How I Menu Plan

A little while ago, Christine suggested I do a post on how I menu plan. I actually have a pretty elaborate system, but it evolved gradually over the two years of our marriage and it still is evolving. I will walk you through this week's menu plan and you will see the method behind my menu madness!

1. Go to kroger.com and look at the weekly ad. Write down anything that is a good deal that we like to eat. Meat and produce deals are the starting point of the menu plan. This week chicken breasts were 99 cents a pound, ground turkey and turkey tenderloins were BOGO. There were other deals but they weren't that great. I find it hard to buy as much beef anymore, because it really has gotten expensive. For produce, strawberries, green beans, watermelon, spinach, and sweet corn are on sale for a good price. We tend not to buy a lot of packaged foods, and my pantry is pretty well stocked, so the only other things I wrote are cottage cheese and Nutri-Grain bars, both for Anthony.

2. Look in the fridge and see if there's anything leftover that needs to be eaten. We'd cleaned out pretty well before our trip to Pittsburgh, so the only stragglers are a half of a ham steak, bacon, carrots, a few stalks of soon-to-be-limp celery, and some lunch meat that's still fine. Write these items down next to the deals.

3. Quickly check the pantry for things running low, and the shopping list notepad on the fridge.

4. Now for the actual menu planning part. I have a binder that I keep in the kitchen that's kind of my housekeeping Bible. The Binder could be an entire post of it's own, but one section is labeled Cooking. In here I have several pages each with a different heading: Freezer Inventory, Quick & Easy, Slow Cooker, Friday, Sunday, Ryan's Favorites, Potlucks, and Desserts. Each page has several Post-It notes, each with a past successful menu and in which of my cookbooks each recipe can be found written on it. Using my binder menus and cookbook collection, I create a menu plan using up all the leftovers and guided by the weekly specials and our schedule for the week. There's a pretty familiar pattern by now. Generally I incorporate one or two new recipes, one from the Ryan's Favorites page, one from the freezer inventory. This sounds complicated, but I'm so familiar with the contents of my binder by now that sometimes I don't even need to look in it to know what I want to make, and not everything happens every week. This week I'm adding to the freezer stash, but not subtracting from it. It's like figuring out a puzzle, but there aren't really any wrong answers.

This is this week's menu:

Monday: Tuscan Soup (throwing in ham and celery), Cheese Batter Bread, Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies
Tuesday: Basil Turkey Burgers, corn on the cob, watermelon salad
Wednesday: Chicken and black bean burritos, chips and salsa
Thursday: Chicken/bacon/strawberry/spinach salad, rolls
Friday: Black bean soup (double for freezer), bread
Saturday: on the road
Sunday: Buca de Beppo for Elizabeth's graduation

Can you find the leftovers and weekly specials?

I don't plan breakfasts or lunches. Breakfast for Ryan is cereal and coffee most mornings and for me something more. Lunch is leftovers or a sandwich.

5. Go through the recipes and write down any ingredients I need to buy. Write down any other perishable staples we need (milk, fruit for lunches, eggs, etc.).

6. Organize the list by categories (produce, meat, etc.). So helpful when shopping with a curious baby!

7. Go shopping!

Coupons are conspicuously absent from this process. I used to clip them all the time and had them all organized and everything, but the amount I saved was so little for the time invested that I've pretty much given up on coupons for groceries. Anything you could use a coupon for I would almost never buy, or if I did the generic version was just as good and still cheaper even with double coupons. Or else I'd be tempted to buy something just because I had the coupon! Ryan tells me coupons are just a way they convince you to try a product in the hopes you'll become a loyal customer. I still go through the paper for them, but only clip ones for toiletries or the foodstuffs we actually buy. This week the only coupon I used was for the Nutri Grain bars. (Plus on sale! Bonus!)

There you have it, but I imagine everyone has their unique method. Having a plan saves me time by not having to scramble for an idea for dinner, and money from not wasting food and taking better advantage of sales. My way seems really long, especially all written out like this, but it really only takes me about half an hour without interruptions! Now, how do you menu plan?

Catching up: Anthony's birthday

On his actual birthday, at the playground.

His Hungry Caterpillar cake! If you click on the picture to zoom in, you can see the individually placed sprinkles to make the rainbow fuzz along his back (It actually didn't take that long, since my sister helped.), the chocolate chip feet, and semi-Eric Carle-esque icing tinting technique.) This was really the only Caterpillar thing at the party, besides the invitations. They were a mock-up of the book entitled The Very Happy Birthday with a picture of the Caterpillar wearing an MS Paint-made birthday hat.


All the artistry involved in the above was lost on the birthday boy, but he sure thought it tasted good!


Friends and family came to celebrate. It was really great having Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop (my parents) and Aunt Teresa here.

He had a great day!

Hot Cross Buns

Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns!

One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!

It's a curious tradition, beginning the most solemn, most severely penitential day of the year with sweet rolls. Like the cross itself, it is a paradox, but not a difficult one. The sweetness of the bun is a little foretaste of the Resurrection; Good Friday will always lead to Easter Sunday. The suffering we experience through our fasting and penance can itself be sweet. Finally, today we have been given the sweetest of gifts, our Savior offering Himself for our sin, that we may have eternal life.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world!

Since my last post...

-Anthony turned one had his first birthday party! It was a Hungry Caterpillar party, because he really likes that book. It's so cute how he laughs at the repetition of "...but he was still hungry!" My parents and my sister Teresa were in town for that weekend. We hadn't seen them since Christmas! It turned out to be a gorgeous spring day and some of our good Cincinnati friends came to play! Anthony had a really good time. He's going to be a social butterfly, I can already tell. Plus he managed to eat an entire cupcake.

-There are vegetables growing in the garden! Peas and lettuce and spinach and broccoli are all up. Carrots and brussels sprouts have been planted, but no sprouts yet. Some more things are still indoors, but they haven't really been getting any bigger. Fertilizer? Ryan built an amazing cold frame that we used to protect the broccoli transplants from the downpours we've had this week.

-The dogwood trees are blossoming! They're late this year. To me it isn't truly spring until the dogwood flowers are out. I love those trees. We had a pink one in front of our house growing up, and we always took Easter pictures in front of the flowering tree. My grandparents had a white dogwood in front of their house. At our house we have one of each: white in front and pink in back. Yet another bit of evidence that our house was really found for us by divine Providence. :)

-I finished addressing Katie's wedding invitations! Then I made her shower invitations and bought her a present. Good thing I like her so much.

-Ryan and I went to the gala supper for which I made the quilt in the last post. It was fun, and sort of a date for us. (We left Anthony with two of his "god-siblings".) The address was about "building our domestic churches", a good topic! Good food and good friends. TONS of stuff was raffled off. My quilt was priced at $200! Maybe I should think about an Etsy shop. Ryan won a very pretty collection of plates with Our Lady on them; my grandmother had the Our Lady of Lourdes one. They're now hanging in our bedroom, but Ryan doesn't know yet.

-Because Ryan's away in New York for his sister's senior fashion show. It's a big deal for her as a design major who's done the show each year she's earned the right to show an entire line of her designs. Her clothes are lots of knits and very soft textures. I am not there because little Bubs was very very sick on Wednesday and Thursday, and was not sufficiently recovered for a ten-hour trip. (He's pretty much back to normal now.)

-So this weekend I rearranged the bedroom and hung up CURTAINS! Like some women like shoes, my mom likes curtains. I have inherited her appreciation for properly dressed windows. Every single room in our house but Anthony's had mini blinds when we moved in. I detest mini blinds. To carry the shoe analogy, they are the cheap Wal-Mart white sneakers of window treatments. Curtains have not been a budget priority, so they remained, until I pulled the old one-two punch of clearance plus coupon at Bed Bath & Beyond! Our bedroom is now clean and pretty and romantic for when Ryan comes home. Or it will be once I chuck the Jumperoo out of here. :)

Mango Blues

It's finished! Just in time for the silent auction on Saturday. I've never named my quilts, but "Mango Blues" just seems to fit. It's 4 feet square, machine pieced and quilted. The texture came out really well; I love crinkly quilts!

I debated back and forth about whether to do a pieced binding or not. I'm glad I decided on the aqua. Using the leftover scraps would have been thrifty but it would have been too busy.


I did do a pieced backing. I think I like the back as much as the front! The brightness is a nice contrast to all the white on the other side.



So there you are, St. Edmund Campion Academy!