Tips for making your weekly menu

Hey Guys! Thanks for visiting my blog! I am very new at this so be patient with me:)

I have wanted to start a blog for a long time, I thought it would be a great way for my family to see cute, new pictures of my daughter, Mayce, and it would give me a great outlet to actually use my journalism degree. But I never thought I'd have a whole lot to write about. My life looks like that of a typical stay-at-home mother of a one and a half year old--interesting to me, my husband, our families and maybe my friends. But that is probably about it.

A few days ago, however, a friend of mine had the idea that I start a blog about what I cook every week and I loved it! I. Love. Food. I love talking about food, watching t.v. shows about food, reading magazines about food, visiting websites about food, and, most importantly, EATING food. (I even like watching other people eat, weird, I know, but it is one of my most favorite parts of a cooking show.)

I have a method to planning my meals that I learned from my mother and have molded and evolved to what works for me. I would like to share it with anyone who is looking to stop asking the age old question: "What are we going to have for dinner?"

Here is what works for me:

1. I have a steno pad. The pages are divided in half vertically.

2. The first thing I do is write the days of the week down the left-hand side of the page. I space them by two or three lines depending on how many ingredients you usually need for each meal. I then look at my planner and write by the days of the week if anyone in my family has a plan in the evening that would effect what is made and served for dinner. (For example, in the summer my husband plays baseball and softball in the evenings during the week. For these nights, I try to plan something that can either be made ahead of time and brought to the games as a picnic or something that can be made quickly when we get home. Or else I know that we are going to eat out these nights and I don't buy groceries that are never used.)

3. I then look in my fridge and see if there is anything left over from the last week that either needs to be used up before it goes bad, or that can be used in recipes to reduce the amount of groceries I then need to buy. I look in my pantry and see what I have to work with.

4. I usually now ask my husband if anything sounds good for dinners for him in the upcoming week. Let's just say he is not much help (he eats anything and everything I cook--with the exception of squash, zucchini, and sweet potatoes) and I am left to come up with ideas on my own.

5. I now consult the many sticky notes that are usually littered around my computer desk. On these notes are recipes I've seen on tv that look like they are worth trying and then I just go with my cravings. I have so many new recipes I want to try, there will never be enough dinners to try them all. And some weeks I crave enough of my standard meals that I don't even get to work in a single new recipe. I then look at the ads (if I am making my menu on Sunday) and try to see what foods are on sale that week or what coupons I can use from my coupon folder.

6. Next, I go through day by day and write out the menu. List what the main is, any sides and vegetables and any desserts. Depending on how big your family is and how they eat you can work in leftover nights or even work the leftover ingredients from one dinner into another. I usually try to plan enough for dinner so that Alex can take it to work the next day for lunch which saves quite a bit of money instead of him eating out every day. Then on the right side of the steno pad, list all the ingredients that you don't have in your fridge or pantry that are needed for that night's meal. Then, depending on how you like to do your shopping, list all the other things you need to buy (i.e. cereal, milk, eggs, diapers, dog food, body wash, etc, etc). When it comes time for grocery shopping day, just rip the right side of the steno page off and you have everything you need on one master list (no more forgetting things and having to go back or walking around the store in a daze wondering what it was you went for in the first place!).

7. This is an extra step that is definitely not needed for some, but is necessary for most--I try to stay on my budget. While going through the week and listing the menu items that are sounding particularly delicious at the time, I try to keep in mind how much money each night is going to cost so I know what to plan for other nights in order to keep in my weekly budgeted amount for groceries. Every family is different, just go by your individual goals. I use the online ordering section of coborns.com and also samsclub.com to see how much each item on my list is going to cost. Then I add up the total and try not to impulse buy when I finally get to the grocery store!!

8. Finally, I try to create meals that are both healthy, yet exciting. Nobody wants to eat plain chicken or a tuna sandwich every night of their life. However, nobody can eat friend chicken or pizza every night of the week either (and if you can, don't tell anybody or you'll lose all your friends!) I try to plan meals that will keep my husband, who needs to eat quite a bit of food, satisfied yet allows me to portion control what I need to eat to stay healthy.

All of the meals on my menu are meals that are complicated enough to test my cooking ability, yet nowhere near expert level. Anybody who can read a recipe can make them. And they are all recipes that can be made while trying to entertain a one and half year old who has a very short attention span. Most of them can be eaten by children (depending on their pickiness level) and all of them can be adapted to fit your individual tastes.

Most of the time when my husband comes home, I am standing in a kitchen that looks like a war zone. There are dirty dishes in the sink, on the counter, on the floor (our puppy thinks she is a dishwasher- don't worry everything she touches is sanitized in the REAL dishwasher). Used ingredients and ingredients waiting to be used litter the counter tops. Cooking, to me, is not as glamorous as they make it seem on the t.v. shows. Sometimes you burn something. Sometimes you cut your finger. Sometimes you have to read a recipe three times before you start--and then continuously throughout the actual cooking process(and then you still forget a step). Sometimes parts of dinner are cold by the time you actually get around to getting everything on the table. And sometimes, despite your best efforts, dinner just ends up being thrown in the trash.

Hopefully this blog inspires you (whoever ends up reading it!) to try something new for dinner! Hopefully it gives you some ideas of meals to make for yourself or your family during those times when your mind is a recipe vacuum and you couldn't make a menu if your life depended on it. Or, at the very least, hopefully this blog gives you some entertainment as I share which of my dinners ended up being completely delicious dishes and which of my dinners ended up being complete disasters.