If you saw my closets you'd know that I am not one of those "organized types". But meal planning is an area of my life that I do pretty well. Here are some of the things I do.
-I shop the loss leaders in the grocery ads. Last week Albertson's had chicken breasts on sale for 1.66/lb. That's a bargain, so I bought 20 lbs. Really.
-I make liberal use of freezer bags. For example, when I got home with 20 lbs of chicken I devided 6 lbs into meal sized portions and put them in LABELED freezer bags. The rest of the chicken I baked. I sliced and diced some and left some whole. All of the chicken got tossed into quart sized freezer bags. Now its easy to pull out cooked chicken to toss into meals like fajitas, quesidillas, enchiladas, soup, casserole, or pasta dishes.
-I have an excel spreadsheet with my grocery staples that I use for making a grocery list. The list is divided into areas of the grocery store i.e. produce, or dairy etc.
-When I'm really really organized I do Once A Month Cooking. My version is slightly less glamorous than the official once a month cooking, but I do get a bunch of meals made and put in the freezer. It saves me on those days when I just don't have time to cook.
-I indulge in buying pre-diced onions in the freezer section. I hate dicing onions and its worth it to me to spend the extra 15 cents to pay for someone else to do it. Sometimes I also buy pre-diced green pepper.
-I have stuff on hand to make a "no complaints" meal at the drop of a hat. Some days its just worth it to eat whatever the kids like and enjoy a relatively silent meal. At our house this includes pancakes for dinner, tacos, pizza, hamburgers, mac and cheese (typical kid stuff) and frittata.
-Sometimes I make things I know my kids won't like because its good for them to try new things. Recent experiments have been African peanut stew, curry chicken, and pasta with a spinach cream sauce. Crab cakes are on the menu for tonight - we'll see how those go over.
-I've been taking tips from Jessica Seinfield's new cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. I pureed veggies and store them is snack sized ziplocks in the freezer. You'd be amazed at how many veggies you can sneak in under the radar when they're pureed. Our veggie consumption has gone way up.
-I plan five or six meals for the week, and buy the groceries before hand. Then I always have the ingredients I need but can flex on what meal we eat when based on how busy we are and what sounds good.
2 comments:
I really need to check out that cookbook you mentioned. It's not that we don't eat veggies - but I have a hard time getting the 2 kids to like the same veggies (other than salad and corn).
And I need to tell you that your last post before this one is something that breaks my heart. If you think about it, pray for our family because we want to do something this year for a kid ageing out of the foster care system.
Thank you for sharing your tips. I really need to start doing better about sticking to my menus! :)
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