Happy Sunday to everyone. I hope you're having a productive & relaxing (it's the perfect combo) day today.
Does anyone try a monthly menu plan (vs say a weekly plan)? What are the advantages & which do you prefer? I find I get bored with a weekly menu plan & forget other options. I'm hoping that a monthly menu plan may give me a more holistic look at the recipes we like, balanced meals & allow me to plan more freezer/pantry usage.
What else did we get up to today?
- Nick is attempting to make a non meal delivery service recipe. We're trying to move him into "real" recipes, so he gets comfortable with those. He's making a 30 minute beef stir fry recipe. If it's tasty, I'll share the link.
- I tracked down Sam's missing prescription, and it *should* be in by Tuesday.
- We set up Sam's new laptop - school starts tomorrow, so fingers crossed this works well. Technology has been a real adventure during COVID.
- M & I had a "date". He drove me to the store & a few places & we chatted between stops. Then we went to the winery to pick up our wine shipment. It's completely contactless (you call when you arrive, they put it into your trunk) & had a great chat on the way home about house projects, kids allowances, & changes we want to make in 2021. Every year we try to evaluate our parenting & determine where we can add more responsibility for each kid.
- I went for a lovely walk
- I picked oranges, green tomatoes (hope to ripen in the window) & the last of the jalapenos
- We put away the straggler few Christmas decorations that were still around.
- M cut my hair! I really like it. He cut off about 4-5 inches, & it's now my preferred length. While it's not perfect (my hair has a bit of a wave/frizz that makes it hard to cut), I far prefer it over the scraggly look it had earlier.
- I filled out some paperwork, deposited checks, & put away all of the items we need to return to the vacation house on our next trip (the random socks that always seem to make their way home with us, and the towels we used to clean on our way out.)
That's it from my side. If you have experience with a monthly menu plan, I'd love to hear it!
I am trialing doing a monthly menu plan this month. I am doing this partly to use up some items in the freezer. So far I like it and am much less stressed about dinner plans. I put it on the side of the fridge so everyone knows what we are having.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you - I think it will be less stressful & easier all around. I also think it will help use up freezer items, and remind me more of what we have on hand.
DeleteI seem to just make a list of all the combinations I can come up with. In hindsight, when I had teens at home, it would have been good to have them see the menu and they could have jumped in more readily and started or helped. It's great that Nick is widening his culinary skills. Good luck with the start of school.
ReplyDeleteI had Sam make protein balls today while M was cutting my hair. I could see what he was doing, but not get up. It was pretty funny, and there were a lot of reminders. But, the protein balls are made! Practice makes perfect. I need to remind myself that we're going to break some eggs along the way, but it's a great payoff - both for the kids & us - for them to have such a useful life skill.
DeletePiC wanted to start meal planning and I was thinking we'd start with a monthly list of options because I don't feel comfortable with a weekly meal plan, it seems too limiting when I'm dealing with a finicky palate (my own) right now.
ReplyDeleteI am starting with a longer list of staple dishes and will start with figuring out which 2-3 recipes to cook ahead per week. We've been eating down the freezer meals I prepped ahead a while ago along with the roasted pork shoulder I've been making and portioning out so we'll need new stores soon.
I'm hoping the monthly plan reduces effort & gives us a better sense of what we're eating regularly. I'd also like the overview of how many Keto meals we're making, # of meals from the freezer, etc. We're pretty good at reducing waste via leftovers, but can always do better. I also only cook 2-3 days a week, and we always eat leftovers the other day. I think I need to increase my creativity, however, as the boys are now eating much larger portions.
DeleteI keep a general running list of meal ideas for using the food on hand or recipes that sound good to us. My husband enjoys cooking and he likes to veer from the plan, which is fine with me! Sometimes we refer to the list and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we don't mind making the same things over and over and sometimes we just want/need variety. Sometimes we want to tackle recipes and sometimes we just want to assemble. Now that we're both home every.single.day for every.single.meal we never have food waste.
ReplyDelete