Menu planning?

[frugalone]

Our dinner menus are very spur of the moment. This is something I'd like to see change. However, we've never been much for menu planning. So, I'm looking for any and all advice regarding same. Especially if you have any suggestions for vegetarian or vegan stuff.

I've also heard of this "cooking once a month" thing, but I don't know if that would work for us.

[herbgeek]

Back when I used to actually plan menus, I had a theme for each day. For example: Monday could be Mexican. So maybe one week quesadillas, another week beans and rice. Tuesday might be soup/stew Wednesday pasta Thursday other ethnic. I used mostly pantry foods, and would add whatever was fresh that I had on hand. The last few years I just wing in for the most part, but again rely heavily on pantry foods, and will pick up produce that looks good.

It was easier to "wing it" within the constraints of a theme.

I also do a lot of partial prep to enable quick meal prep during the week. Like, I partially bake pizza crust so I can make quick flatbreads with leftovers, or I'll cook my protein (I eat meat) and freeze in 2 person portions. Easy to add a salad, veg and maybe a starch and have dinner on the table in 20 minutes or so.

[Blackdog Lin]

What works for us: before I go to the store (weekly), having checked the sale ads for bargains, I make a list of 4-5 menus. Stuff that utilizes what's on sale, or what I need to get used up out of the freezer, or what DH says he has a craving for. Then I shop with those menus in mind for the week. I can't stick to a "well, it's Wednesday so we're having beef stew" kind of thing. But having that menu list, and knowing that I (theoretically) have everything in the house to produce that menu - then all I have to do is look at it every morning (in my case, since we eat our main meal at noon, it's the night before) - see what sounds good, or what I'm in the mood to fix, or what I have time to do, and then take the necessary stuff out of the freezer and plan that for our next meal.

It's a combo of a firm menu plan that keeps me out of the store(s), but with room for improv, depending on what's going on around the household.

[merince]

We used to be spur of the moment people, but that resulted in giant grocery bills, so I am trying to cut back. Right now I am looking at they flyers and planning the shopping trip around that. While the menu for each day is not firmly set, I have a list of meals that will be be meals for the week. For example, Mon and Wed are our late nights, so for those I am planning on a portable meal that the kids can eat on the way home as they are usually starving by that time. For those nights I have pizza wraps, chicken nuggets, tacos, etc.

I tried the cook ahead thing and found out it's not working out for us. It is easier to just set the crock pot in the morning or do the prep and just do a quick dinner. EatingWell.com has a nice selection of dinners that can be done within 30 min or so. I keep track of those, so I can get the groceries on the weekend. They usually are pretty good about dinners with seasonal ingredients, too.

[lessisbest]

I just finished teaching a class on this subject at the Food Bank. Like herbgeek, I use themes for each day of the week. The method I use doesn't require a lot of planning and writing everything down, and any day can be substituted with another, or left out entirely, and not mess up the whole week. It does depend on having a well-stocked pantry and user-friendly amounts of a variety of foods in the freezer. As an example, I found 2-pounds of ground turkey discounted and when I got home from the store, I made one pound into sloppy joes and the other pound into taco meat. Packaged them into user-friendly amounts in the freezer.

My week looks like this:
M - Big Meal - Large cut of meat (or enough chicken to cover several meals) with all the trimmings. The leftover meat is used for sandwiches for lunches, leftovers for another meal, possibly some for the freezer and when there is a carcass (turkey or chicken) and bones I use them in soup or stock.
T - Leftovers or Sandwiches - The leftovers may be from any former meal.
W - Stir-fry - A good way to use up small amounts of meat, veggies, beans, rice and quinoa.
Th - International - Usually something with pasta or a tortilla.
F - Vegetarian - Helps save on expensive meat purchases. I have a $10 budget for meat each week. A nice time to have breakfast for dinner.
Sat - Soup and/or Sandwiches - Sandwiches includes burgers/dogs, sloppy joes, wraps and quesadillas.
Sun - Homemade Pizza or a Dinner Salad during hot weather - A good way to clean out the refrigerator.

Other meal themes that may work better for you:
-Something new
-Crock-Pot
-Comfort food favorites
-Grilling
-Anything goes - freezer and refrigerator clean-out. What we called "every man for himself".

[Florence]

Here is my general plan:
Monday Seafood- baked fish, shrimp jambalaya, tuna sandwiches, fish chowder, etc.
Tuesday Chicken something
Wednesday Beef something
Thursday. Leftovers
Friday. Something easy--Scrambled eggs, pizza, Chinese take-out
Saturday Baked potato, Bacon sandwiches
Sunday. Restaurant dinner.

I usually make one meal in the Slow Cooker. (I recently bought a copy of Slow Cooker Revolution by America's Test Kitchen and it has so many good recipes!)

[SteveinMN]

What seems to work for us is weekly menu planning around two or three (different) main dishes. These dishes usually feed both of us twice for dinner and either DW or me once for lunch besides. Sometimes I'll also throw in a dish that I know I like (and DW doesn't) for my lunches.

This allows us to eat seasonally, address cravings, and not buy food that eventually is wasted. The menu planning is synced to our calendar (who is home to eat; when it needs to be a slow-cooker meal or assemble-your-own night) and what's in the house (e.g., I already have chicken breast in the freezer so I shouldn't buy chicken this week unless it's a screamin' deal). We've cut way down on what we end up tossing out because we weren't home enough to cook it or eat it. And sometimes this will put a stew or chicken soup or an egg dish (frittata, okonomiyaki) on the menu to use up bits and bobs.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Dinner: Honestly I'm so tired at the end of the day and often only a little hungry (do graze some in the afternoon, I get hungry then) that I have just kind of settled on soups as the way to go for dinner and sometimes I bring them to work for the late afternoon graze. I can eat as much or as little as I'm hungry for and if it's made I just warm it up - talk about fast food! There's a thousand different soups to make. Now on weekends I can have a more elaborate dinner of course - the protein (fish or meat usually), the fancied up veggies (this time zuchinnis with roasted red pepper dressing), the optional carb (rice of potatoes) - the more typical dinner. But weekdays soups seem to work well.

Lunch: lunch is salads - green or other, not a veggie so can add some animal protein if I like or just cheese sometimes legumes etc., prepare the salads the night before or in the morning, dressing is almost always a simple vingarette.

I kind of have to live this way with my work and commute schedule at present. Or it's much easier to anyway.

[Gregg]

We planned menus around the sale ads when the kids were growing up. Every Wednesday night we'd sit around and plan out the next week. For most of that time we lived high up in the mountains so a garden wasn't a consideration (unfortunately). Anyway, now that we're empty nesters and not on such a tight budget we are pretty free form based in large part on what is coming out of the garden or just on what mood we're in. Both of us like to eat late so if we dink around figuring out what we want and don't end up eating till 9:30 we really don't care. Its kind of fun for us to get to make it up as we go.

[iris lilies]

We don't have menus so I probably shouldn't even reply to this thread. But I like it that way! So in a typical 5 workday week, I'll thaw 2 dishes on 2 evenings, cook 2 dishes on 2 evenings, and maybe on the 5th evening go out or eat what someone has brought us or go to the deli. Yes, we have a friend who is a fabulous cook who brings us dinners. We are just spoiled by that. On Saturday or Sunday we are more leisurely and wing it.

I have a smallish repertoire of dishes that I make, usually things on top of rice or noodles. I use whatever is on the counter, fresh from the garden. Since we are meat eaters, we also have slabs of meat a couple times per weeks, along with a salad and potatoes.

I cook ahead on Sunday evenings while listening to NPR show. I usually can make 2 -3 dishes for upcoming weeks, then I put those into the freezer. We have a big chest freezer to store a lot of these food items.

[frugalone]

Soup is a good idea (at least in the cooler months). These are all great ideas, even if they are not "formal" menus. I like to hear about what works for other people. Thank you!

[Simplemind]

DH enjoys cooking and has always done the shopping. He is a straight forward no frills kinda guy who follows recipes to the letter. I prefer eating to cooking and look at a recipe as a general guide. Since his stroke he really has a difficult time thinking ahead. I take a calendar and fill it in with the main course. We have a set rotation for a lot of things (Friday/Pizza) so the shopping is always pretty much the same. This has helped him a lot. So I have to dream it up but don't have to shop for it or cook it most of the time. We do salmon once a week, roast chicken once a week, big chopped salad once a week etc. When I do a casserole type dish I always double or triple it so when it comes up next in rotation it is like getting the night off.

[saverchic]

Menu planning saves me! I do a lot of crock-pot meals, and meals I can prep during nap time and then throw in the oven. It's almost impossible for me to cook dinner because my preschool-aged sons need a lot of attention in the 4-6 pm time slot. Having a plan helps to keep me from panicking, and prevents me from ordering out or driving through fast food places too much.