Routine

When a new year rolls around, I always, always hear my mom’s voice in my head talking about getting “back into the routine” and getting with a “new program.” These phrases always accompanied any occasion where a shift in mentality was called for—the beginning of the school year, January, coming home from a vacation, what have you. Granted, her “new programs” almost always came with some sort of chart for divvying up the household chores, but while that was never fun, there was always something sort of calming about getting back into the routine. I distinctly remember my mom’s set of index cards laying out what tasks belonged to what days—I imagine there were times that without that sense of structure, she might have gone crazy. It must have profoundly influenced me, as I still look for my bearings in the comfort of routine.

Anyway, January is a good time to both "get back into the routine" and start "new programs," and I’m learning that the lynch-pin for many of those programs (i.e. eating healthy, taking lunches to work, getting control of spending) is the same: meal planning. I am heavily dependent on meal planning, and I’ve mentioned in a few blog entries the ambitious four-week menus that have kept me sane during particularly busy times. I suspect that there are a lot of us out there who have latched onto meal planning as either a good new program or a way to get back into the routine for 2011. I don’t claim to have the best solutions to menu planning (I am NOT good with coupons, for example, which I realize completely influences how you plan meals), and I think there are lots of ways to do this (I love Becca's idea from way back here), but if, as Andrea has suggested, you’re looking for some tips, here's how I do it.

My menu planning has two levels of intensity. Ever since Jason and I got married and I discovered that you cannot actually live on love alone, I have planned my meals on a weekly basis, writing out the entire menu on a white board on our fridge. A couple of things I consider:

• Weeknight meals need to come together in 30 minutes or less. If I have a recipe that takes longer, it needs to be scheduled for the weekend.
• We don’t usually get home from church until shortly before 1:00 on Sundays, so I try to plan meals that can either go in an oven set on a timer (roasted veggies are particularly good) or in the crockpot—especially dishes that can only cook for 3 or 4 hours (as opposed to the 10 hours required for weeknight meals).
• Speaking of crockpots, Wednesdays are usually the longest days at work, so I try to plan a long-cooking crockpot meal, like this, for that night so that we can walk in, dejected and worn out, and smell dinner ready to spoon into our bellies.
• I try to choose meals early in the week that provide leftovers to take for lunches during the rest of the week. For example, we almost always have soup on Sunday nights, and I occasionally make four servings of a dish on Monday instead of two.
• Figuring out what to make is always a challenge—easier if you’re only doing it once a week instead of every night, but a challenge nonetheless—so I’ve put together a list of meals that we like to eat. I can then just look at the list rather than sort through all my recipes and cookbooks.
• I know this seems to go without saying, but once I’ve chosen the menu, I pull every recipe out to see what ingredients I need to buy at the store. If I don’t do this, I inevitably forget that I need green onions for black bean tacos or didn’t realized I’d run out of the cashews I need for curry.
• Perhaps this also goes without saying, but I plan out the entire meal—main dish, sides, veggies—and mark where to find the recipe. This enables Jason to make the meal if he gets home first, which is key to the success of both our meal plan and our marriage.

In a particularly busy season, I take my meal planning up a notch and plan for four weeks at a time. There are clear advantages to the four-week plan—obviously, less time figuring out what to have, but also less grocery shopping and less wasting of perishables—but there are disadvantages too, mainly lack of flexibility. I often lament at three food magazines worth of recipes going untested during the four-week plan, but sacrifices must be made. For a four-week plan, I think about:

• What dishes can I double so that half can be eaten the first night and the other half put in the freezer for a quick meal later in the month? Things like this work well.
• In the same vein, what dishes can I make on, say, Monday of one week, and then eat again on Thursday of the next week, so that I use up all of, for example, the shredded cabbage that I only like in black bean tacos?
• In the same vein (again), how many recipes do I have that use plain yogurt? Cilantro? Green onions? What do these ingredients all have in common? 1: I can never, ever use a whole container/bunch of them in one meal, and 2: I have three or four well-loved meals for each ingredient. Solution? Plan meals around ingredients to use them up, rather than throwing away yet another bunch of slimy cilantro or putrid yogurt. For example, cilantro goes in this and this and this.
• What can I use up that’s been in my pantry or freezer for a long time? Somehow the type of planning that involves using up the side of beef we bought from my parents, oh, three years ago goes better with long-term meal planning than short-term, so I like trying to clean out what we have by the end of the month so we can start fresh.
• What simple meals can I plan for nights when I know I won’t have a lot of time? I realize this should be how I think on a daily basis, but meal planning exercise forces me to look at dinner differently—as something that has to be done each night instead of a fun activity to take up an evening. I know, you think I’m looking at this backwards, but honestly, when you have to work until 6:30 and drive home in traffic and then read 300 pages and write a five-page paper before going to bed at a decent time so that you can do it all again the next day, it’s healthy to consider dinner as a means to an end. This summer Andrea (to whom this blog entry is dedicated) impressed upon me the importance of setting realistic expectations in the kitchen—paninis and salad, for example, are a nice meal, as is anything that takes 15 minutes or less (like this or this).
• Also good: leftovers. How have I forgotten this message? My favorite nights all through high school and college were Sunday night leftover nights, which were a smorgasbord of whatever you liked best. Plan one night a week to finish off all the last bits of curry and those last two slices of pork that are not enough for a meal all by themselves but go really well together with a dollop of tapioca salad.
• Grocery shop for a month at a time. Putting together the four-week meal plan is a production—recipes everywhere, scratching out things and moving them to different days, list after list—but go all the way and make your grocery list at the same time. Write down every ingredient you will need for each week, then go through and put all the canned goods, frozen meat, etc., on your grocery list for week one. Your pantry and freezer will be full, but for the next three weeks you will just have to add the list of produce and other perishables you’ve already created for that week to whatever milk and eggs you need to get. If the point of the menu is to save time in the kitchen, save time at the store, too.
• And here is my last tip: If you are planning for longer than two weeks, keep one night free each week. Stuff always comes up—a friend comes into town and you go out to dinner one night unexpectedly, Jason has to work late and we decide to do “dinner on your own” (aka ramen noodles), someone invites you over to dinner for this next Friday—and you can really only guess how the calendar will look four weeks in advance. The four-week meal plan was particularly successful for me during school, since I knew what I was going to be doing at least five nights a week (homework, class, homework, class, falling asleep at 7), but these days I would need to build in for some uncertainty. Maybe I make this my leftovers night, with the recognition that we can have leftovers on Saturday for lunch if we don’t eat them on Thursday. Whatever. It’s a good practice.

Okay, long blog entry, but hopefully interesting? What are your ideas for menu planning? Does it work for you or not? Any tips or advice you want to offer?