Feeding The Cheungs: Making A Menu

This wasn't really and truly hammered out and religiously adhered to until the arrival of Baby Number Two, but this is what we do: 

At some point towards the end of the week, I sit down with my favorite Target Post-It notepad, a good pen and the grocery store circular which comes in the mail every Tuesday. In my Previous Life I threw these grocery store circulars away. Junk mail! Boring! But no more. Do you know there are COUPONS in there? And I sit at the dining table wearing my Food Thinking Cap, trying to come up with dinners for the next week. (My dad, right now he is getting his comeuppance.) 

This is really hard for me. I mean, you know how some people love to cook and cook new things and try new foods? Um, yeah, that's not really my thing. I don't hate to cook - it's an awesome feeling when everyone eats the dinner you made that night! - but I never cook for fun. I'm just not INTO it, not like some people are. I LIKE food (obvs) but I'm pickier than the average adult (hangs head) and at various points I am low carbing or Weight Watchers-ing (I KNOW) and I truly and honestly wouldn't mind eating scrambled eggs for dinner every night. (Dessert? An ENTIRELY different story.) So I have a hard time thinking of dinner ideas. At one point I finally wrote a list of all the things I 1) know how to make with a fair amount of success and 2) are easy and quick enough to be weekly dinner menu items. This helped, but let's face it, that list is short, and that bugs. Not EVERYONE in my house wants to eat eggs every night, and maybe I don't want to cook for fun, but my overachiever side desperately wishes I'd improve. So, herewith, things I do to find new dinner ideas:

• Hint around for food magazine subscription, open sub to Cooking Light on Christmas Eve, thank my mother
• Make awesome internet friends who send me cookbooks (two so far! Would you like my mailing address?)
• Call my mother, ask for the recipe of that thing she made last weekend
• Allrecipes.com I WANT TO MARRY YOU, ALLRECIPES.COM!
• Idly ask my friends what they are making for dinner, go home and copy them
• cooking blogs, though I have to admit, most of the time these intimidate the crrraaappp out of me

I have a handful of cookbooks I actually use, a lot I don't use, and a binder I bought someone else for Christmas (but decided to keep!) full of recipes I've printed out or acquired from friends or torn out of magazines. I would say about 75% of the recipes in that binder are for cakes. Sigh.

I have also stopped asking Phillip what he likes or wants for dinner that week. It's frustrating. He's either hedgy about saying what he really wants (or what he thought about last week's dinners) or he suggests something I don't like or don't want to make again. BOTHERSOME.

So I make my menu and it usually only contains three to five pulled-out-of-my-own-brain dinner ideas. This is because Phillip ALWAYS makes stirfry on Sundays (the only night he has time to cook), we ALMOST ALWAYS see my inlaws and eat with them on Mondays and Phillip ALWAYS has class on Friday nights which means I don't have to think about cooking. Oh, and one night is usually leftovers/Maggie-doesn't-feel-like-cooking night, and that night is completely at my discretion.

I try to make dinners with lots of leftovers early in the week, because Phillip brings them for lunch the next day. I look at our calendar so I know if we have anything going on in the evenings that might affect dinner. I try to factor the kids into meal planning, but half the time Molly wants to eat dinner at five, a full hour before Phillip gets home, and what I think is a kid-friendly dinner is often flat out rejected so WHATEVER, CHILDREN. So much for taking YOU into account!

I do go through the circular and see what's on sale. I have been shopping at the same store every week for nearly three years, so I know the prices of the things I buy all the time. But I try to pay attention to meat and vegetable sales, since that might dictate what's in the stirfry that week or whether Phillip gets to have steak. And I do a cursory hunt through the freezer to see if I've forgotten anything - which reminds me, I need to marinate tonight's tuna steaks! 

Grocery shopping - the part you were interested in in the FIRST place, you had NO idea what you were getting into, did you? - coming tomorrow!

Comments

[Lindsay]

I think it's so funny how you are spot on about childless living...obvs this makes sense as you lived that life and all. I guess I never believed the circular has anything worthwhile in it, like it's just full of stuff I wasn't planning on buying anyway. Maybe I will look at it this week.

[Raven]

I have two tabs of Allrecipes open right now and I am a person that loves to cook.

Most days I will wing something as I am what you would call an experimental cook but there are occasions where I want something more structured and I use various cookbooks or websites for that. I also watch A LOT of food network so I'll end up making recipes I see on there on occasion.

Nights where I am struck with a migraine are cereal nights or my husband might make pizza rolls. (this happened last night and it was the first time he had cooked in probably a good 6 months) The only other thing he cooks is steak or burgers on the grill.

If you like eggs so much have you thought about trying quiche or a frittata just to change it up a bit?

[HereWeGoAJen]

I am not yet into the circular. I always buy off brand stuff anyway, so I rarely find coupons for anything we actually use.

[Sarah]

I'm with you! Cooking is not my favorite thing to do. I'd much rather have someone bring food to my house every night than stand infront of my refrigerator hoping something jumps out at me. Kraftrecipes.com has some good tips too and they have a place where you just put in any 3 ingredients you might have on hand and it brings up recipes with those ingredients. Pretty cool. I'm looking forward to the grocery post tomorrow!

[Holly]

I love to cook, but seriously, my menu making steps look almost exactly like yours (including the circulars! ha!). Even though I enjoy cooking, that doesn't mean that menu planning and creativity always happen on the day you have to shop, right? And since I usually shop on Sunday afternoons everyone has pilfered through all the good stuff at the grocery store anyway so they may not even have the ingredients I want. It is A JOB menu planning and one that not a lot of people value. I can't wait to hear about grocery shopping..haha

[Elsha]

I told Brian that one of these days I'm going to stop asking him what he wants for lunch or dinner and just make stuff. And he's going to eat it whether he likes it or not. No more of this, "oh, I don't know. What do you want?" business.

[Jess]

This is so interesting. I have pretty much tried all the WW recipes I wanted to try. Then I checked out Pioneer Woman but she uses so much BUTTER. And CREAM. My goodness! So, I think Allrecipes.com may be my next destination. Excellent tip!

[Carrie]

I'm telling you, you need to try out relish. I love it with all my heart. It has taken meal-planning and shopping down to just a few minutes per week. LOVE it.

[Christiana]

I think it's funny how much we seem to be channeling each other on these topics. How weird is that? (Except the scrambled eggs every night thing - absolutely not!) (Did you read my Monday post on my early days of shopping/eating?)

I am blessed with a husband who loves to cook (and has taught me most of my best skills) and is creative in that department. I am cursed with a husband who gives no thought to the complications or mess of said creative meals, but I suppose you get what you can, right?

We have the policy that with few exceptions (like when we make an especially spicy meal) the kid gets fed what we eat and she can take it or leave it. But for the most part, she doesn't get an alternative.

My 2 favorite cookbooks are my own binder of collected (mostly internet recipes and I LOVE allrecipes.com) recipes and the Betty Crocker cookbook with a few recipes given me at my bridal shower (my hostess collected recipes from each guest, typed them up and inserted them into the back of the book).

[Dr. Maureen]

I used to hate to cook, but I like it more now. And I find the hardest thing to do is to coordinate meals with what's on sale that week, and I usually fail at it. And I am THE WORST grocery shopper ever in terms of having any idea what stuff is supposed to cost. I can't remember AT ALL. I am so bad, in fact, that I spent four or five weeks buying one 96-oz premium OJ and two cans of frozen concentrate on the assumption that the frozen concentrate was cheaper, and it TOTALLY ISN'T. I finally did the math right and it's so not cheaper.

But I am trying to at least stick to a budget.

[Michelle]

Ooh, I love cooking and meal planning (ok mostly the cooking) so I'm going to come out lurkdom and comment. Now I have always checked out the sale circulars because my mom always did. I mean how are you supposed to know when steak or salmon or whatever is on sale? Now honestly I usually just go to 1 grocery store so that's just one circular, although there is a natural grocer that sometimes has good deals so I generally peek at that circular too. And since I'm "one of those people" who makes her own baby food...I like to look at see what organic produce is on sale (pears for $1/lb!)

We have a chest freezer in the garage so I stock up when chicken breasts or pork tenderloin or whatever are buy one get one free. And when the yummy Kitchen Basics broth is on sale (make a great base for soups or whatever). Of course that goes in the pantry.

I have a couple of go-to standby meals that everyone loves which varies a bit by season. Spaghetti, salad and turkey Italian sausage (surprisingly yummy!). I personally don't like pasta all that much but the rest of the family does and I make extra pasta since one of my kids is allergic to fish. That way I can just reheat the pasta and he can eat it with whatever veggies we are having that night. And a sort of shepherd's pie with hamburger...so yummy and the kids all love it. We love Mexican food so I also usually have supplies to make tacos (using ground turkey) or fajitas (with skirt steak...always on sale!). On super busy weeks I like the roast chicken chimichanga recipe from Cooking Light that I think I heard about from another parenting blog. YUM! Ok, my 3.5 yr old's chimichanga is usually just beans and cheese but whatever. We were eating stir fry pretty regularly but I think we all got a little burnt out on that so it's off the rotation for now. In the summer, I tend to buy a lot of stuff that can just be thrown on the grill. Greek souvlaki-style grilled chicken with couscous and pitas, grilled salmon,etc. Plus I stock up on Annie's Mac n Cheese for the nights when my husband has something going on so I can just make that for the kids.

Goodness, I guess I need to start shutting up now as this is a loooong comment. Because I could go on and on about meal ideas and planning etc. But really quickly, I HATE having a set menu for each night. Ugh! Instead, I just look ahead at our weekend and roughly plan the meals around any late work nights for my husband or after-school activities for my oldest, etc. That way the nights when things are little hectic, I plan one of my easy go-to dinners.

[Jen @ The Short Years]

I recently bought the new Weight Watchers cookbook at Costco (even though I don't even do Weight Watchers) and have liked it a lot. The recipes are surprisingly low-cal! The sausage-stuffed pizza was an especially big hit.

Also, anything you ever make off the Pioneer Woman Cooks will be reasonably easy and delicious. But the opposite of low-cal.

[Jen @ The Short Years]

Oh, and also home-made roast chicken is the easiest thing ever. I use a recipe similar to this: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/herbed_roast_chicken/ but I don't bother to tie it up with twine or anything. Just rub it with herbs and stick it in the oven for a couple hours. Makes your house smell delicious, makes you feel like a domestic goddess, my kids gobble it up, and there's often enough leftover to make chicken salad sandwiches or something the next day.

[Ellen W]

What about Smitten Kitchen? I mainly do baked goods off her website due to my picky husband and 4 yr old. I also like Homesick Texan as a fellow Texan.

I also love Pioneer Woman - have her cookbook. My philosophy on butter - it is a more natural fat than Crisco or margarine.

[LenaDeeAnne]

I totally admire anyone who can take the time to cook in the evenings. When I get home from work and the Three Munchketeers are waiting with their beaks open, I just whip out the store-bought pizzas. Or worse yet, turn around and go back to the car and go straight to Sonic or the pizza place!

Cooking is a creative endeavor I keep promising myself I'll learn someday, but in the end I'll probably die of a Hamburger Helper overdose.