Meal Planning Check In

Meal Planning March is almost half over, and I'm here with a fascinating in-depth status report. 

First, let's check in with each guideline:

1. Plan each dinner at least 48 hours in advance.
   Yep, I've done that! Buuuuut... well, I'll explain below.

2. Incorporate stuff from the pantry, freezer and garden wherever possible.
   Doing pretty well here.

3. It's OK to rearrange the plan!
   Yeah, there has been some rearranging, some OK, some well... see below...

4. "Leftovers" and "going out" are completely legitimate planned meals. 
   Oooooh yeah they are.  How I love Leftover night.  "From the freezer" - also legitimate.

5. Once a week +, I will double up a recipe and put half in the freezer*.
Doing OK here, though we do have a tendency to leave leftovers in the fridge and pick at them.  Nothing wrong with that, except that we don't end up with a stockpile for "From the freezer" nights.

6. Aim for HELFY meals, but dude, it's OK to bust out and have a steak or some pasta carbonara now and then.
 A-OK!

All in all, it's going quite well... buuuut... we haven't totally stuck to the plan.  I changed the recipe (day of) a couple times, ate leftovers more than planned (because I forgot to defrost our frozen meal), and we ate out one night (because we wanted to go out, not out of desperation)  I'm all good with remaining flexible, but also don't want to slip so much that we're wasting food or spending time spinning my wheels in the search for a new recipe.

One issue is that I sometimes don't want to prepare the recipe I've chosen when I'm in overly-ambitious meal planning mode.  It may be because the recipe is intimidating or because the food just isn't what I'm in the mood for.  So the first tweak I'm making is to choose fewer new-to-me recipes - one a week is plenty!  I'll include more tried-n-true's - recipes that don't intimidate me (anymore).

So keeping that in mind, I created this week's meal plan.  Here she is!

Meal Plan   3/7/11-3/13/11

Ingredients to Use: Pasta, sweet potatoes, salmon, spinach

Monday

Tuna cakes, spinach salad

Tuesday

Grown-ups out – Grama watching kids Leftovers

Wednesday

Red Pepper Salmon Pasta (new-to-me recipe), salad

Thursday

St. Patrick’s Day!  Green pancakes for breakfast.  Corned beef & cabbage (also new-to-me, but Mr. Helfy will talk me through it.  Or maybe he'll just make it.)

Friday

Pizza – pepperoni, mozzarella.  Try thin crust recipe from CI (which is new-to-me so if I don't feel like doing something new, I'll use my old tried-n-true pizza dough recipe)

Saturday

From the freezer – mac n’ cheese

Sunday

Mr. Helfy's choice (seems like cheating, huh?  I like to leave a night open in case, as often happens, Mr. Helfy gets inspired to make something specific)

 There ya have it!  Wish me luck!

Meal Planning March

I am officially declaring this month Meal Planning March!

For a long time now, I've been simultaneously aware of and flummoxed by the need to plan our meals in advance.  We've had small successes here and there, but have never stuck to it.  Which is why I solemnly swear to plan all of our meals in advance during the month of March.

Here are the guidelines for Meal Planning March:
1. Plan each dinner at least 48 hours in advance.
2. Incorporate stuff from the pantry, freezer and garden wherever possible.
3.  It's OK to rearrange the plan!
4. "Leftovers" and "going out" are completely legitimate planned meals.
5.  Once a week +, I will double up a recipe and put half in the freezer*.
6.  Aim for HELFY meals, but dude, it's OK to bust out and have a steak or some pasta carbonara now and then.

Doable?  I think so.

How will I manage meal management?  This is an area that has gotten me hung up in the past, as I tend to over-think.  So I'm just going to keep it simple, and change it up when needed.  Here's my first meal plan, for this week.  Totally works, but I think I'll switch to paper, since my kids are fond of erasing...

It just lists each day of the week, with the main dish and possibly the sides.  I'll also note other meal-ish to-do's - bake bread, soak beans for tomorrow, etc.  It says "use up" at the bottom - that list will be inspiration for the recipes I choose.  Also inspiring?  The pictures at the top.  :)


What will Meal Planning do for me?  Several things, I think:

• Sanity retention - I loathe that "what should we have for dinner" feeling I get at 5pm.  Also, I hate feeding my kids late due to poor planning.  And I'm guessing Mr. Helfy doesn't like coming home to hungry kids and a clueless Me.
• Money savings.  Last minute meal decisions lead to last minute trips to the store... impulse purchases are made...cha-ching, cha-ching...  
• We'll waste less food from our garden and freezer/pantry backstocks if we're consciously working it into our meal plans.    
• Greater variety.  It would be OK to have quesadillas a little less frequently.
• And finally, the driving factor behind needing a freakin' clue what I'm going to make for dinner.  Every extra minute I stand with my pantry/fridge/mouth agape, wondering what to make, this one is tearing the place up.  

She used to be content to rearrange the jars.  Now she OPENS them.  Yikes.

Joining us just in time for Meal Planning March is our new freezer* (I think I'll call him Hugh - whadya think?).  We've been saving up for a while now, and this bad boy joined us on Sunday.  It is enormous, intimidatingly so.  13.8 cubic feet didn't sound that big, ya know?  I'm sure we'll have no problem filling it, over time.  Freezer management will be a challenge, as it is deep - but it did come with some cool dividers, baskets and cute little labels to help.  Having room to freeze meals will be awesome - we can pre-make meals for don't-wanna-cook nights.  Also, we can bulk buy when stuff's on sale.  And, it seriously expands our produce preservation options.  Yippee!

Can you tell how big it is?  Ha-uge!

So that's the plan, wish me luck.  Any meal planning tips or insight for me?