FIXIN' FOOD FER my FAMILY
I have tried to make food calendars, planners, menus, charts, graphs, sundials, abacuses, cave drawings, etc... basically I've tried this before... and I have never been successful. I'm not sure why (maybe I was watching Smallville at the time... hmmmm.) or I wasn't paying attention (moi?). But I have always found meal planning HARD. That's probably why I put it off for this notebook. But I saw a clip on youtube where a lady was showing her binder (see it's not ALL pop culture geekness that I watch) and in her binder, she had a page where she wrote down all the meals her family liked: meats, breads, vegetables, and fruit... and
A LIGHT BULB WENT OFF!
DUH... I thought! How freakin' genius!?! I wanted to kick myself for not doing it before. So, I sat down with my notepad and pen and started jotting down all of our meals that *I* cook. I didn't include my dh because he's a wild card. I can't count on him cooking a certain day (NOT that he's a horrible person, but sometimes things pop up and I want to have a backup even if he does cook one day).
What I found was here I *thought* we had a lot of options, but really... we don't. I think there were about 8 meals that my family liked (ie meatloaf, baked chicken, etc) on a regular basis, 6 basic vegetables, a few fruit, and a couple bread options. And that was it.
THEN when I got out my calendar to plan for next week, I just picked a meal, veggie, fruit, and bread if needed from my list and boy that was it! A whole week planned for with meals that we will actually eat.
Now, some of you reading this are probably thinking, "Um, woman, I knew about this all along!" And good for you, but I say, "Why didn't you tell me?"... ok, not really, but still... I'm very happy to have finally found this system and hope that it's as easy to use as it was to write. I really want to stick to the weekly menu.
As for the coupons, I saved $10 at wal-mart today. I got 3 Simalac formulas for the same price as 1 (HUZZAH!).
Much Love,
Kelly