Something to Chew On

Both of my parents grew up in really large families living on relatively small budgets (my mom is one of 9 children and my dad is one of 12).  Neither of my grandmothers were the pie-baking type – their approach to planning and preparing family meals was centered on cost and efficiency.  To this day, my mother and her siblings can recite the weekly menu from their childhood -  Monday was “chop suey”, Tuesday eggs and toast, etc, etc all the way down to one special bottle of soda on Saturday.  

I think my grandmother was on to something.   Having a predictable weekly meal plan made her life much easier – it kept the shopping simple, allowed for consistently balanced meals and ensured that food was on the table at a predictable time every night.  Most of us don’t get too excited about the thought of chicken chop suey every Monday (my mom sure didn't) but using a predictable cycle for your menu planning can save your family time, money, and unneeded anxiety. 

I’m not a fan of simply saying that Monday night is “chicken night” or Tuesday is “vegetarian night” because that still leaves a lot of last minute choices to be made.  Two meal planning strategies I like are to have a predictable cycle of the type of meal and/or the cooking method.  

By type of meal – Plan your general menu cycle by general style/ type of food served and then change around the ingredients from week to week to avoid boredom.  For example, Monday is stir-fry with rice; Tuesday is something grilled with vegetable on side; Wednesday is a pasta dish; Thursday is soup or stew, Friday is pizza; Saturday is leftovers and Sunday is some kind of roast.  You can have a regular burger night, taco night, casserole night, quiche night, curry night, breakfast-for-dinner night, etc, etc, etc. 

By cooking method - Since time can be our most precious commodity, set up your weekly menu by style of cooking.  Choose quick-cooking methods like grilling for days when your schedule is full and save more involved methods like a roast for days you have more time.  For example – Monday stir-fry, Tuesdays and Saturdays on the grill, Wednesday slow-cooker, Thursday a no-cooking required meal, Friday and Sunday use the oven. 

Even just making one or two weekly meals more predictable – such as setting Friday night as homemade pizza night - can make things simpler for you and start a little family tradition that ends up being about much more than just the food.     

Here are some more meal-planning tips.

• Be specific – Go ahead and pick an actual recipe for each night at the time of planning and double check to be sure that the needed ingredients in the cabinet or on the shopping list. Try online recipe search engines such as Allrecipes, Food Network, or Epicurious. You can search by specific ingredients, type of meal or cooking method. Food blogs are another great inspiration for meal ideas but can really suck you in - so be warned.
• Be balanced - Set your menu cycle according to your usual shopping schedule – but do at least a week-long period at once so you can more easily control variety and overall cost. Look over the weekly plan as a whole and make sure there is variety of protein sources and fresh produce.  It’s easy to swap chicken or extra vegetables for pork in a stir-fry or to add some ground beef or lentils to a pasta sauce.  Try to include at least one fish and one vegetarian meal each week. 
• Be flexible – Learn a bit about ingredients and appropriate substitutions so you don’t have to throw out your recipe choice just because you overlooked one item on the grocery list. The back pages of general cookbooks usually have charts with equivalency suggestions.  For baking look here and here.  For herbs and spices here  and here