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.
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'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. If you end up doing this, I'm really curious about what you plan and how it turns out!
What's your recipe for dough? I've always used the smitten kitchen recipe but I bet there's a healthier version out there
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.
Quote:
This recipe in the back of my "eat healthy for $50 a week" by Rhonda Barfield is easy and fast. and the sauce recipe is a cinch too. I seriously put it all together in about 15 minutes.
Dough:
Combine in a small bowl:
* 1 cup hot (not too hot) water
* 2 teaspoons yeast or 2 packages (get some from the bulk foods section!)
Mix thoroughly and set aside. In a larger bowl, combine:
* 2.5 C white four
* 1.5 C whole wheat flour
* 1.5 tsp salt
* 3 tbsp honey
* 2 tbsp oil
* 2 egg whites
Add yeast mixture to flour mixture. Stir together until completely blended. Knead by hand for two minutes, adding flour as needed. Cover bowl with clean dishcloth and set in a warm place. Let rise until doubled in size, about 2-3 hours. divide dough into two mounds. Add enough flour to take the stickiness out of each mound, working flour into each mound. Roll out each mound for two pizzas onto pans sprayed with non-stick spray and some flour sprinkled over it.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Sauce:
* 1 15 oz can tomato sauce
* 1/2 cup ketchup
* 1 tbsp Italian seasoning
* honey or sugar to taste
Divide the sauce between the two pizzas, layer with toppings and shredded mozzarella. Bake for 12-20 minutes, depending on thickness of your crust.
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.
Last edited by Palestrina; 11-04-2009 at 12:21 PM.
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.
Simplifying Menu Planning
If you end up doing this, I'm really curious about what you plan and how it turns out!
