Sunday, April 21, 2013

Some nights I call it a draw

One of my challenges for nearly my entire adult life has been cooking and eating at home.  I love eating out, but more than that, it's *easy* to eat out and fairly cheap.  Not as cheap as cooking at home, but when you come home to a fridge with soy milk, ketchup, and one shriveled up apple, cooking at home isn't going to happen without a giant grocery run and by then I'm so hungry I'm going to eat the next person who looks at me sideways.

So the real problem for me has been planning. Not coincidentally, this is where I go off the rails with any healthy eating plan, too. The first week after a grocery run is great.  Then I run out of stuff and start eating dry cereal out of the box and the leftover chocolate chips, because all the healthy snacks are gone. You feelin' me?

Now that we've essentially cut our income in half, it's not prudent to just grab takeout, or hit up the Claim Jumper when the fridge is empty.  Also, we have a 6 month old, who has not yet mastered the concept of "restaurant behavior" since she's JUSTABABY.  So eating out is often a *stressful* exercise, and one parent usually ends up eating their meal quickly with one hand while holding a fussy baby.  NOFUN.

So, meal planning.  It's been one of my goals this year to master this skill that eludes me. Luckily I know my way around the kitchen. I love to cook.  But for me, cooking is a multi-hour, multi-course *project*, something I did for fun once a month or so on a weekend day with no other obligations.  Not the daily grind of getting a meal on the table.

I found SimpleMom's brilliant meal planning technique using Google Calendar.  She advocates planning 2 weeks of dinners at a time, then repeating them, so you have a month done at once.

I made this even easier by picking a "theme" for each day of the week, and made the "theme" an All-Day appointment, recurring, on the Google Calendar.  I'll change it up when we get tired of this rotation, but it's general enough that it'll be a while before that happens.

Monday = Breakfast for Dinner
Tuesday = Dinner Out (since T has dance class in the late afternoon)
Wednesday = Dinner in Asia
Thursday = Beef. It's What's for Dinner
Friday = Chicken.Chicken.Chicken (based on this brilliant paper)
Saturday = Dinner in MexicItaly
Sunday = Dinner with Friends 

Here's the process I use.  Maybe it'll help someone out in Internet-land who finds meal-planning incredibly annoying/hard/exhausting.  (Click for a larger view of the calendar.)



1. I do a quick check of the fridge, freezer and pantry to see if there's anything I'd like to use up - meat, veggies, etc.

2. I grab 2 cookbooks and find main dish recipes that use those items, matching them to one of the themes above.

3.  For 2 weeks, I fill in the main dishes and sides on the Google Calendar in an appointment at 5pm (which is when I have to start cooking).  Sides are *extremely* simple, like steamed veggies, cut fruit, a baked potato, etc. unless the main dish is heat-and-serve.  I also put down the cookbook and page number so I can find the recipes easily when I'm ready to cook.  Each "appointment" is repeated in 2 weeks on the same day.  At least once a week we eat something very easy to "cook", like a frozen or pre-made item from Trader Joe's.

4. On Saturdays, I look at the coming week and write up a grocery list for these meals (plus anything else we need for breakfast and lunch).  If this is a "repeat" week, I remove anything we didn't like the first time and replace it with something else (and repeat it in 2 weeks to make planning easier).  I also check for other evening commitments in case things need to be moved.  For example, when I have a dinner with friends, I feed T something simple before I go, and TJ can fend for himself.

5. I'm keeping a running list of the things that were easy to make and well-liked so I can build up our own list of what we like to eat regularly instead of always picking out new things. 

I started this a month ago with skepticism. I've gone down this OMGBRILLIANT path before and fizzled out. But seriously, this just worked.  We've followed the plan most days of the month, and have reduced the random items languishing in our freezer.  Most nights we are all eating the same thing (except for BabyM, of course), which is brilliant.  No more kid meal + adult-fend-for-yourself.  We're definitely spending less money eating out, and are more organized about our grocery shopping since I have an actual list.

We're luckily not in a position where I have to clip coupons or figure out what meat is on sale before I buy it, so I don't stress too much about what to choose.  I do try to avoid the $18/lb filet mignon at Whole Foods unless it's a special occasion. Since we don't buy a ton of processed foods and snacky items, spending a little more on meat doesn't affect the grocery bill much. 

The nice thing about this plan is that I can tackle health at the same time.  I've mostly eliminated simple starches from our dinners, though we do love our potatoes. (TJ and T are definitely not into sweet potatoes as a substitute, yet.)  We were already dairy-free, and now I can make sure we're getting enough vegetables in too.  

Another awesome result of this is reducing my mental load.  I don't have to make decisions each night about what to do for dinner, then throw up my hands and decide we should just go to Five Guys and get burgers.  Now I just look at the calendar, make sure we have everything we need, and get to work at 5pm, usually with my 3yo helper.  My routine-oriented self LOVES this part.

So now maybe I can earn one of my SAHM merit badges. :)  My next goal is to tackle lunch, as we don't have as many leftovers as I thought, and then I skip lunch and then THECRANKY.

What about you?  Do you plan meals ahead?

22 comments:

  1. I do meal plan, but some weeks work out better than others. We almost never eat out, but we do end up improvising at least once a week. Having a stocked pantry helps. The improvised nights are frequently ones where I feed the girls earlier and then J & I eat after they go to bed. I need some new recipes, but have been struggling with figuring out things that everyone will eat.

    I hadn't thought of trying the two weeks at a time approach. I wonder if that might work for us. I'm not sure how many cookbooks you have, but I use a handy website called Eat Your Books when I'm looking for recipes that fit what I have on hand. I've added all my cookbooks to it, and it basically acts as an index for all of them so I don't have to hunt through each one.

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    1. I'll have to check that site! I actually like just grabbing a random cookbook and flipping through to find stuff - it makes it more fun for me :)

      We definitely do not have a well stocked pantry so part of my job here is to figure out what we like to eat regularly and what we can stock up for.

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  2. I would like to say yes but generally no. I usually have a couple of ideas when I go shopping but I never do a list for the whole week ahead. Hubby is away a lot with work so often the same meal does two nights when it is just me and Miss Three.

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  3. I usually plan a week in advance, just before I go grocery shopping. I try to have a mix of simple and more complicated meals. It does make life easier. Though it's still a pain having the kids bug me while I cook! x

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  4. A plan might be a good thing for me too. I really don't like to cook, especially because of the time it takes and because mostly it's just for myself....so why all the trouble, is what I mostly think :-)

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    1. I hear you! I used to feel this way when I was living on my own, and even when it was just me and hubby, since we worked a lot and are both picky about what we like to eat. So we'd just sort of figure out our own food, and maybe sometimes eat together ;) Now with kids, that's not a feasible plan anymore, so we are forced to figure something out!

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  5. As I got into the nitty gritty of this post, I was struck by the overwhelming desire to say one thing to you, which I will do now: NERD!!

    (Said with love and sweetness, of course. :) )

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  6. I love love love this idea!! Love. Our struggle will be what to do when Jon is gone but this should help. Will report back.

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  7. I don't meal plan, I wish I could be that organized but it's jut not in my genetic makeup lol :)

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  8. My husband and I had tea, cookies and yogurt for dinner last night...we were soooo tired and had NOT planned for dinner. Kids got waffles and eggs!

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  9. This is so helpful! I love the google calendar! Thanks for sharing!

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  10. This is one thing I have done relatively successfully for many many years. I plan by the week. Right now I actually pick a specific meal and assign it to each day, but in days gone by I used to just plan and shop for maybe 5 dinners and we ate them (or leftover them) whenever the desire struck us.

    Currently I use a one-week calendar white board. On Sunday (when everyone is home) I sit down and erase last week and write down everything we have scheduled for the week -- baseball games and ballet practice and art class and who goes to which babysitter on what day, etc etc etc. This informs the meals -- the days the kids have gymnastics and we have to be gone from the house from 5 to 7:30, I make french toast or soup or something quick and easy, for example. I think about how much time will be available, who will be cooking (my husband does a lot of the dinners, I'm the make-it-ahead person, so "my" days are more likely to be crockpot or casserole dishes I 'made' in the morning). I make everyone else help me think up the meals, because ugh, thinking them up, and also because You Asked For This helps quell the inevitable I Don't Want This For Dinner from the 7 and 8 year olds. I write them all on the white board, make a grocery list and shop on Sunday afternoon. My daughter (and sometimes my son -- depends whether there is a NASCAR race or not!) likes to help with this part, so grocery shopping does double duty as Mommy-kiddo time. Sometimes my husband will do one more quick grocery run later in the week (for fresh produce or bread or if I forget something or discover an empty package in the pantry or whatever). I have also recently started making sure I fill my gas tank on the same trip out for grocery, since that usually eliminates the need to squeeze that in during the week.

    I find this saves A LOT of money over the take-out/go-out/buy something easy to cook right this minute route. When we were poor college students, I made a grocery budget of $150/month work for us (I'd spend $25/week at the grocery store and make one $100 trip to Costco every other month) using this method. We eat better quality food now (and we're feeding 3 more people and it's um ... quite a few years later) but I still think we spend way less money on food that a lot of families. And I am so not interested in that coupon-clipping hoopla (though I do buy meat when it's on sale and keep it in the freezer to use later).

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    1. I like "You Asked for This". We had some trouble with that, too.

      I also like grocery shopping as Mama-kid time. Especially with just one. T and I have a pretty good time when we do this.

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  11. I'm awful with meal planning I do it in my head. I have tried to write it down for the month but then I over think it and nothing gets done. I do try and cook one new recipe every week and we have one night of leftovers.

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  12. I'm a menu planner to the enth degree. I don't have kidlets nor a husband to contend with so my planning is pretty easy. I have a system that is similar to yours only I have the nifty brandy snifter that I put all my recipes in. Each week I select a couple of new recipes to try and add them to the shopping list. I also have recipe software that allows me to select said recipes and have them build a grocery list from it. Very handy.

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  13. Dear god thank you for writing this. I'm HORRIBLE at meal planning, we never know what to have for dinner, and I go from mildy irritated to SUPER CRANKY in about 5 seconds if i'm over hungry. My goal during maternity leave is to do something about this!!! Plan meals, shop for them, have a schedule!! YAY! I will use these tips and let you know how it goes. :) PS - your post title reminded me of "some nights" by FUN. hehe

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    1. You got the title right :) Mine are almost always song lyrics.

      Yeah, I had been wanting to do this for my entire leave, but didn't manage to get it together until recently. And it's still a challenge if we get off track on our shopping, etc.

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  14. I never have time to cook during the week, plus I really don't actually like to cook, so I've found that what works best for me is to make batches of two or three things that freeze well all in one day on the weekend, and then supplement that with salads during the week. I usually have a couple of servings leftover, which adds some variety to the next week. And if plans change, then the food is safely in the freezer and it doesn't get a chance to go bad. I started doing this in grad school, and it definitely seems to be the best way to make sure I'm eating healthy and relatively cheaply. Plus I don't have to cook every night, but I'm not eating out more than once a week either.

    Good luck with keeping up the planning, An!

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    1. This is a great tip, too! I unearthed some things from our freezer that I had put in ages ago and they didn't survive too well. I'll need to revisit that with things that are specifically known to freeze well (or get better containers!).

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  15. Awesome post. i so need help with this too and I already like using google calendar, though the need for it has gone way down since I stopped working.

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  16. I love the idea of mom merit badges. I can think of a few I'd like to earn...

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