Does anyone do weekly meal planing???

"Giggles" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi all,

I'm a mother of 2, ages 5 & 7 and I love to cook. I wake up every morning
thinking "OK what am I making for dinner?" that way I can take out the
meat from the freezer to defrost, but even then I'm stuck for ideas. A
long time ago I would sit down on Sunday and plan out my dinner meals for
the week & do all my grocery shopping that Sunday that way everything I
needed was already in the house. I loved having it all planned out for
me. Now I want to do that again but I'm finding it difficult to think of
meals for the week. I'd like to plan out 4 weeks worth of dinner meals,
but I don't want any repeat meals. Boy I thought it would be easy. Plus
I don't like to cook & freeze meals...I find it just doesn't taste the
same.
What to do?
What to do?
What to do?

My question is does anyone do weekly meal planning? Care to share some
ideas with me? Are there any free meal planning sites out there?

Thanks for listening,

Giggles

This probably isn't enough planning for you, but normally, I have two or
three menus in mind for what I want to cook next. If not full menus, then
I've at least got a meat or a recipe in mind. Some weeks, two or three
things might be enough for the week. For instance, if I make a roast, there
would normally be left overs for a day or two. Maybe just sandwiches, maybe
completely different meals. When I make pasta dishes, there's usually enough
for 2 days. Maybe the second day it's just a side dish.

Almost any time I make chicken or turkey, the bones and leftovers end up as
a soup starter.

I try to rotate the "meat" portion, so we're getting a variety. In the
normal rotation are beef, pork, chicken, lamb, fish, pasta dishes (which may
or may not have meat) and then we have the now-and-then things like turkey,
shrimp, liver...and other things that we only have once in a while like
crab.

And I try to rotate the cuisines, so it might be Mexican one night, Italian
another, American (whatever that is) another night, Asian
another....Sometimes it's an old classic, sometimes it's a new recipe.
Sometimes it just depends on what I'm in the mood to make or what the
weather is like. And sometimes I get hung up on one particular cuisine, and
we end up with that more often than others.

If I was going to actually plan things out, I'd probably start with the
meats and go from there. Leave some flexibility for sales and/or
availability.

I don't know if that helps at all.

Donna

On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:48:50 -0400, "Giggles" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Hi all,

I'm a mother of 2, ages 5 & 7 and I love to cook. I wake up every morning
thinking "OK what am I making for dinner?" that way I can take out the meat
from the freezer to defrost, but even then I'm stuck for ideas. A long
time ago I would sit down on Sunday and plan out my dinner meals for the
week & do all my grocery shopping that Sunday that way everything I needed
was already in the house. I loved having it all planned out for me. Now I
want to do that again but I'm finding it difficult to think of meals for the
week. I'd like to plan out 4 weeks worth of dinner meals, but I don't want
any repeat meals. Boy I thought it would be easy. Plus I don't like to
cook & freeze meals...I find it just doesn't taste the same.
What to do?
What to do?
What to do?

My question is does anyone do weekly meal planning? Care to share some
ideas with me? Are there any free meal planning sites out there?

Thanks for listening,

Giggles

I let the sales ads help me decide on meals. If pork is on sale this week, I might do a
pork loin meal and a pork chop meal with past and a veggie stir fry (or add leftover pork
to the stir fry).

If beef is on sale, I do the same type of thing.

If I later decide to do something other than what I had planned earlier in the week, I'll
keep the meat for a later meal or freeze it for next week.

I have general ideas in mind but let the food ads help. Saves money too because I'm buying
what's on sale.

--
Rick R
[email hidden]
replace default with com to email

"RoR" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

I let the sales ads help me decide on meals. If pork is on sale this
week, I might do a
pork loin meal and a pork chop meal with past and a veggie stir fry (or
add leftover pork
to the stir fry).

If beef is on sale, I do the same type of thing.

Very sensible. Planning ahead never appealed to me, aside from special
occasions. Why pass up pork at half price just because it is not on the
menu for the next week or two? I don't even know what we will be having
tomorrow, let along know if I'll be in the mood for chicken on Thursday.

Giggles said:

Hi all,

I'm a mother of 2, ages 5 & 7 and I love to cook. I wake up every morning
thinking "OK what am I making for dinner?" that way I can take out the meat
from the freezer to defrost, but even then I'm stuck for ideas. A long
time ago I would sit down on Sunday and plan out my dinner meals for the
week & do all my grocery shopping that Sunday that way everything I needed
was already in the house. I loved having it all planned out for me. Now I
want to do that again but I'm finding it difficult to think of meals for the
week. I'd like to plan out 4 weeks worth of dinner meals, but I don't want
any repeat meals. Boy I thought it would be easy. Plus I don't like to
cook & freeze meals...I find it just doesn't taste the same.
What to do?
What to do?
What to do?

My question is does anyone do weekly meal planning? Care to share some
ideas with me? Are there any free meal planning sites out there?

Thanks for listening,

Giggles

I got a book from our library called "life's on fire" Cooking for the
rushed, by Sandi Richard. It lays out a month's worth of meal plans
with shopping helps. It might help to just plan a few days at a time or
whatever fits into your lifestyle....hth....Sharon

Giggles said:

Hi all,

I'm a mother of 2, ages 5 & 7 and I love to cook. I wake up every morning
thinking "OK what am I making for dinner?" that way I can take out the meat
from the freezer to defrost, but even then I'm stuck for ideas. A long
time ago I would sit down on Sunday and plan out my dinner meals for the
week & do all my grocery shopping that Sunday that way everything I needed
was already in the house. I loved having it all planned out for me. Now I
want to do that again but I'm finding it difficult to think of meals for the
week. I'd like to plan out 4 weeks worth of dinner meals, but I don't want
any repeat meals. Boy I thought it would be easy. Plus I don't like to
cook & freeze meals...I find it just doesn't taste the same.
What to do?
What to do?
What to do?

My question is does anyone do weekly meal planning? Care to share some
ideas with me? Are there any free meal planning sites out there?

Thanks for listening,

Giggles

I think I forgot to mention that it has the recipes for the meal
plans too....Sharon

biig said:

Giggles said:

Hi all,

I'm a mother of 2, ages 5 & 7 and I love to cook. I wake up every morning
thinking "OK what am I making for dinner?" that way I can take out the meat
from the freezer to defrost, but even then I'm stuck for ideas. A long
time ago I would sit down on Sunday and plan out my dinner meals for the
week & do all my grocery shopping that Sunday that way everything I needed
was already in the house. I loved having it all planned out for me. Now I
want to do that again but I'm finding it difficult to think of meals for the
week. I'd like to plan out 4 weeks worth of dinner meals, but I don't want
any repeat meals. Boy I thought it would be easy. Plus I don't like to
cook & freeze meals...I find it just doesn't taste the same.
What to do?
What to do?
What to do?

My question is does anyone do weekly meal planning? Care to share some
ideas with me? Are there any free meal planning sites out there?

Thanks for listening,

Giggles

I got a book from our library called "life's on fire" Cooking for the
rushed, by Sandi Richard. It lays out a month's worth of meal plans
with shopping helps. It might help to just plan a few days at a time or
whatever fits into your lifestyle....hth....Sharon

But you don't need a specific cookbook in order to plan meals. I plan
all my meals once a week (on Fridays, since we go to the farmer's
market on Saturday mornings). What I do is take a couple of cookbooks
from the shelf and find meals according to the season. I usually leave
one meal unplanned, that night we either eat the leftovers or I
improvise something or we go out. As I choose a recipe, I add the
ingredients to buy to my shopping list, and voilà. With time, my
shopping list has evolved (it's on my PDA), it's now organized by
market seller, plus the supermarket for things you can't find at a
farmer's market. And I buy the basics (cleaning products, sugar, flour
etc.) on the web once every 2 months.

Nathalie in Switzerland