Menu Planning

My wonderful husband got my shelves all installed in the closet in the kitchen so at last I have a working pantry. Now I am working on getting a weekly menu together so I can shop smart instead of wasting money like I have been doing as of late.

I set up a spread sheet in excel to help me - I hope. This spread sheet has a weekly meal planner where I list out all our meals. I used to only plan for dinner and purchase a bunch of stuff for lunches for the kids to choose from, but lately they haven't been choosing too good so I'm going to include all meals and see how it goes.

Then I listed all the meals we like to eat which also includes the major ingredients and where the recipe is from so I can quickly locate it if needed (cookbook name and page number). I have picky kids (and husband) so it helps me to have a list of everything they will eat. I'm hoping to try a few new recipes each month and if they like it I'll add it to my list to incorporate during the month.

I also included a shopping list section. So what I did was drop in what we're going to eat each day into the meal planner, then go over to my shopping list and figure out what I might need to buy. Then I print off the planner and post it on my fridge, and print off my shopping list.

I am going to try and do some pre-cooking on Saturday so some of the meals are at least partially ready to go. Hopefully this will save me some time during the week.

I'm in need of some make ahead/freezer type recipes of things the kids can warm up in the microwave for lunches, and dinners on the nights hubby and I might not be home and my oldest is working. If anyone has any recipes - please share! ;-)

So here is my menu for the coming week. We'll be getting groceries tomorrow (Friday), Saturday evening we always have homemade pizza so my plan starts on Sunday.


Breakfasts:

• Cream Cheese Danish
• Breakfast Rollups
• Hard boiled eggs & Muffins
• Cereal/Oatmeal
• Baked French Toast
• Eggs & sausage

Lunches:

• Stuffed Shells/Tossed Salad/homemade bread (Sunday)
• Hummus & Pita or tuna fish/PJB sandwiches
• Grilled cheese & tomato soup
• Canned Pasta or sandwiches
• Egg Salad sandwiches
• Corn Dogs
• Sandwiches
• (veggies, chips and fruit are added to each meal)

Dinners:

• Frozen Pizza (our Sunday after church snack)
• No Peek Stew & corn bread
• Sloppy Joes & veggie side
• Chicken Casserole & veggie side
• Leftovers
• Pancakes or Waffles
• Homemade Pizza

Snacks:

• Fruit & Veggies
• Monkey Munch
• No Bake Snack Bars
• Granola
• Nachos and Cheese
• Popcorn
• Brownies

Items I'll make ahead on Saturday:

• Stuffed Shells
• Sloppy Joes
• No Bake Snack Bars
• Monkey Munch
• Pancakes
• Hummus
• Frozen bread dough
• Breakfast roll ups
• Muffins
• cook the chicken for the casserole
• Granola
  

We'll see how this goes and report back to you next week.

Until next time...

Pantry Overhaul

I need to do some major overhauling to my food shopping, menu planning, and pantry organizing. In our previous house we had lots of kitchen storage and a beautiful pantry with deep shelves that pulled out making it nice and easy to see what we had on hand. Our current kitchen needs some major re-modeling - someday. Cupboard space is okay - but I really miss the pantry.

There is a small 38" wide closet in one corner that my husband had promised he would put shelves in - one day for a pantry, however after almost 3 years of being here I'm still waiting. We put some plastic shelves in it for the moment to serve the purpose - but they really aren't cutting it anymore.

So I'm on a quest to get something done in this closet that will work better. Once I have that I'm hoping I can start building up my food stuffs. I have never been one to "stock up", but really feel the need to start doing this for a few reasons:

1. I never have on hand what I need when I decide to cook something (poor menu planning has a lot to do with this - but I also tend to not have some of the basics on hand either because I forget to buy them or we just run out)

2. I hate grocery shopping, the lesser times I have to do it the better.

3. In today's economy - one never knows what tomorrow is going to bring and I would like to be able to "stock up" on food just in case something happens.

I'm hoping with our tax refund I can begin to work on this project. Originally I told my husband I just wanted to get some wire type shelving for canned goods and put them into my laundry room until he was able to do my shelves - but then figured why not just work on the closet first - then if I still need more storage space we can turn to the laundry room.

I've planned out putting the wire shelving along a side wall to put the canned goods on, then shelving along the back wall for the other stuff. I figure I can do four 18"x18" wire racks for the cans (3 shelves each), then five shelves 25"-28" long by 8"-10" deep - 15" apart. I figured this would be deep and tall enough to hold most boxed type foods we use.

My husband was asking what I wanted to do tomorrow (his day off) so I think I'm going to suggest checking out the stores and get some prices on this stuff and see where we are money wise. I'll try and remember to post before and after pictures once we accomplish this project. Then my next project will be building up my food supply and developing weekly menus.

Until next time...