I have often been (relatively gently) teased by friends about my tendencies to make lists and plan ahead. It isn't that I have no carpe diem spirit, it is rather that I have found that 20-30 minutes of planning (in this case a week's worth of dinners) makes for less stress during the week - always a good thing where I am concerned since a stressed mother in my case tends to be a short-fused shrieky one...
I promise to post a complete menu every Sunday. I will follow up with recipes of the dishes that really worked. All recipes will be for 4 people - unless specified otherwise. Recipes that I adapted will be credited and a link to them provided; all others are original recipes by yours truly.
I am not a fan of blogs that photographically detail each step of the cooking process so I will probably just insert a no-frills image of the final product. All the food photos (unless otherwise attributed) will be taken by my 12 year old son, L., as his contribution to my documenting our eating habits or by me since, being a teen, he is often busy with his own stuff right before dinner.
Most of all, there will be no guilt-inducing, unrealistic, glamorous shots of perfectly coiffed me in a retro fifties apron or closeups of my unchipped manicure next to food mauled to make it look prettier. You'll be seeing what I am serving - the good, the bad and the fugly. Consider this an anti-lifestyle blog.
I save money by shopping once a week with a detailed list. This does away with last minute impulse buys that really can add up. I also waste less food by incorporating left-overs and extras into my lunches since I work from home - something that somehow is easier for me to do if I see the possibilities on paper first while planning everything out. Menu planning has become a Thursday family event, though I am on my own for the associated grocery list. Occasionally the 20 minutes turn a bit hostile and I end up mentioning tersely that if no input is given then no complaints are to be uttered during the course of the week during mealtimes. I don't mind planning, am fairly open to suggestion and I love to cook but do not need to hear anything negative once I've gone to the trouble of putting the finished product on the table!
While not set in stone, my weekly template tends to be structured so that planning doesn't become a headache. For example, if I know that Tuesday is pasta day then it is easy to percolate ideas on that theme.
I am a firm believer in using one's freezer. I see no reason why one shouldn't double (triple, quadruple...) a recipe and freeze some for a later date. It also makes lunch planning really easy and the evenings where the urge to cook is out the window a cinch. It also allows me to buy meat in large quantities which is often cheaper, as well as seasonal fruit and vegetables that I can use later.
Besides a few favorites, like mac and cheese and roast chicken, I easily get bored and tend not to cook the same items in too close a rotation or, according to L., ever. Breakfast is the exception to this rule and our staples come up on the schedule like clockwork. The main reason for this is that my son and I are not morning people and the effort expended to make breakfast interesting and exciting is not offset but any kind of a positive and grateful reaction. As long as I can get something fairly filling and nutritious in his stomach without a fight that will last him until mid-morning, I am fairly at peace with the world. And now that he is a teen, sometimes not even that.
You will notice that desserts will not often make an appearance in my menus. The reason is two-fold: L. will have some and then move on to different snacks so I end up feeding my hips much more vigourously than I would like to and, more importantly since I am actually capable of showing some form of self-control, I just am really not good at them. But occasions present themselves when they are necessary so I do have a repertoire and am always on the lookout for a good recipe. Lemon desserts especially. Thank you in advance for your submissions.
So there you have the bare bones of the thing. What do you do to make it through a week's worth of cooking without boring yourself and your family?