What its all about

After posting to Facebook the other day that I was meal planning for the next month, many people were shocked and others asked me to send the plan along.  I plan a month at a time because I don't have time to plan each week, and I like variety.  Our family is unlike most... we eat together nearly EVERY night of the month, with only occasionally having plans that interrupt our menu plan.  Occasionally i'll trade one meal for another or swap them around in a week, but I plan in a certain way because of our schedule.  Its really important to our family to have a nice home-cooked meal most nights.  My kids will eat most of my meals, and after each meal we decide whether or not its a keeper.

Here's how I plan:

Each day of the week has a category:

Mondays are always chicken.  Tuesdays are fish or seafood.  Wednesdays are ALWAYS a crock pot meal (my daughter has a dance class that gets out at 5:30, and I cannot cope with trying to throw a meal together if I start cooking after 5:30).  Thursdays are usually Pork.  Fridays are Pasta, generally meatless.  Saturdays are pork and Sundays are vegetarian(though not always).  Sometimes my Thursdays and Saturdays get swapped, depending on the type of recipe I have.  Special occasions, like the upcoming Halloween, have special meals.

With the exception of my crock pot meals, most of the meals take 30 minutes or less to cook, come from one of a few cookbooks or websites (and I will give credit where credit is due) and are pretty simple.  I am a GOOD cook.  I can chop with the best of them, quickly.  I do not measure, will often substitute ingredients at a whim, but I love fresh and simple ingredients.  I do not prep everything ahead, sometimes burning the meal as I look for something, but I always read through the recipe ahead of time to make sure I have the ingredients (or substitutes) and try to pull them out ahead... but I chop as I go.

Tonight's meal is my husband's father's mother's spaghetti sauce recipe.  With that one, I always make a double batch and freeze half, to use with another meal later on in the week.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that I loathe leftovers?  I also am totally adverse to mayo (gag!) and you will never see me use it in a recipe.

You will notice that for the most part I plan main courses, not sides or accouterments.  Those I have on hand and figure out what I have time to make with the recipe.

Another thing I will include is that I am making a concerted effort to serve my kids ONE meal for breakfast each day as well.  I don't like trying to decide each morning, so I have a list of standard breakfasts I will make each day, and I rotate them every day.  So, every 17 days, they will have the items repeated from the top.  I'll include that in my calendar too (that too I will sometimes swap... this morning I had leftover coffee cake from yesterday and my morning schedule was off, so we ate that instead).

So, that's it for now... I will post my menus shortly.