Menu Day! Part 2- Laying out the Menu

I have tried a few different techniques to writing out my menu. They each get the job done, but I haven't found the perfect method for me. And I think that's extremely important for anyone who writes a menu. The process of choosing the menu items has to work for you and your lifestyle, or you won't do it.

I've been making menus for over 2 years now. Not always consistently, but very often. I actually hate when I don't have a menu, because my family doesn't eat as healthy, and food can sometimes get wasted (a BIG no-no for me).

It's been years since we have eaten a processed diet. After I saw how much cheaper it was to cook from scratch (and how much better it tasted) I pretty much stopped all of it. Now, we still do the occasional box of frozen corn dogs, and hot dogs. I even buy bread way more often than I make it. But I haven't bought a meal in a box in a very long time.

I'm not judgemental about them either. There are times- like super busy/stressful times that we eat more convenience foods, or eat out more often.
If I am hurting too badly it is very hard to stand in the kitchen for hours cooking.
If I am too depressed it is very hard to stand in the kitchen for hours cooking.

So there are times that we are grateful for a box of frozen Lasagna or a bag of premade chicken nuggets.

But I can definitely tell when we've been off our menu for a couple of weeks. Lately I've noticed my stomach not tolerating a whole lot of processed or restaurant food. The first and second day isn't too bad. But beyond that I get nauseous, my bowels are way out of whack, I get more irritable, and I get tired of the food to where I'd just as soon not eat anything at all. So for me, the menu is pretty important.
When I do my menu, there are a lot of things that don't work for me. But what DOES work for me is paper recipes. I've tried keeping track of internet links for recipes, and even files on my hard drive, and it just doesn't work for me. I'm not super technilogical. I only just bought my first smart phone last month! So the even the google calender doesn't really help me when it comes to my menu plan. So I have found printing everything out is just easier for me.

Then I either hole punch the paper or slip it into a plastic sleeve then put in a three ring binder.

What also doesn't work well for me-

budgeting while I'm choosing my recipes. 

Don't freak out on me.

The budget is VERY important. But, for me, it's impossible to attempt to think about how much each item costs while writing out my grocery list. My brain just doesn't work that way. I have to process one thing at a time, and I can't be looking at recipes and my receipt spreadsheet at the same time.
Here's what does work for me- I look at the ingredients of a recipe and if I only have to buy one or two items, I use my best judgement and try to estimate how pricey those will be. If I am missing most of the ingredients, or the ones I am missing are expensive, and unique, I set it aside. The only time I sway from this is when the missing ingredients are shared ones- such as a bag of spinach. I won't use a whole bag on one recipe, but I will use spinach in multiple recipes, several times a week.

There was this one recipe, it was pumpkin dumplings, and I had just pureed like 5 pumpkins, so I was wanting to try the recipe. It called for a radicchio. I did a little research on this veggie and saw that it was pretty unique in flavor, and couldn't really be substituted by cabbage or other chicory. I went ahead and put it on my menu, but when I went to the store and saw the size of the thing and the price attached, I nixed it from my menu. I will, eventually, do the pumpkin dumplings, only in a different soup where I do not need radicchio.

One thing I have always WANTED to work for me, but never have been able to is a categorized daily plan. Such as- meatless Mondays, chicken Tuesdays, crock pot Wednesdays- etc. Where the idea is that every Monday of that month you would have a meatless dish, every Tuesday a chicken dish, etc.  The purpose to categorizing is to keep it mixed up and fresh. This way you're not having chicken 6 nights in a row and getting burnt out. I believe the reason this never really worked for me is because my main cooking involves chicken, ground beef, and meatless. Also, the market makes a huge impact on my cooking- if chicken is on sale, I will stock up on chicken. If I'm broke, we stick with our Bountiful Baskets veggies as much as possible. I very rarely buy fish and pork, or any cow that's not ground beef. So fishy Fridays just isn't in my budget.
I have also tried categorizing by ethnicity- American Sunday, Italian Monday, Mexican Tuesday, Chinese Wednesday... but that gets hard (and boring) quick for me- and can be expensive!

This menu I have decided to try that again, only I approached it a bit differently.
I did start out by writing out a list of what I wanted to categorize each day of the week, only I made it work more for ME. It looks like this:

I have always loved slow cooker Sundays because of church- when we go. I have been unable to for a little while and I miss it. But I loved getting everything ready in the morning, tossing it in the pot, and letting it cook while we were gone, then coming home to a yummy smelling house and dinner ready! (Cause I don't know about you, but wrestling kids for 2 hours in heels and a skirt wears me OUT!)

I incorporated Mexican Mondays because, well, we just eat a lot of Mexican food!! Not only do we LOVE it, but it's fairly easy, has many of the same ingredients, and we're in Southern Texas where the foods and ingredients are easy to come by. Also, on the nights that I don't really feel like making that enchilada bake I can just cook up some ground meat and we'll do tacos instead!

Casserole Tuesdays lets me be flexible, but stick with a specific kind of dish. It could have any meat, or none at all! And casseroles are GREAT for big families and small budgets!

Veggie Wednesday lets me dedicate a day to eating meatless, or at least mostly so. I figure we can use Wednesdays for totally meat free meals, or something like chicken salad, where it's MOSTLY veggies. This is also a way for me to use very specific veggies that I get from Bountiful Baskets that I may otherwise give to the dogs.

Big Pot Thursday means anything I would put in one big pot. Soups, chili, chicken n dumplings etc. I have this little cook book

(sometimes they're not 1 dish (or even a pot), but the idea is that everything goes into 1 pot/pan/dish before serving).

it works out well most of the time though.



Fancy Fridays is my creative outlet day. I LOVE to explore new recipes and ideas in the kitchen. I love to cook (and eat) Italian food, Chinese food, or try foods I've never tried before (Thai!) but they can take a lot of time for preparation. So I figure I'll focus on meals that take a long time to make for Fridays.
The cool thing is that Fridays are also our food days for homeschool, so I'll already be in the kitchen for that, we can just make this a part of it too! (Cause my kids do a lot of food prep and cooking with me)

And Something Saturdays is my free day. The night to eat left overs or easy food the kids can make themselves or with little supervision. While we eat a lot of left overs for lunches, I still wanted a night dedicated to leftovers, to make sure they do get eaten, and every other Saturday is Bountiful Baskets which takes up several hours of my afternoon, and wears me out, so I really don't want to (or physically can't) spend all evening cooking. So Something Saturday is my easy, peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese sandwich night!

Next up- Part 3; Selecting recipes!