Organize Now 12-Week Challenge Bonus Mission

Organize Your Menu

This "little" mission has actually taken me 3 weeks to work through. I kept starting, getting frustrated, and putting it aside. Because this falls under the "Organize Your Routines" category in Jennifer Ford Berry's book Organize Now! (the category not included in the original edition - so if you're going to pick up a copy be sure to get the revised edition!), I committed myself to finishing it this week even though it's not part of the challenge. I had a few reasons for really wanting to do this:

1. We've been trying to cut preservatives and food dyes from Z2's diet. This means cutting a lot of convenience foods from our menu, which means we need to plan accordingly.
2. We fall into the trap of ordering out way too often because it's suddenly 6:00 and I have no plan for dinner. This gets to be pretty costly and is not a particularly healthy option.
3. Z1 and I are vegetarian, Z2 and DH are not. Preparing separate meals every night is a pain. It's easy enough to prepare just the protein portion of the meal separately, but having it all figured out in advance makes knowing when I will need to do so makes life easier. I've actually figured out several veggie-friendly nights that should keep the meat-a-tarians happy as well. 

I know a lot of folks menu plan a week at a time, but I just don't see that working for me at this point. I wanted to come up with a 5-week plan that we can rotate through. I know there's arguments against this, but I can still follow the sale flyers and purchase things in advance if a good deal comes up. Some of the challenges I faced in trying to sort out a menu were:

• Z1 and I are vegetarian. I still stress about protein sometimes, even though I know we get more than enough.
• Z2 is ridiculously picky. I've looked at so many delicious-sounding recipes over the past weeks, and keep coming back to the fact that he just wouldn't eat it. 
• Figuring out when to make some dishes that we really wanted on the menu - our schedule is a bit insane.

I had my light-bulb moment today after looking at the recipes I had come up with taking a better look at our schedule. The thought process resulted in a kind of recipe roadmap that pulled things all together:

Sunday: I am often gone at dinner time, so meals need to be something easy that DH can toss together while contending with dogs and Z2. While he is capable of following a recipe, asking him to measure out 1/4 tsp of 6 different spices wouldn't be fair

Monday: I have bible study at 7, so dinner needs to be ready early so I can at least start clean up before I head out the door. Perfect night for crockpot dishes! (I can do prep work for tomorrow after if necessary.)

Tuesday: Z2 has Scouts at 6:45, so again dinner needs to be ready early. Quick dishes are a must unless they can be prepped in advance.

Wednesday: This is another night I'm often absent for dinner time, so more easy meals for DH.

Thursday: We usually have nothing going on, so anything goes!

Friday: Often times, I get home and DH is out the door, typically with Z2 in tow to be dropped off at dad's, within an hour or two. So, most of the time I am only cooking for Z1 and I. So 2 Fridays will be "Grab & Growl" nights (you're on your own); 2 are crock pot meals that DH can have some of before he heads out; and 1 is a veggie bake that can be prepped ahead and heated up in 20 minutes.

Saturday: Saturdays are weird - DH has breakfast at 3 or 4:00 p.m. and then heads to work. But, if I have dinner ready early he'll eat that for breakfast happily. I've saved recipes that Z2 won't eat for Saturdays since he's usually at dad's. 

Once I'd figured that out, it all fell into place!

I still have a little prepping to do in the execution department. I want to compile complete shopping lists for each week. I have a few more recipe cards to write up (most are done though!). I have a couple more magnets to make and then I need to color-code them. I will try to explain my plan as clearly as possible. 

I have the full 5 weeks written out on a blank calendar page like this:

Items that have a recipe card are highlighted to match the color of the respective card. Pink for Make-Ahead Mixes; Yellow for oven-cooked items; Orange for stove-top cooked items; and Green for crockpot meals (right now they are highlighted blue because I couldn't find my darned green highlighter, they WILL be green on the magnets). The thought behind color coding is that a quick glance will hopefully help jog my memory - tomorrow morning I need to give myself time to start the crockpot; I need to pull the whatever out of the freezer. It may be a bit of overkill, but I had colored index cards to use for recipe cards and they had be categorized somehow, LOL!

Now, the magnets... I have this magnetic dry erase board in the kitchen that has a daily section at the bottom that I knew was perfect for posting the menu. Rather than wipe-and-write every week (I know myself, this would never happen), I thought magnets would work great. So I bought a roll of 1" wide magnetic tape (about $5 at WalMart) and broke out a couple sheets of address labels. I also grabbed a cookie sheet to lay out the magnet pieces on to straighten them. (As you work through the roll cutting pieces, they get more and more curled until they've laid flat for a bit.) All you have to do is cut the magnet to the length of the address labels and stick the labels on - the height is a perfect match!

The magnets still leave plenty of room to make notes about special activities and such.

I had the idea of typing up all my labels so they'd be nice and pretty, but my computer had different ideas. So, they're hand-written for the moment. I debated putting clear tape over them to make them washable, but with the menu being new I anticipate changes down the road. In that case, I can will just replace the current label with a new one. 

I need to pick up a magnetic hook to hold the ring of recipe cards and we'll be ready to roll!

We hope to get a larger freezer very soon, in which case I will be able to do freezer/once-a-month cooking a lot more. At this point, I will be looking to add some new items to our repertoire, perhaps extending our menu to a 6 or 7 week rotation.