar if you’d rather.

2. Compile your family’s complete schedule for the upcoming menu period (week, weeks, month). Include information such as the nights people won’t be home, known crazy busy days, holidays, special events, entertaining, etc.

3. Write a list of your family’s favorite meals or even just foods they eat often and willingly. Perhaps even ask for input to see if there specific things they’d like to eat in the near future.

4. Check your pantry, fridge and freezer to see what ingredients you have that should be incorporated into the upcoming plan and add those meals to your list.

5. Start plugging the meals into appropriate days. By appropriate I mean days where you will be able (physically or mentally) to prepare that meal. If you aren’t going to be home all day you will want to plan a crock pot type of meal or maybe that will be your pizza night for the week instead of having a hands on intensive dinner.

6. See what you have left. Are most of the unfilled days busy days? Flip through your recipes to find some crock pot meals or make ahead dinners.  At the meeting, one mom suggested getting a menu to a favorite restaurant or two and looking for inspiration there.  You can often find copycat recipes for popular restaurant dishes online.

7. While you are filling in your weeks keep in mind that you probably don’t want to schedule too much of the same thing in a row, like three Mexican dinners, or three nights where the main ingredient is lentils. Look for recipes you’d like to try and maybe add one new thing for each week (more than that and you might start overwhelming yourself.)

8. Leave room for changes and have a plan for leftovers. Planning a new meal for each night often times means too much food. For us it means that we have lunch for the next day. If there is enough of certain types of meals leftover I will freeze it and have a ready meal waiting in the freezer for a busy night.

9. Going through each meal and the corresponding recipe, make sure you right down all the ingredients you will need, including those for any side dishes or desserts you plan on serving with them. I like to put my ingredients into five columns: dairy/cold, freezer, meat, dry goods, produce. This makes it easier later when you are shopping. Make sure you cross check this with your pantry.

10. Finally, post the menu in a prominent place where you and the rest of the house can refer easily to it. This makes it harder to forget to take out the roast to thaw for tomorrow’s dinner, and eliminates a lot of questions of, “What’s for dinner?” once your family gets used to the idea of the meal plan.


If you missed them earlier, read parts one and two.  Please feel free to ask in the comments if there is anything in particular you would like to know.  Also, I have in mind to address some pitfalls.  In your experience, what have been some you've encountered?

How To Make A Monthly Meal Plan, part 2

If you missed it yesterday, read part 1 here.

In the days before the first monthly trip I had come up with our menu. Our menu is a simple one, listing only the dinners that we will be having since Little Man and I eat leftovers for lunch and breakfast is either cold or hot cereal. After compiling the selections, going through all the recipes, and writing a comprehensive list of ingredients needed, I then checked the list against the contents of our fridge, freezer, and pantry. Various items were adjusted and the list was divided into two parts. After taking stock, I added to my portion of the list any household items that might run out in the next four weeks. We were ready.

While writing out my lists I tried to keep it as organized as possible by grouping like items together. The cold section (Dairy, Meats, and Freezer) I gave to Hey, Babe. It is a shorter list, covering a much smaller portion of the store, but it is nearly as time consuming since you need to check a lot of dates. I took the dry and canned goods as well as the household products. Starting at the farthest aisle first and working my was toward the registers, I got all the things on our list. The cart was very full, and quite heavy. I had strategically placed everything in to make sure it would all fit.

When I was done, I realized that it hadn’t taken me any more time than it normally would have. I still needed to walk down nearly every aisle, but while I was there I was taking several items, or several of the same item, rather than just one. Checkout took a little longer, (understandably so) but even that didn’t take nearly as much time as I had suspected it would. The whole trip (not including traveling, but including loading up the car) had taken about 45 minutes to an hour.

Upon arriving home again we found ourselves faced with the task of storing all the groceries. If it weren’t for our second fridge in the garage, this would have been much trickier. As it is our freezers ended up very full because we had to stow three 1-gallon jugs of milk and four loaves of bread in one (yes, we freeze our milk and bread). Everything else we tucked into place in our cabinets in as organized a fashion as possible and we were then done. For the next four weeks we had everything that we were going to need with the exception of produce.

We have been doing it since. We just shopped for our twentieth month’s plan and while there have been some forgotten items, extra items, nights we didn’t feel like any of the options on the plan, etc. it has made our lives so much easier. At 6 o’clock on any given night we have a fully loaded kitchen, ready to make any number of meals. It even has a convenient list of meal options still available clipped to the fridge.

It has gone so well that once after having written out the menu and corresponding grocery list we arrived at the store to discover we had forgotten the list at home. If we turned around and went home to get it, that meant a 40 minute round trip and losing our window of opportunity for shopping during a low traffic time, so we did our best to get what we thought we needed. We only forgot 5 things (though I think we had some extras of some others).

Are there nights we don’t want to eat the menu? Absolutely. Are there nights I don’t want to cook? Yup. Do we sometimes toss the plan to the side and order takeout? Don’t tell anyone, but yeah. Life happens. Kids interfere with your timetable and it becomes too late to start what had been on the plan, or you forget to defrost the roast that was supposed to be for dinner, or maybe you remembered to pull it out but the darn thing is for some reason still frozen solid. It happens, but because we know that it happens, I try to make sure that there are a couple of easy standbys in every month. Things like breakfast for dinner, or even just holding onto a couple of cans of soup for something quick and hot.

We don’t stick to our menu verbatim. If we are suppose to have Chicken Tacos on Tuesday, but I decide to make Thursday’s Beef Stew instead, it isn’t going to be the end of the world. I do, however, try to stick to the current week but that for the sake of the weekly produce more than anything else. For some families that kind of flexibility might backfire. I don’t have readers (yet) but if my kids were older and looked at the menu to see their favorite Spaghetti with Meatballs as tonight’s dinner they might balk at discovering we are instead having Vegetable Soup and no longer want dinner. It isn’t something I have experienced yet, but it is something to keep in mind for the future. Maybe by then I’ll be better at sticking exactly to the plan, but don’t hold your breath!

How To Make a Monthly Meal Plan, part 1

Earlier today I spoke on a panel with three other people at my church's MOPS group.  The subjects presented included juicing and smoothies, couponing, organizing your recipes, and meal planning.  I feel that I was a little scattered in my presentation and am certain I didn't touch on everything I wanted to say.  Since I mentioned that my monthly meal plans could be seen as an example here and some of you lovely ladies I met today might be visiting (Hi!) to get a better idea of what I was talking about, I thought that I would try again. Hopefully more clearly.  First, a little back story:

I am an accomplished list maker. I like writing them, (it helps stall for time so I don’t actually have to cross things off the list). I also like to cook, especially for an appreciative (or sometimes captive) audience. When I was in college and cooking for myself I wasn’t so enthusiastic about cooking because there wasn’t anyone to share it with and I didn’t like the huge mess it made just for myself. After we got married I was the one who was home and available to do the dinner planning and prep so Hey, Babe and I made an agreement that whoever made dinner, the other of us would clean up. Both of my issues with cooking vanished. I started planning out our meals, usually for a week at a time, and doing the shopping once every week or so. I hate shopping (of all the kinds of shopping I’m actually most fond of going for groceries) and so I planned for a week at a time so that I wouldn’t have to go more often than that.

It worked well for a few years, then I got pregnant and two things changed. My sense of smell was such that I could smell our grocery store’s olive bar from the parking lot which made me quite ill and I developed a slew of constantly changing aversions. I didn’t know what I could eat even hours before dinner, let alone days. Hey, Babe started stopping at the store on his way home every night and calling me as he walked up and down the aisles suggesting things. We ate a lot of convenience foods and junk (the opposite of what you really should do when pregnant) and spent at least twice as much (if not more) on our groceries.

It got a little better after I had Little Man. I started planning weekly menus again, selecting meals that were easy to make with only one hand since I had to prep dinner with a baby on my hip. I probably would have stuck with doing the planning and shopping weekly if it weren’t for a few things. One of which had to do with the way I planned our meals. Since Hey, Babe, contrary to his mother’s belief, is not a picky eater and will eat pretty much anything I make, I only had my own tastes to apply to. I would sit with some cookbooks, magazines or websites, and browse for what was appealing. As I browsed through all my recipe sources, I would come up with numerous possibilities which I then had to whittle down to only seven. It wasn’t at all stressful, but it took up a lot of time and as a mother time wasn’t really something I could call my own anymore.

Still, if that were the only factor we would probably still be planning and shopping weekly, and be quite content doing so. The major cause in our change to monthly planning was the simple fact that we moved. The grocery store we liked to frequent was now a half hour ride away. We started shopping at a new and closer store, however, we quickly discovered that we easily spent over $20 more at the new, closer store, than we did at the old one. Now, $20 a week may not be a huge amount of money, but it will quickly add up. On top of that, we could no longer buy certain store-brand items that we preferred if we shopped at the closer store.

After considering the circumstances, we wanted to see if we could go less frequently. Hey, Babe passes a farmer’s market on his way home from work so fresh produce is picked up weekly rather than in the monthly trip. Even without getting any produce, we use two carts. Hey, Babe works Monday through Saturday so we decided to go really early the first Sunday of every month. I knew from experience that we needed to go early enough that we would beat the weekend crowd. At around 7am on that first Sunday morning back in September we headed out, learning that going early meant we wouldn’t just avoid traffic in the store, it also meant that we would have a much shorter ride getting there.

May Meal Plan

As I was scrolling through my recipe box looking for dinner ideas I was dismayed to find that less than one percent of the recipes in there were wheat-less. Yikes!  Nearly everything was pastas, breads, had breading, etc.  Using less wheat and avoiding processed foods is going to require more thinking outside the box than I had first thought.  We have become such a bread centered society it is hard to avoid it.  There are still some bread-type recipes (like all the pizzas on Mondays, I love pizza) but there are a lot less of them this month than there were for previous months.  Enjoy!

May
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
						Zucchini Parmesan
3 Cheese Spinach & Broccoli Pizza	Corn Chowder	Garlic-Mustard Glazed Chicken Kebobs	Swedish Meatballs, Mashed Potatoes	Game Night	Pan Fried Falafel, Tzatziki, Greek Salad	Mother's Day
Spinach & Broccoli Calzones	Baked Salmon w/Tomato Mayo	BBQ Chicken stuffed in a loaded Baked Sweet Potato	Beef Stir Fry w/Snap Peas	Eggplant Balls w/Marinara	Black Beans with Homemade Tortillas	Rosemary Balsamic Chicken over Salad
Sicilian Pizza	Sweet Potato & Pecan Burgers with Caramelized Onions	Grilled Herb Chicken, Grilled Summer Squash	Kefta and Zucchini Kebabs	Sausage-Stuffed Potatoes, Spinach	Salmon Patties	Cranberry Orange Chicken, Rice
Grilled Pizza	Cream Cheese & Parmesan Baked Salmon, Baked Potato, Spinach	Sweet & Spicy Wings, Sweet Potato Fries	Stuffed Cabbage	Chinese Barbecued Pork, Fried Rice	Anniversary	Pollo Rosa Maria, Mashed Parsnips
Memorial Day	Cobb Salad

April Meal Plan

In the past week or so, Hey, Babe and I decided to change how we eat a little.  We already avoid a lot of processed foods, but we are going to be making an effort to eliminate even more of them.  Things like white flour, white sugar, processed oils, etc. will be if not totally removed from our diet (I really like to bake and I don't want to give that up entirely) they will be drastically reduced.  I am curious to see how increasing our consumption of foods nearer to their natural form will alter our energy and health (both mental & physical).
It was a bit trickier for me to come up with a variety of foods that would work with this new tactic.  As you can see below, we didn't avoid them completely, but there is a significant lack of pasta and breads in the majority of our month's plan. 

April
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
				Potluck Dinner	Chicken Pot Pie	Chicken Stir Fry
Chicken Curry, Brown Rice	Salisbury Steaks, Mashed Potatoes, Peas	Salad Pizza	Taco Salad	Eggplant Parmesan	Birthday Party	Black Bean Soup
Chicken & Basil Roulades w/Mustard Sauce, Baked Squash, Green Beans	Beef & Broccoli, Brown Rice	Salmon Fish Sticks, Carrots & Peas	Black Bean Mushroom Burgers, Roast Corn	Pork Chops, Brown Rice, Broccoli	BBQ Chicken stuffed in a loaded Baked Sweet Potato	Sautéed Spinach w/Chickpeas & Oven Roasted Tomatoes, Roasted Potatoes
Chicken Cordon Bleu, Twice Baked Potatoes, Broccoli	Fiesta Steak, Tomato Salad, Corn	Pizza	Taco Salad	Vegetable Torta	Greek Grilled Chicken Kebabs,	Easter
Herb Roasted Chicken & Sweet Potatoes	Stuffed Zucchini Cups	Fish, Rice, Broccoli	Potato Nachos	Kielbasa, Sauerkraut, Mashed Potatoes, Sauteéd Apples	Chicken Florentine, Whole Wheat Pasta, Peas

It seems that this month my work will be more cut out for me.  It will be interesting to see the results of our efforts. Enjoy!

March Meal Plan

With the end of February I hope we are also seeing the end of Winter.  It has been a rather rough one for us what with the flu and colds and stomach viruses plaguing our household.  This is the first month in a while that has not caught me by surprise, but it is no wonder since I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Spring.  We have been teased with gorgeous, no-jacket weather a few times only to receive more snow and rain.  It sometimes feels like a cruel joke.  Today Little Man and I are suppose to start the first of the seeds for the veggie garden so I have great hope that Spring is firmly on it's way.  Perhaps once Spring has thoroughly overtaken winter we will have less sickness in the house, which will mean less time spent being a frazzled nursemaid and more time to sort through my backlog of recipes that I am itching to share.  Here is our plan for the coming month:

March
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
	Veggie Burgers, Baked Sweet Potato Fries	Spinach Lasagna	Pizza	potluck game night	Buffalo Chicken Wings, Fries, Salad	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Italian Chicken Wraps	Spanikopita & Greek Salad	Crispy Fish Tacos	Make Ahead French Toast Casserole	Spaghetti & Meatballs	Omelet, Home Fries	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Chicken Tortellini Soup	Spinach, Cheddar & Mushroom Quesadillas & Sweet Potato Black Bean Soup	Pesto Stuffed Shells	Corned Beef, Colcannon, Soda Bread	Chili & Matzo	Chicken Stir Fry	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Yeast Raised Waffles, Sausage	Chicken Enchiladas	Fried Fish Sandwiches	Chicken Caesar Salad	Sarah's Cabbage Soup	Southwestern Egg Rolls	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Potato Soup	Chicken Curry over Rice	Slumgullion	Taco Salad

February Meal Plan

It seems to me that I am always caught surprised at the end of the month, I never seem to notice it passing.  For February, I had fully intended on creating a meal plan that exercised strict frugality.  I had plans of comparing ingredient prices in recipes and creating an incredibly budget friendly menu for the month, including breakfasts, lunches and snacks.

Unfortunately, misery in the form of weeks of the flu followed by a stomach bug has invaded the household (we are not yet in the clear) and I was unable to sit down with a calculator as I had hoped.  Instead, February's meal plan is a reflection of meals that I think are inexpensive.  I suppose as we enter into a new and hopefully healthier month we will see how near the mark I am in my assumptions.  A few of the meals you may notice are "repeat offenders" which in most cases means that they were skipped over last month.  Perhaps they will find more favor in February.

February
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
	Pancakes & Sausage	Cream of Tomato Soup, Cheese Sandwiches	Chicken Pot Pie	Potato Soup	Pesto Stuffed Shells	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Veggie Burgers, Baked Sweet Potato Fries	Rice, Refried Beans, and Cheese Casserole	Fried Fish Sandwiches	Salisbury Steak, Potatoes, Peas	Sweet Potatoes with Warm Black Bean Salad	General Tso's Chicken	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Egg Nests	Cabbage Rolls	Fusilli with Wild Mushroom Cream Sauce	Chicken Noodle Soup	Chili w/Cornbread	Chicken Marsala, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Roast Carrots	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Pesto Chicken Pasta	Sausage, Peppers & Potatoes	Salmon Patties	Samosas	Lentil, Chickpea, and Rice Dish	Roast Chicken, Stuffing, Corn	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Corny Mashed Potato Bowls

January Meal Plan

As much as I love the holidays, it is nice that things will soon be returning to normal.  The Christmas toys have all found homes on the shelves and today I started the undecorating process that I would normally have put off for a few more weeks if it weren't for Little Man's interest in our Christmas tree.  It is sad to see the bare tree sitting in the corner, waiting for Hey, Babe to help me pull it apart and stow it away in the attic for next year, but I am ready to move on into the new year.  I will be hunkering down and keeping warm for the next few months by dreaming of the garden that I hope to plant in the spring.  Meanwhile, here is our menu for the coming month:

January
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
					Spanakopita	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Beef Tacos	Chicken Tortellini Soup	Fried Fish Sandwiches	Crepes	Cider Baked Ham, Roast Veggies, Scalloped Potatoes	General Tso's Chicken	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
White Bean and Ham Soup	Chicken Marsala, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Roast Carrots	Ham Sandwiches or Omelets with Ham	French Toast, Sausage	Salad Pizza	Steak, Fried Mushrooms & Onions, Creamed Spinach, Salad	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Meatloaf, Roast Veggies	Rice and Beans	Horseradish Honey Salmon	Waffles, Bacon	Spaghetti and Meatballs	company	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Pepperoni Pan Pizzas	Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, rice, green beans	Spinach Lasagna	Eggs, Home Fries	Slumgullion	Buffalo Chicken Wings, Fries, Salad	Salmon Salad Sandwiches

May the Lord bless you all in the coming year.

December Meal Plan

I can't believe that December has already arrived.  After focusing on the bustle surrounding our Thanksgiving weekend plans that included five days of having company, I have only just had a chance to recover.  Now that I am at least mostly recovered, I put together next month's plan.  There are still three days that are kind of up in the air regarding specifics (they would be the holidays of course).  There will be several meals repeated this month since we didn't use them last month and they still sound appealing.

Hey, Babe's family tradition for New Years Eve is to graze on hors d'oeuvres all evening which since it sounds rather appealing we will continue but have yet to nail down which ones exactly.  Since Hey, Babe's family always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, that is when we get together with them to celebrated Christmas (very convenient) and then they next day we do my family's celebration.  Once I find out what everyone else would like to bring for the meal (both will be at our house this year) I will finalize what I will be making.  

December
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
		Omelets	Chicken and Rice Casserole	Sheet Pan Pizza	Potato Soup	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Barbecue Chicken Braid	Spinach Pasta e Fagioli Soup	Chicken Stir Fry	Tex-Mex Pizza	Penne with Vodka Sauce	Monte Cristo Sandwiches	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Arroz con pollo	Cream of Tomato Soup	Crispy Fish Tacos	Spaghetti with Chickpeas	Pepperoni Pan Pizza	Rump Roast, Potatoes, Carrots & Parsnips	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Beef Soup from leftover Roast	Spinach, Cheddar & Mushroom Quesadilla & Sweet Potato Black Bean Soup	Chicken Curry Over Rice	Omelets	Christmas Eve Potluck: Black Bean Soup	Christmas Day Potluck: Tiramisu	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Chicken Enchiladas	Chicken Tortellini Soup	Horseradish Honey Salmon	Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, rice, green beans	hors d'oeuvres (specifics are as yet undecided)

November Meal Plan

I like that in the cooler months my options for foods opens up.  I don't like to use the stove or oven much at all if I can help it in the summertime, so now that it is a lot cooler I have been making a lot more soups and breads and casseroles.  We did surprisingly well with actually sticking to the items on the menu this past month.  There were some things that got skipped over, or had their ingredients reinvented into a completely different dish, but that is something I expect to happen.  I think it is a successful month when I don't have to ask Hey, Babe to stop for takeout or at the store to get something quick for dinner.  Since that didn't happen at all in October we'll call it good and move along.

In the 13 months that we've been planning and shopping for our meals a month at a time, we have only had two months that we didn't buy last minute alternative meals.  The other 11 months weren't so successful, things happened and we got a lot more takeout than I'd like or a lot more runs to the store to get something easier/faster for dinner.  2 out of 13 isn't a great track record, but since even the worst of those months are better than before I started meal planning I am happy overall.  Besides, I started this monthly meal planning idea and then got pregnant.  Trying to stick with a meal plan while dealing with pregnancy craving and aversions is tough.  And then figuring out things to cook with a baby on your hip? Also tricky. 

Here is what we plan on eating for dinner this month:

November
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
Leftover Minestrone Soup	Pancakes w/Apple Butter	Taco Salad	Pan Fried Tilapia, Green Beans, Rice	Spaghetti & Meatballs	Southwestern Egg Rolls	Company
Oven Fried Chicken, Creamed Spinach, Baked Potatoes	Brazilian Rice and Beans	Chicken Caesar Salad	Chicken Chow Mein over Rice	Pepperoni Pan Pizza	Party	Salmon Salad Sand- wiches
Make Ahead French Toast Casserole, Sausage	White Bean & Ham Soup	Chicken Curry Over Rice	Spanikopita	Sarah's Cabbage Soup	Lassagna w/ Meat Sauce	Salmon Salad Sand- wiches
Chicken Enchiladas	Meatloaf, Broccoli & Carrots, Salad	Chef Salad	THANKS-GIVING!!	Company	General Tso's Chicken	Salmon Salad Sand- wiches
Turkey Soup	Crepes

Again, breakfasts are cold cereal, oatmeal, or eggs.  Lunches are some variation of sandwich or leftovers from dinner.  It occurred to me that as the kids get older, leftovers are going to be harder to come by.  That means that I may actually need to start planning lunches as well.  Hopefully by the time that happens I will be so used to planning dinners that it will be easy to do.

October Meal Plan

October really has sneaked up on me.  I realized earlier today that our monthly grocery trip was this weekend and that I had yet to think of a single meal for the month!  While the little boogers were down for their naps, and since those naps actually overlapped today, I was able to sit down in front of BigOven and browse through it to find some appealing Fall-ish recipes.  It took me longer to figure out how to put a table in here than it did to pick out all the recipes.  Here is what our month will look like:

October
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
				Chili, Bread	Moussaka	Chicken Salad Sandwich
Italian Chicken Wraps	Black Bean Pumpkin Soup and Rustic White Bread	Italian Sausage Bread	Chicken Caesar Salad	Spinach Mushroom Lasagna Ziti	Chicken, Stuffing, Potatoes, Corn, Gravy	Salmon Salad Sandwich
Chicken Pot Pie and Biscuits	Black Bean Soup, tortilla chips	Cobb Salad	Amazingly Moist Salmon, Cheesy, Broccoli & Rice	Pizza	Lighter Chicken Parm, Spaghetti, Green Beans	Salmon Salad Sandwich
Chicken Piccata, Broccoli, Rice	Black Bean Quesadillas with Zucchini and Butternut Squash	Breakfast Burritos, Home Fries	Un-Fried Buffalo Wings, Celery, Blue Cheese	Chicken, Corn and Black Bean Soup	My Favorite Meatloaf, Scalloped Potatoes, Green Beans	Salmon Salad Sandwich
Chicken & Broccoli with Pasta	Minestrone Soup	Salad Pizza	Fish, Broccoli, Rice	Pizza	Zuppa Toscana, Salad, Breadsticks	Halloween Party at Church

Breakfast is usually cereal, sometimes oatmeal, and on Sundays, eggs and toast.  Lunch is leftovers, PBJ, salad, grilled cheese, or something else easy.

Our Monthly Menu

One item that will probably be a regular feature here is my meal plan for the month.  I used to fly by the seat of my pants when it came to groceries and meals. We would kind of make it up as we went along, which seemed to work pretty well for the first two years we were married.  That was when Hey, Babe was still working managing a pizza place and we only ate dinner together a few nights a week (the other nights he ate at work and I didn't bother cooking for just myself).  When Hey, Babe got a new job and was going to be home by 6:00 every night it started getting a little tense around dinnertime.  Especially since I got home at 4:00 and should theoretically have had plenty of time to get just about anything ready.  Then I got pregnant and suffered from miserable, and constantly changing, food aversions.  So every night Hey, Babe called on his way home to find out what I thought I could eat for dinner and picked up the necessary ingredients.  Most things ended up being quick processed foods which meant dinner was rather unhealthy AND pricey.

We finally overhauled the system when we bought a house and moved away from our dinky little apartment and it's corresponding dinky little fridge and ended up with a beautiful large fridge in our new kitchen plus a decent sized spare in the garage.  With all the wonderful new fridge space, along with the fact that the best grocery store was a 25 minute drive (one way & without traffic) we decided to try monthly shopping.  This of course meant that we needed to know everything that we were going to need for the month, excluding produce which we would buy at the farmer's market.  There are the occasional items we miss, but it isn't too much trouble to pick up one the odd missed item here or there.

During second month of our new system I got pregnant again and took the food aversion symptom to the extreme.  Nothing was appealing. Ever.  I decided to stick with the menus anyway, figuring that since I didn't want anything and had to eat something anyway I might as well keep making menus since it made shopping and dinner time easier.  Eventually it went away and we have now been monthly planning and shopping for one whole year.  I'm very pleased with how well we have stuck to it.  In the moment it is easier to just plan a week or a few days worth of meals, but in the long run it saves a lot of time and money.

Some people may think that shopping for the month would take too long, but we actually save quite a bit of time since we only walk the length of the store once a month, instead of every week, and we only make the hour or so round trip drive once a month.  Another plus is that I don't have to worry about running out of food, or needing to go shopping while I am sick, or in bad weather, etc.  In fact, we skipped shopping for two months when my daughter was born (excluding the weekly farmers market, and a few gallons of milk, diapers and cheerios).  Even if you don't think you personally can get rid of your weekly (or more) grocery trips, I highly recommend planning out your meals for the month.  I find it helps with what can otherwise be the most stressful time of the day, dinner prep time.

September
Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
		Bean Burritoes	Crepes	Pasta & Sauce	Veggie Pizza	labor day picnic at church
Taco Dip	BBQ Chicken Quesadillas	Omelets and Homefries	Stuffed Zucchini Cups	Penne with Vodka Sauce	Beef & Broccoli Stir Fry	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
BBQ Chicken, Corn, Mac Salad	Tex Mex Mac & Cheese	Chicken Caesar Salad	Fish in a Bag, Broccoli, Br. Rice	Pasta & Sauce	Shepherd's Pie	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Chicken Parmadillas	Potato Nachos	French Toast, Sausage	Herbed Chicken & Sweet Potatoes	Spaghetti & Meatballs	Chicken Stir Fry	Salmon Salad Sandwiches
Slumgullion	Pancakes & Bacon	Cobb Salad	Fish in a Bag, Broccoli, Br. Rice

I actually plan first Sunday to first Sunday since I only have Hey, Babe's help to grocery shop on Sunday mornings, and it takes two carts.  So here is the beginning of October as well:

1. Chili
2. Moussaka    
3. Chicken Salad Sandwiches

There you have it.  We don't actually always eat the meal for the day it is scheduled, but we try to at least make it happen in the correct week, otherwise it messes with our produce quantities. For those of you who are curious, we have only skipped two planned meals so far, and both were for unscheduled events that conflicted with dinner at home.