Menu Experiment

Menu planning is one of those things that I strive to do that sometimes works and other times doesn't. Of course, my effort is what makes or breaks it. Last year I lifted a lot of recipes from my friend's menu which was helpful. I'd pull 6 or 7 of her recipes, shop for those ingredients, and the meal plan would last us about 2 weeks with leftovers. I like the versatility of this option instead of saying "Recipe A is for Monday, B for Tues" etc. I have thought about experimenting with once a month cooking (you shop for a month's worth of recipes, spend a day cooking/preparing them, then freeze the food until you're ready to eat it), but I just haven't made that leap. This last month I ended up with what I feel is a nice compromise. We'll see if I can keep it up, but it has been absolutely wonderful this month.

Starting in 2002, I began purchasing the annual recipe book for Light and Tasty. I discontinued this practice in 2007 when I started seeing variations of the same recipes in each book. I really like the 2002 and 2003 cookbook though, so I went back to them in January when I wanted some healthier recipe options. I began pulling recipes with a couple of goals in mind: main ingredients (especially meat) were already on hand or would be used in several of the recipes - like cilantro or red onions, meatless - especially thinking of beans as proteins, and the food looked/sounded good.

I went through my 2002, 2003, and 2004 cookbooks with a spiral notebook to keep track of each recipe that interested me, which book it came from, its point value, and what ingredients I most likely needed to shop for. The results gave me over 30 recipes - enough to last the whole month. I began with the intent of just choosing my menu items a few at a time as I did in the past, so I went to the Light and Tasty website to cut and paste the ingredients to make a grocery list. Once at the website, creating my list was even simpler than I thought! The website has a recipe box feature and a printable grocery list. So, I put all my targeted recipes for the week on the grocery list and quickly realized that I could add all the recipes, shop for them and have meals available for the whole month - which is what I did. It has been such a blessing!!

Dinner is so much easier because I know we have all the ingredients on hand. I try to look at the spiral the night before and give the family a choice from 2 or 3 items. Knowing ahead of time what I'm going to prepare makes it easier to pull meat from the freezer to begin defrosting or to start the crockpot early enough to get done for dinner. I think it has saved us money too, but I don't know for sure. I've kept all my receipts and plan to track the bill to see if we're saving money in the long run.

My hope is to go through the remaining 3 cookbooks for next month and do the same thing. I just realized that I may fizzle out once I get through the last 3 books because there aren't any new ones, but maybe I'll have to start over and focus on one book at a time. Hmm