My mother has been my inspiration in this department. (Well, really in all departments - love you, Mummy!!) Every Saturday, Mum would sit down with her cookbooks and recipe binder and write out the dinner menu for the week on the back of an envelope. When she was done, she'd stick it on the fridge, and we could all take a look at what we could expect in the days ahead. Chinese chicken Mondays? Yay! Spaghetti and meatball Tuesdays? Yay! Leftover Wednesdays? Boo!!!!!!
Besides being informative, and assuring your family that you are, in fact, going to be feeding them, planning the menu for the week is immensely helpful for the cook and grocery shopper, who often are one and the same. I follow in my mother's footsteps and plan a menu every weekend. Here is my dinner menu for this week:
And now, my chicken scratch, decoded:
- Sunday: Summer garden pasta, grilled steak and arugula, lemon yogurt cake
- Monday: Chicken piccata, pasta with garlic oil, salad
- Tuesday: Grilled rib eye steaks, grilled asparagus, salad
- Wednesday: Weeknight bolonese, salad
- Thursday: Grilled chicken with balsamic vinaigrette marinade, pesto pasta, grilled zucchini
- Friday: Tuscan white beans, fresh baked bread
Next to each recipe I write the cookbook in which it can be found (i.e. "HEIT" = "How Easy Is That" by Ina Garten) and the recipe's page number. This is clutch, because I am ditsy enough to not remember on a Wednesday where a recipe came from on a Sunday, and there's nothing more annoying than pawing through your cookbooks trying to find your recipe while the hungry masses give you the hairy eyeball!
While I'm doing up my menu, I keep my grocery list next to me. After a billion rambling trips through my grocery store, I decided to create the most efficient shopping routine possible by designing a custom grocery list (sorry for the grainy photo):
What you're looking at is a grocery list that is mapped out according to the layout of my grocery store. When I walk into my store, I arrive in the produce section, then the deli, butcher, etc. I went to my store one day and mapped out the layout, including taking pictures of all the aisle signs to create the aisle sections (ex. Aisle 1 in my store is where I find bread, peanut butter, jam, water, etc).
When I make my menu, I have a print out of my grocery list and I add what I need in the respective sections. When I'm done planning for the week, my grocery list is ready to go with me to the store. I can be in and out of my store in under 30 minutes because of this list. If there are no items listed in one of the aisle boxes, I can skip that aisle entirely! It has cut down on unnecessary purchases because I'm not wandering through the aisles looking for things and getting tempted by stuff I don't need - I know exactly where I have to go and what I have to pick up. I also have eliminated that most aggravating situation of being on one end of the grocery store, realizing you totally blew by something on the opposite end of the grocery store that you need, and having to backtrack. I hate when that happens!
This routine works really well for me. I tend to do this first thing on Sunday morning, when I have the most energy - in my pjs with my coffee and piles of cookbooks. To keep it interesting, I challenge myself to make a menu using cookbooks from only one author - or from only one cookbook. And nothing is better than knowing you don't have to think up a meal on a weeknight when you're exhausted!!
I'm thinking about posting my weekly menus every Monday on the blog. Would anyone find that helpful? Let me know.
If you guys have any questions or additional thoughts on menu planning and grocery shopping, let me know in the comments.
xoxo,
MF
I would like to see your weekly menus, please, Modern Femme. And if you can try to cook more vegetarian and vegan dishes, I will try to mimic your efforts! I would like to be as diligent as you are about cooking meals for my family every night, even if I have to leave it out for Sam to eat after I go to bed.
ReplyDeleteI will not be using your grocery store method, however, because I buy my groceries exclusively through FreshDirect. It's a very different grocery experience, but one that's a lot easier to manage with two toddlers underfoot. A person cannot fit a week's worth of groceries in a stroller basket. Not even a double stroller basket!
Well then, it will be my very great pleasure to post my menus!! Yes, I have heard that Fresh Direct is a marvelous shopping experience, and most likely even more so for the mother of two toddlers! xoxo
ReplyDeleteAlso, Friday's Tuscan White Bean could be made vegetarian with the subsition of veggie broth vs. chicken. It is so yummy.
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