July 2010 Menu - Renewed Enthusiasm for Healthy Cooking

We just returned from visiting family in Savannah, GA. Somehow my brother-in-law’s girlfriend effortlessly threw together fresh ingredients to make several dinners that were delicious. She told us how her parents raised her and her siblings on whole organic foods and by some miracle she grew up without much of a sweet tooth at all. She craves healthful foods naturally. Our kids were not quite the angels on our trip that we would have liked (imagine that). To be honest, we have slipped down into such a junk food pit that I believe their junk intake may contribute to some of the negative behavior we witnessed (go ahead and laugh but I have heard of links between behavior and diet before). So anyway, I am feeling super motivated to cut out the junk we have been eating along with all the excuses we were using to buy it (treat for the pool, road trip, summer excursion, got a coupon, etc.). During our 26 hours spent in the car last week I went through magazines and got some healthy meal plans together for the remainder of July. I am hoping that I will find the time to report back with my reviews of how these new recipes worked out. Among my recipe finds are some chewy energy bars and healthy dessert ideas. I expect to get some resistance from the kids for a while during their junk detox but I’m motivated to stick to it and get them eating healthier. Afterall, it’s my job!

April 2010 Menu

March 2010 Menu

February 2010 Menu

Anyone who ever visits here probably wondered if I was ever coming back. Yes I love doing this little blog. I will be back. The Holiday Season and my 3 little ones tugged at my time. Admittedly I did not enter this past holy season prepared as I would have liked. This doesn’t happen every year for me. This year will be better. I will be done with the gifting ideas by Halloween so I can truly enjoy the season. While I was gone I put together this Februrary menu with all new recipes which I am excited about. Being a bit lazy with it, however, in putting it together, I basically sat down with my latest copy of CL magazine, (heard they were nitpickedty about copyright rules on blogs and such but I know you can figure it out), and used all their recipes because everything looked so yummy.

October 2009 Menu

September 2009 Menu

I have finally gotten back to posting the recipes that go along with my monthly menu. It wasn't even that hard or time consuming. We will be trying a new veggie Boboli recipe inspired by my friend Megan. I have tried to incorporate a lot more veggies in this month's menu. Maybe there were loads of veggies in the past months but this month there was a real effort to load up on them so hopefully you can see that. There are lots of new recipes that I am excited to try. Thanks to my sister-in-law I got a subscription to Cooking Light of which my friend Barb is a big fan. That magazine may be part of my inspiration to load up on veggies. The recipes look great and healthy. I used to have the mistaken belief that Cooking Light was for people who dieted and ate bland and uninspired meals. It is clearly not true. I have already recommended it to people looking for recipe ideas to feed their family healthy. I too am a big fan. Thanks sil!

August 2009 Menu

Don't worry. I haven't lost interest in this little blog. It's these kids. They keep me so busy in the summer. We've been having a blast. When they are back at school I will get back to this blog. I already have ideas in the works.

Here is our August menu. I am trying to get the most leftovers while still being realistic. Once a week wasn't working out to be enough, twice a week was sometimes leaving us with too little leftovers, so my husband thinks that we can have leftovers every 4 days. So I'm giving it a shot having mindfully filled the 3 days between leftover days with meals that seem leftover-worthy. I may not get to posting the recipes so if there is a recipe that you want just email me and I will get it to you. Oh and as always, asterisk are new recipes and purple meals are slow cooker recipes.

Laziness is the Goal

This July I have been lazy. Very lazy. I never came up with a new menu. I was away for a week. I have not been doing all the proactive things that I usually like to do to keep on top of things. However, I have not become unorganized and chaos has not taken over. How can this be? I have been monthly planning long enough that once it was obvious that I was not going to get around to creating a new menu for this month I simply pulled last years July menu and roughly followed it. Of course I could have redone last month too if I wanted but I like to mix it up a bit more. This is the perfect example of why it pays off to put in some extra time and effort to get really organized. If you get organized in a way that is truly functional and works for you then you can turn on autopilot and get lazy later. Here is the 2008 menu I followed for this July:

June 2009 Menu

I think this is one of the most simple menus I've had in a long time. I am utilizing the crock pot and cooking up some simple meals that can be taken to the pool. We are so excited for our town pool to open on Monday. We get to the pool nearly every day that it is open and enjoy the most simple basic and free things in life. I think I only survive the 9 months of fall, winter and spring because I know summer is the reward. There is always something magical about being with the kids away from the house. There are no "to do" list distractions, no laundry that can get done, no house . . . anything. So hopefully this menu will allow us to be at the pool as much as possible this June.

May 2009 Menu

Well I’ve had some computer problems. Thankfully they have been resolved so I can finallyshare my May 2009 menu with you. It's amazing how much I rely on my computer. Some sleep was lost but all is well. I will get the recipes together asap.

I am still enjoying a lot more leftovers than I am used to which means less cooking (perfect for good spring time weather) and less shopping. The menu looks so sparse compared to menus prior to April but it’s working. I am just trying to cook extra so we can stretch leftovers. A couple times last month I ran low on leftovers so I just threw some chicken breasts on the grill with a big salad. Simple. Easy. Healthy. That’s my new spring and summer motto.

April 2009 Menu

I wonder why I’ve been killing myself, (I haven't really), to come up with 25 or so fabulous meals each month for my family when all I really have to do is cook about every other day? I recently organized my friend Jill’s kitchen and when I do such a thing I have the pleasure of bonding with someone over a 5 hour period of laborious tasks. Unfortunately for my friend-clients, they must also spend that time putting up with me and my opinions about everything in the world that doesn’t really matter in relation to their kitchen. Anyhoo, my wise friend Jill told me that they only cook a dinner every couple of days and then they eat leftovers. This idea has sat with me for a couple of weeks now. WHY am I not doing this also? I think partially because I just love food and always have so many new recipes that I want to try. I am also in a habit of torturing, (it’s not really torture it’s a “learning” experience), my children by placing dinners that are healthy for their growing bodies in front of them regardless whether or not they like the meal. I think that having the same meal 2 days in a row that they don’t like lowers their chances of enjoying meal time but, regardless, we are giving it a try. Here is the absolute most simple month I have ever done. It just doesn’t seem right, but I’m going to cook more of every meal to make sure we get a leftover meal out of each one (aside from pizza and the occasional meal taken from the freezer). We'll see how it goes.

Oh and I forgot to add April's in-season produce to the top of my menu for shopping purposes. I will do that now . . . .

March Monthly Menu

My meal planning advice of the day today is DON'T do what I did for March. Plan your menu early in bits and pieces and do not wait till the end of the month to do it. My daughter watched an hour more of tv than I would have liked as I rushed to get my menu together so that I could make ONE trip to Sam's club instead of two. I know that pulling it together will be worth it over the next 4 1/2 weeks but it wasn't fun doing it last minute.

Well coming up in March I tried to get super cheap and even though we follow the pre-Vatican II abstinence on Fridays year round, we will be trying some new vegetarian recipes on Fridays during this Lenten Season. The new veggie recipes were more inspired by what odds and ends I found in my pantry than a desire to try a yummy sounding recipe. A couple of them I am not so sure about but hey, it's always good to try something new and at least it uses some pantry items that I already have on hand.

I hope the Pad Thai is good. I just had the pleasure of having Pad Thai out for the first time in years thanks to my friend Theresa and it made me want more!

February Menu

It seems to me that there are too many new recipes to try and too little time to try them all. I really do try to keep my menus simple but I am constantly coming across new recipes that I want to try to make. Often, as is the case for February, when I sit down to put the menu together I realize that there are about three new recipes each week. Too many new recipes can be a recipe for disaster. Not all new recipes are a success so my family and I can get tired of flop after flop so hopefully we will have good luck this February. Sometimes a traditional ethnic recipe sounds so terrible awful but has such great reviews that I must try it. So this February we will give the German dish Sauerbraten a try.

Double click on the smaller images to enlarge:

January 2009 Menu

Happy New Year! I started off my new year updating my freezer inventory list. Ahhh, that feels good.

Here is my January 2009 menu. It's going to be a month of laziness in the kitchen here. I only have 5 new recipes on this month's menu and we are resorting back to our tried and true recipes. I have baked and consumed enough cookies this Christmas season for about a year! The solution may be just to stay out of the kitchen. We will be having a lot of meals from the freezer and focusing that domestic time and energy on cleaning and reorganizing all the closets, cupboards and drawers that have gotten a bit out of control over Christmas. The storage area of our basement gets strategically very messy around Christmas for Santa so it is time to clean that area out as well, which is no small job.

You should be able to double click on these smaller images to enlarge.

December 2008 Menu

My husband thinks that I make many simple tasks more difficult than necessary. I totally disagree with him on this but for this December menu I would have to agree. I have been monthly meal planning now for a year an a half. I have a lengthy eight page entrée list with ingredients listed. I could have easily cut and pasted from my existing list and used a new recipe once a week to keep things fresh. But NOooo, I decided again try 13 new recipes (partly in the spirit of seeking new crock pot recipes) and as if that wasn’t enough work, I came across this blog: http://www.catholiccook.blogspot.com/ and I thought how cool it would be to work in the Saints on the Church calendar into our menu. I love creating opportunities for religious education with my kids (and me, the convert) and what a perfect pairing, right? Ok, so if you haven’t thought that I am a complete obsessive compulsive dork at this point, now you MUST. I tried as much as possible (I gave up on some as you can see) to have an ethnic dish that matched the Saint of the day. My proudest match is on Lazarus’s day we will have Live Longer Casserole, a favorite of my husband. It was kind of fun to shout out, “I need a Dominican Pork recipe idea.” I actually utilized the advanced search options at some recipe sites where you can select the cuisine (German, Spanish, Mexican, etc) for the first time. We will definitely be introducing some new vegetables thanks to St. Dominic of Silos so it’s all good.

So if you are new to monthly meal planning and want to get started, I am happy to email you this word document if that is easier for you. I also urge you to get your menu started asap. It takes time and if you get it done early you can tweak it.

You should be able to double click on the smaller images to enlargen.

The recipes for December can be found here: http://jennshomework.blogspot.com/2008/11/december-2008-recipes.html

How to Create a Monthly Meal Plan 101

A few people I know have said that they would very much like to stop running to the grocery store so often and would like to try a monthly meal plan. I will also say that several other people I know just think that monthly meal planning is plain crazy. I love it for so many reasons but regardless of my reasons I’m probably not going to talk anyone into doing it if it does not appeal to them. I can guarantee you that monthly meal planning will save you time, money and get your family eating healthier and more of a variety of foods. Don't think that it is inflexible. It totally is. You will have the ingredients to make anything on your menu for a week. It is not so different than planning weekly in that regard. So if you don't feel like having hamburgers tonight, if you've planned for the month and shopped your produce for the week then you probably have several dinners to choose from.

(1) So the first thing to do to get started is to list all the meals that your family enjoys regularly. Of course you will want to do this in word document on your computer. Under each meals list all the ingredients that you would shop for that make up that meal. I call this my “Master Entrée Ingredient List.” I like to organize my entrée list by beef, chicken, pork, seafood and vegetarian categories so that when I am filling in my menu I can easily find the dish that I am looking for. This step may take several nights after the kids are tucked in bed and an hour here or there but it is worth it because it will save you SO much time in the end. This is the step that takes the most time.
I also like to make the produce or parishable food items on each meal ingredient list in green type at the top. That way when you go to make your grocery list from your Master Entrée Ingredient List you will easily be able to pick out your weekly produce runs and once a month shopping trip items.

I haven’t updated my Master Entrée Ingredient List in a few months and I have several new recipes that are keepers to add to it but here are several pages of mine to give you an idea:

(2) Once you have a list of several meals with their ingredients you can pull up a calendar to start planning your month. I download the free calendars at http://www.calendarsthatwork.com/ and then save it in a folder for menus. Or you can save it wherever it makes sense in your word document file list so you can retreive it later. That calendarsthatwork website only allows you to get one month in advance for free so I just use one I have and change the numbers on it if I want to plan more ahead. KWIM?

(3) I have found that it is easiest (if you want to get a variety of foods in your family’s diet) to label each day of the week with a kind of dish like chicken, pork, beef, etc. That makes plugging in your meals easier. For my fellow Catholic folks, this meal planning technique also makes it quite simple to revert back to pre-Vatican II practices of abstaining from meat on Fridays which is an added bonus on many levels. Then you simply start plugging in your meals in the squares of your calendar and copy and paste from your Master Entree Ingredient List on the second page (3 or 4 columns at 8 pt font so it fits on one page) to make up your corresponding grocery list. Be sure to break out your regular calendar to look at dates for things like Christmas concerts or sports activities and such. This way you can be sure to plan a meal that either cooks fast, travels well or is done in the crockpot for those days. You can also double or triple freezer friendly meals on days that you know you will have time to assemble them. Also be aware of meals that require you to defrost things from the freezer. In my calendar I type the items that need to be removed from the freezer in blue one or two days before I need to us them.

(4) If you find that you do not have enough meals initially to plug in a 30 day calendar don’t be discouraged. It’s difficult to come up with 30 meals off the top of your head in the beginning. As you do this month after month it gets easier and faster because your list gets longer and then you find yourself wanting to try new recipes. We always fill up the calendar with one leftover day per week and at my husband’s request a pasta meal once a week. This not only fills up the calendar but it is also budget friendly. Other ideas to fill up a calendar when you are struggling is homemade pizza or a breakfast for dinner night.

I also try to get everyone in the family involved in the menu planning. I fill up our calendar as much as I can and then I start asking everyone for ideas. Last month Carter came up with fish sticks when I told him I needed a seafood dish. I never made fish sticks so I tried a new recipe and Carter loved it and was excited that he had come up with our dinner idea that day.

(5) Once you have a monthly menu with the shopping list on page two, print two copies out, each with the calendar on one side and the shopping list on the back. Keep one in a handy place in your kitchen and the other stick in your purse. Before you shop, be sure to look to see what you have on hand in your pantry and cross off the things you do not need to buy.

Some other things I have found helpful since I started monthly meal planning is making sure that the first two days of the month have meals with items that I already have on hand or that are quick and easy. I do my monthly shopping usually in two days at the end of the month when we get paid. For the best prices I hit Sam’s Club first, then Aldi’s for whatever Sam’s didn’t have and then Giant Eagle (similar to Piggly Wiggly, Stop & Shop or Krogers elsewhere) for the items that Aldi’s does not have. Dragging little ones with me is no fun so I usually do one or two stores over a two day period. So I don’t want something on my menu on December 1st that I will have had to hit all 3 stores in order to make because I might not have made it to Giant Eagle yet, KWIM?

Another very important tip is to start your monthly meal plan EARLY. It's too difficult to get a whole month together in two days. I get sick of looking at it and take a few days break and then I look at the month fresh the next time I sit down with it and come up with new ideas. It's better to do it a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Eventually you will find that you sometimes have TOO MANY entrees and your ideas will spill into the next month.

I also try to plan my meals that use produce that parishes quickly at the beginning of the weeks and meals that use produce that lasts longer at the end of the week so that I can do my weekly produce runs successfully. That is really for advanced menu planning, but something to keep in mind. Scallions for instance may not be in the best shape for Sunday if you purchased them on the Monday before.

It's also good to keep seasonal produce in mind when creating a meal plan. I put the seasonal items at the top of each of my menus for meal planning purposes and for when I am shopping for a veggie at the grocery. In season produce is usually what is on sale and travels less. Produce that travels less is most nutritious.

To best utilize an ingredient that you may not cook with very often (and is not likely to be completely used with one recipe) it can be useful and economical to plan another recipe to use the leftovers of that ingredient. For instance in October I wrote about how we used ½ can of pineapple chunks for two different meals and the pineapple juice from the same can for a third marinade recipe.

There are always ways to improve a menu plan I am sure but in the beginning you just want to get it together. Improvements can be made later. Happy monthly menu planning!

Oh, and if you want to see my October and November Menus just find "Monthly Menus" on the articles list or click here: http://jennshomework.blogspot.com/search/label/Monthly%20Menus

November Menu

Printing tip: For calendar & grocery list, click on the image, go to File, Page Set up, Select Landscape. If you have too much trouble I can email it to you.




Does anyone know why my grocery list doesn't scan in color? Hmm

October 2008 Menu