adventures in meal planning

I remember when I was single...I'd have things for dinner like goat cheese, brie, crackers, and peppered salami...at 10pm at night....with a beer.  One of my greatest fears before having kids was that my kids would starve, since I am not known for following a schedule with precision.  I remember thinking, "Wow, I'll have to PLAN dinner and have it ready at a certain TIME?!  And have VEGETABLES?!"  The girls are two now, and dinner is at 5:30pm, maybe 6pm at the latest, and it actually seems easy compared to mixing formula non-stop or pureeing veggies, and the schedule itself has eased up as well from the newborn days.  We've been making an effort to eat at home more to save money and to eat more healthily, but I've discovered unless I have a meal plan in place, suddenly it's my nightmare come true--it's 4:30pm and I have no idea what's for dinner, and everything is frozen solid.  (Actually, my nightmare is that it's 10pm and I realize the kids are not only still awake, but starving and screaming.  Actually, any one of those three things at 10pm is pretty much a nightmare.)

I've been doing here and there, kind of casual meal planning for a few months now.  I dove headfirst into a ton of get-it-on-the-table-quick-and-cheap-and-organic-from-our-freezer-and-basement-stockpile-that-I-bought-solely-with-coupons-and-grew-with-my-own-hands kinds of books and was--of course--overwhelmed.  So I picked a few things out that made sense and started there.

• Plan meals for a week or more at a time
• Make a list from those recipes
• Stockpile if on sale and you have coupons
• Make certain parts of the meal ahead (if you are baking chicken tonight, cook an extra piece for tomorrow's jambalaya and you're 20 minutes ahead of the game
• Choose recipes that are easy and use ingredients you usually have on hand

This month was my first attempt at menu-planning for the whole month, taking all those recipes and making a master list for the month, and shopping according to store sales.  I organized the list by food type and store layout as much as I could remember (I don't always go to the same store and it slows me down).  I used a Mom type calendar that I already had (and which had a space labeled "Chow" at the bottom of each day, and used the stickers that came along with the calendar (supposedly to write things down like "Johnny's soccer practice" or "Susie's violin recital") and wrote as many of our favorite meals on them as I could think of, in multiples.  So the sheet of labels looked something like this:

meat loaf
meat loaf
meat loaf
pesto pasta w/chicken
pesto pasta w/chicken
pesto pasta w/chicken
red beans and rice
red beans and rice
red beans and rice

Then I pulled off labels and started sticking them onto calendar days, paying attention to how many times we had a particular meat each week and what could be used as leftovers from one dish and turned into something else (baked pork loin turned into soft tacos a few days later, for example).  This sounds like a bit of a pain, but it saves me from having to write it as I go along next month, AND it means that I can swap things around if I decide on Tuesday that I really don't feel like making vegetable soup.  Swap it with Thursday and--presto changeo--we can have easy pasta tonight.  I threw in a few new recipes and some old favorites, and on some days just put something vague like "Fish."  I considered making it more simple and just saying Mondays are pasta night or Meatless Monday, but that didn't help me make my grocery list, although I may revisit the idea in the future.

So far the month's menu looks something like this:

Monday:  Chilaquiles (a new recipe from an AJC book, apparently there is also a website!)
Tuesday:  blank (family in town for dinner)
Wednesday:  homemade pizza (the girls love to help)
Thursday:  fish (to be announced...turned out it was frozen salmon from Trader Joe's) and spicy coleslaw (a new recipe I'd found)
Friday: dinner out (Brandon's birthday)
Saturday: linguine with slow-cooked zucchini, basil, and cream (also a new recipe)
Sunday: LO pasta (LO=leftover)
Monday:  baked chicken and squash
Tuesday: jambalaya with LO chicken
Wednesday:  LO jambalaya and other assorted leftovers
Thursday:  homemade meatloaf with veggies, mashed potatoes (homemade), and zipper peas (fresh frozen)

I have a too-small budget of approximately $275 each month for food, household supplies, and baby supplies (we use cloth diapers but disposables at night and when out).  I usually hit closer to $400, which is a more reasonable amount if we could afford it, but this month's careful planning has made me more aware of things we could cut out and things that we should buy instead.  Since I didn't plan most side dishes with the meals (thinking I could play it by ear), I ended up with too many fruits and veggies at the beginning of the month and am starting to run low on some here at mid-month.  I spent $250 at Kroger on the majority of the groceries, and another $48 at Wayfield (our closest store--nice staff but a limited selection) for meats.  But we're already running low on fruit, spinach, lettuce, eggs, and half and half.  So next month I hope to plan out a few sides and not blow my whole fresh fruit/veggie budget at the beginning of the month.  I also hope to get the veggies either at the local farmer's market (first one, this weekend!) or at the DeKalb Market, which has great prices on fresh vegetables.

Side note:  I buy organic when I can afford it but have had to let some things slide.  We buy some organic fruit, vegetables, ketchup, etc.  When I can't buy organic, I at least try to find no high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, etc.  We grow some veggies at home, but as the trees surrounding our yard have grown, our garden is suddenly shaded and our crop has been small this year.  Next year we'll move the garden or cut some trees!


I'd love to share more, but it looks as if I need to go make tacos, beans, and rice for dinner now... ;)