Menu Planning

I have a long history of being overwhelmed by menu planning.  We make most of our meals from scratch because 4 of the 5 members of our little family cannot have dairy, and right now, two of the members can't have egg.  It's slightly insane, hence the overwhelming part of the menu planning. 

On top of all the allergy issues we also have a really strange schedule around here.  My husband's schedule is never the same.  Read: every. single. day. is. different.  I like routine, so this is very hard for me.  Sometimes he's home for all three meals, while other times he's home for only one or two.  And to top it off, his schedule may look one way at the start of the day only to have it change at the drop of a hat.  What does this have to do with menu planning?  I have to be prepared to make an on-the-go meal quickly or plan to have dinner for my husband early or late while still maintaining some sort of routine for our kids.  By the time I sort through all of that I struggle with the actual weekly menu planning.  But I've finally, after six years of marriage, come up with the system that works for us.

Breakfast

Breakfast is easy.  I've always enjoyed breakfast food; pancakes, muffins, scrambled eggs, french toast.  Why is breakfast so much fun to make?  But around here, we save "special" breakfast meals for the rest of the day and stick to the basics for the morning.  Our mainstay: oatmeal.  We buy oats by the 50 pound bag at least 4 times a year.  We usually fix oatmeal for breakfast paired with almond milk and either banana, raisins, or peaches.  Sometimes we get energetic and cook pieces of apples in our oatmeal with a hint of cinnamon.  It tastes good and it makes the house smell great.  But my point is, unless we happen to have some cereal or cream of wheat in the house, we have oatmeal almost everyday.  It's not as boring as it sounds and it makes for an easy breakfast solution.  Check that off the menu planning list.  Moving on.

Lunch and Dinner.  Lunch and Supper.  Dinner and Supper.

I don't know what you call it, but I refer to these meals as lunch and dinner.  This is where I used to get overwhelmed.  I remember, growing-up, my Dad worked a nice 8-5 job.  Those of us still at home would have a simple lunch of PB&J or other sandwich.  Since my Mom was great about fixing an amazing meal for dinner she kept lunch simple.  That's a little bit harder with allergies.  Ham and cheese is out.  Grilled cheese is out.  Mac and cheese is out.  Peanut butter is a no go here.  If you think of super simple meals many of them contain cheese or milk.  So I found myself making full meals for lunch and dinner.  It was time consuming and by the time I hit mid-week I was burnt out on cooking.  I was out of ideas and ready to throw caution to the wind and eat out the rest of the week.  Except that our budget wouldn't allow for such an extravagance.  So I got a little smarter and came up with the 14-step meal planning technique.

It sounds like some sort of meal planning rehab.  For me, it was.  I sat down one day and figured out that if I take out breakfast meals, since those are easily covered here, that leaves 14 meals to prepare for the week.  So on a piece of paper I wrote 1 through 14 like this:

I didn't write the days of the week because I needed enough flexibility within the plan to accommodate changes in my husband's schedule.  But I also needed to be able to plan ahead for grocery shopping and times when meat needs to thaw. 

So I began to think about the week - the things I knew, without getting stuck on the fact that each day is different and I won't know what my Thursday is going to look like until I'm actually on Thursday.  For example, I like to have a meal prepared when we come home from Mass on Saturday evening.  I always plan a meal like meatloaf or soup for that day.  The other meals I fill in accordingly, trying to make packages of ground beef stretch and using leftover meat from one meal (like baked chicken) to make another meal (chicken pot pie).  The list starts to look like this:

The "x2" means I can get two meals out of that one item, so I leave the next line blank.  I like x2 meals!  Once I have 14 meals planned I begin to make my shopping list of items I need from the store.  I also hunt through the deep freeze for any meat that needs to thaw and stick it in the refrigerator.  As I move through the week I check off the meals we've had and do a mental inventory of where we are so I don't run short.  This gives me the flexibility I need to move with our very random schedule as well as enough planning to have everything I need to make each meal on any given day.  It works really well for us and sometimes, if things go better than planned, I can squeeze out an extra meal here or there and have a carry over into the next week.  I do my grocery shopping on Mondays so the start of my meal planning week is Tuesday.  I do all the planning on Monday before I head to the store.

With this system I am making the food stretch further and I am more prepared.  It's certainly cut down on the times when I forgot to get something at the store or I forgot to thaw out meat or I have to make a last-minute run to the store.  It's given me more freedom to move throughout my day without that sense of dread, "What am I going to make for dinner tonight?" looming overhead.  I'm saving time, money, and brain cells.  I like that.

Do share: what is your menu planning strategy?

Check here for a simple way to keep shopping lists handy.