Menu planning, part 2 - more ideas, less crazy

It's hard to describe menu planning with a picture.

Maybe my crazy method of menu planning (see part 1 here) didn't do it for you. Believe me, it doesn't always work for me. Like yesterday, when my husband had to go out of town on a last minute business trip. I have a week's worth of recipes planned and even the groceries to go with them. But my motivation? I'm having a really hard time finding it. So to help myself out when it happens again (and I know it will), I'm adding a back-up plan to my method.

That is the point of all this work, after all. We're doing it to ultimately make our lives easier and hopefully, better, healthier...you get the idea. There's a never-ending stream of research telling us how important family meals are for our well being and our health. And by family I don't just mean two parents plus two kids. Family is however you define it and dinner for one is just as important as dinner for six.

If you're still not convinced that it's worth the effort, check out this food manifesto by Mark Bittman. He has a bunch of great ideas on how we can improve our food supply, but he also talks about the value of home cooking. Another good source of information is the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans that was released this past week. It can be tough to follow the guidelines at a restaurant, but at home you're in control.

In the end, no matter what your motivation, planning meals (and cooking them) will take some time to make it a regular habit. It makes sense to find the method that works best for you and your lifestyle.

Here are a few more ideas to help you get started.

1. Create theme nights. If you were a kid in the 1970's, you might remember Wednesday as Prince Spaghetti Night. The ad campaign may have been hokey, but the concept still makes sense. Whether it's Pasta Wednesday or Soup and Salad Thursday, a routine makes it easier to plan the menu and to stick to it. Find four pasta recipes, four soups and you're on your way to planning a whole month of dinners.
2. Plan for leftovers. If you're making a pot of spaghetti sauce, it's not much more work to double the recipe and freeze the extras. Soups and casseroles also freeze well.This is my 'new' back-up plan, by the way. But it only works as long as the dinner gets made in the first place.
3. Cook ahead of time. Similar to #2, except you're typically only planning a week ahead. Prep and cook meals on the weekends or whenever you can find the time. Plan for the days you know you'll get home late and you'll stop making a side trip to pick up a pizza.
4. Finally, don't forget to treat yourself. I still love going out to eat at restaurants - who doesn't?  But if healthier eating is your goal, those meals need to be a special occasion, a treat. It's going to be tough, but I promise it will be worth it!

Now let's get cooking!

Planning a menu, part 1

Why make a menu plan? Well, if you're anything like me and you head over to the grocery store without any specific ideas (aka, a list), you end up coming home with snacks, some veggies, maybe some meat and a gallon of milk. And then they sit in the refrigerator while we go out to dinner because I have no idea what to make.

I've been cooking for myself for close to 20 years now and think the only recipe I have completely memorized is Broccoli and Garlic Penne. And that's because the ingredients are broccoli, garlic and penne pasta. OK, plus salt, pepper and Parmesan cheese. But I always have those on hand so they don't really count.

So unless you're some mastermind with a treasure trove of recipes memorized, I think you can agree with me that making a plan is a very good thing. Now we just have to figure out how to do it. There are as many ways to make a menu as there are cooks. I'm not going to tell you my way is the only way; it's just what works for me. Here's what I do.

1. I start by looking at my/our schedule for the upcoming week and figure out how many meals I will need. Typically, I shoot for 5 meals, knowing that my fresh veggie supply will have to be replenished after that many days. And also realizing that despite my best attempts, there will possibly be a restaurant or take-out dinner somewhere in there.
   
2. Decide the different types of meals I want to make. For me, this means one soup/salad dinner, one or two chicken meals, a beef night, pork and hopefully something vegetarian. The last one's an ongoing struggle for me as my husband's tastes run to more meat and potatoes fare, but I'm working on it.
   
3. And speaking of my husband (let's call him Bob - because that's his name), if he's going to be out of town for work, I'll be sure to plan dinners that I wouldn't normally make and will look forward to cooking. It's hard enough to motivate myself to cook for two and in the past, going solo usually meant I treated myself to some take-out. But to be honest, I tended to find myself catching up on some trash TV and before I knew it, it was 7pm, if not later. And my local take-out options? Not so great.


4. Next up? This part varies week to week, depending on my mood and energy level. I have a growing collection of cookbooks, I subscribe to a few cooking magazines and I read far too many cooking blogs. I also have recipe software (MasterCook Deluxe, to be exact) and although it came with its own collection of recipes, I've never used any of them. Instead, I use the program to import recipes from the web or wherever else I find them. It's not the best software, but it keeps everything in one place and it saves me from printing recipes. So, to make this long story short, depending on what I feel like, I go through my cookbooks, search online and/or sometimes just scroll through my handy-dandy MasterCook for ideas.
   
5. Once I've found recipes that sound appealing, I do a double-check to make sure they're something I can pull off within my time constraints. If I want to make something more time consuming (like 2 1/2 hour Carbonnade a la Flamande), I'll plan to make it over the weekend, when I have more flexibility.


6. Ooh, and don't forget side dishes! This is where I typically fall short. It's great when I can combine them in the same pan as the main course, like a roasted chicken. But that doesn't work for everything so I usually end up with something simple on the side. Steamed or roasted vegetables, basic green salad and sometimes a rice or grain.
   
7. Finally, after a quick check of my cupboards, freezer and refrigerator to check on ingredients, I put everything on a list to take to the grocery store. And that's it!
   

OK, so I might have lost a few of you back there on number 4. I realize not everyone's as crazy as I am about hunting down recipes. I promise Part 2 will offer a more stream-lined solution. And in the meantime, see if you can guess what I'm making in that picture at the top. I know no one's coming here to see more pictures of empty pots and pans!