Simplifying Menu Planning
 

What do you do to simplify your menu planning. Especially if you are cooking for a family?

I noticed in the other thread wannabeskinny mentioned that Tuesday night is fish night. I'd love to do something like that. Maybe a fish night, chicken night, beef night, meatless night, casserole night, soup night...etc?

Anyone had success doing that and not getting bored?

I have done weekly meal planning in the past with weekly grocery shopping and we were having homemade pizza every Friday. believe it or not I actually got sick of the pizza after several weeks. and that's my fav food! haha!

I still do the weekly shopping but the planning is more in my head now, while I'm at the store.

I make very simple, healthy soups and beans, vegetable sautes, or homemade waffles or pizza with whole wheat flour. If the kids don't like what I've made they can have a PB&J, quesadilla, cereal or hot dog (healthiest version of each of these I have found).

Hopefully some day they will develop their palates enough to appreciate more foods. My oldest is 8 and absolutely loves my pea soup so maybe there is hope. LOL


And speaking of homemade pizza...I made it last week after a long hiatus and forgot the recipe produced two pizzas. So I doubled the recipe and realized I had enough dough for 4. I stuck two balls of dough in the fridge for the rest of the week. OMG! do you know how long it takes to get through that many pizzas when you're eating low calorie? I had pizza (piled high with veggies) at nearly every day this last week. I think I'm set for a while.

What's your recipe for dough? I've always used the smitten kitchen recipe but I bet there's a healthier version out there

I've thought about doing that in the past but never really followed through because I'm not great at planning ahead. Although, maybe if I had to plan ahead a bit more, I'd feel more organized.

I'm gonna seriously consider this... I'll get back to you when I come up with a plan. :D If you end up doing this, I'm really curious about what you plan and how it turns out!

Cut and paste from my blog. You can add in a higher ratio of WW flour too if you want and I saute bell peppers and zucchini for toppings sometimes too, but my kids will only eat cheese.

awesome!!! Thanks!


Mayness I haven't sat down and tried to make a list yet, but maybe I'll do it later today.

We menu plan for a few different reasons. Mainly because we want to make sure we are incorporating all the nutrition we need, and limiting all the nutrition we don't need. We have a menu grid, and then a menu plan. The grid stays the same every week, but the menu plan changes week to week so that we don't get bored. Here's our grid:

Monday - Vegan Night
Tuesday - Fish/Seafood night
Wednesday - Chicken or Turkey breast night
Thursday - Soup night
Friday - Pasta night
Saturday - Wild Card (interchangeable with any other night)
Sunday - long prep day (I get lots of time to cook on sundays so I use this day to make time consuming meals like stews, roasts, and fancy stuff).


Ok so those stay the same, but every week the menu changes. So last Thursday we made chicken rice soup, this Thursday we're making lentil soup, next thursday we may make beef/barley soup, etc.

For pasta night last week we had pasta with spicy shrimp marinara, this week we're having risotto, next week we're having pizza (I guess it's more like italian night haha).

Wild card is whatever floats our fancy that night, or we can use the wild card to go out to dinner. Or we can interchange it for another night, let's say if we happen to go out to a work-related dinner on Monday night and cannot eat vegan then we switch vegan night to satruday. Cool huh?!

There's only one rule: Vegetables are a huge part of each meal! We can incorporate red meat as we see fit into the grid, but most often we leave it out. Notice that Monday-Thursday are very very healthful nights, while Fri-Sat are a little more relaxed. This helps us stay focused as well. Thanks for asking about the plan, we worked long and hard to make it work for us.

I like your ideas! I really should go back to weekly meal plans on paper.

Wow, I might just totally copy you LOL.

I really really like your plan and I agree that having a plan ensures that you are eating healthy throughout the week.

Just wanted to chime in a bit here. I tend to have one soup night and one pizza night a week. The soup changes, and the pizza does too. One week it might be turkey pepperoni, another week it might be a Mexican-style pizza.

Other ways I try to vary our menus is by international cuisine. Mexican night, Italian night, Asian night, or a homestyle all-American night like Chicken N' Dumplins. I also vary the meats. If one night is Asian pork, the next might be Mexican chicken. You get the idea.

This works for us and keeps it from getting boring.

What I love for simple healthy cooking is a crock-pot. You could fix it all up the night before and just plug it in in the morning. It is good for meat (on or off the bone, but by the end it is all off the bone), stews, beans, soups, all with added vegetables. There are cookbooks dedicated to crock-pots.