This is probably only of interest to the two or three people with whom I’ve discussed this of late, but here’s how I organize my menus and simplify my life in the kitchen (suggestions for simplifying other housekeeping tasks, especially the detested pile of ironing, are ALWAYS welcome!)…
Every two or three weeks, I sit down with my calendar and my cookbooks and figure out a menu for the next few weeks. This was one of my favorite activities as a teenager, but now that I’m in charge of the food budget, I realize that we can’t just eat all of our favorite expensive recipes every week! With the help of these posts on menu planning and this post on frugal meal ideas, I came up with this general structure for our family meals:
Monday: Chicken or
Tuesday: Meatless
Wednesday: Crock-pot or one dish skillet supper
Thursday: Breakfast for Dinner
Friday: Beef or Pork
Saturday: “Family Favorite” for Dinner
Sunday: Pasta
(Explanations: Wednesday is our busiest day of the week, with my online class in the afternoon and Kingdom Group in the evening, so that has to be the easiest dinner night. I enjoyed expanding my repetoire of crockpot meals this winter! We used to do a lot more meatless nights during law school (I tried for at least every other night), but now that we try to avoid cheese, it’s soooo much harder to come up with three meatless meals a week. Doing one veggie-based one and one breakfast-for-dinner (which we LOVE) makes it seem like a lot less of a burden. Also, we love to entertain, so we don’t do too much experimenting on the weekends when we know we’re likely to have company over!)
Here’s a couple sample weeks of meals at our place:
Monday: Chicken Cacciatore (make bread)
Tuesday: Tomato and basil bowtie salad
Wednesday: chicken tortilla soup (make bread)
Thursday: French toast
Friday: hamburgers and corn on the cob (make buns)
Saturday: Lunch—company! Tortilla avocado ranch wraps
Dinner–Classic Pasta e Fagioli Soup
Sunday: pasta and foccacia bread
Monday: chicken stir-fry
Tuesday: refried beans and rice
Wednesday: Cuban chicken (crockpot) and bread
Thursday: Whole wheat oatmeal waffles
Friday: Grilled pork chops and fresh veggies
Saturday: chicken pot pie and rolls
Sunday: Pasta
(NB–my side dish ideas still need a lot of work. Suggestions, anyone? We end up eating green salad a lot. Also, we usually do leftovers for lunches unless we have company.)
In any case, meals at the Muller household are now much more interesting than back in the day, when my longsuffering husband ate a diet mainly consisting of stir fry, homemade pizza, and Italian Chicken with couscous!
Wow–that all looks yummy–I should raid your recipe box for menu ideas !!
hehe… I think we talked this into the ground on our summer walking dates when I was still figuring out how to be a grad school wife (you were such the expert!), but I still find this topic fascinating! I agree, it’s so much fun to get ideas on how to be a more frugal and efficient homemaker (someday, for me)! love you!
can you give me some of your meatless recipes? I can’t seem to find many that Josh deems hearty enough 🙂 How have you all been? I love reading your blog, I feel as if we are somewhat staying in touch! 🙂
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