Planning, It's Your Friend

Every weekend prior to grocery shopping, I sit down and write out a menu for the week that includes lunch and dinner. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, nothing is more annoying to me than coming home from work, standing with the fridge open and thinking, "What's for dinner?" At that point, I'm already hungry and tired and the last think I want to do is think coherently. Second, I hate going to the grocery store, spending $100 and two days later, I don't have the complete ingredients for a single healthy meal. So, I started the menu tradition.

In the beginning days of menu planning, it seemed a bit overwhelming to figure out what the heck we wanted to eat all week. I would spend hours looking through cookbooks, get frustrated and then ended up making the same stuff week after week. One day, inspiration hit me. What if I had my own cookbook that contained only stuff that was tried and true? A couple of days later, I came across this nifty thing.



It's just a bunch of index cards bound together, but it spoke to me, so I took it home. I spent the next couple of hours going through our favorite recipes and writing them on each individual index card.



The cards are color-coded, so I split our recipes into sections that made sense to me (appetizers, soups, sides and main dishes). In order for a recipe to be added to the index, in needs to get a thumbs us from me and the Irishman. If we try something new that was just ok, I wouldn't add it. This is for super yummy dishes only. That's the official criteria.

So now when I sit down to plan a menu, I pick 4 dinner recipes from my purple recipe "book" and I pick one new recipe to try (either from my Cooking Light magazine, Food Network or the Internet). It now takes me less than 10 minutes to get a menu together. And you know what they say, time is money.

So give planning and her sister, organization, a try. I promise that they will simplify your life.