52 Changes - Cooking up a Plan

You know how I knew that I needed to start making some changes recently?

Picture this:  I come home after a long work day, lounge around and wait ‘til Stacia gets home, at which time one of us says “what should we do for dinner?”  Then we open the doors to the fridge, then the freezer, then the cupboards, and though there’s food in all of them, there’s nothing you could make a meal out of.  I’d usually feebly suggest that we run to the store to pick up some staples, but more often than not, we’d end up going out to eat.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I started to think...

“For a guy who says his favorite thing is cooking, you aren’t really putting in the effort to actually do it.”

I needed to get myself back on track, and it was clear that the meal plan was the key.  We’ve meal planned at home for years now, but with all the diversions and distractions, I’d kind of let it slide.  We were able to get by with going out, scavenging at home or picking up ingredients day-of.  But with the Farmer’s Market now in season, it’s especially imperative that we plan, since I really don’t want to have to stop at Hy-Vee for fresh ingredients that we forgot to pick up.  Simply put, this week’s change is to make a meal plan every week.

Now, the very phrase “meal plan” may sound unpleasant, hearkening back to school days where the meal plan defined the one or two options you had for what to eat that particular day.  Either you ate what was offered, or you went hungry.  Outside the limitations of school, that could never work.  If I come home to a meal plan that says we’re having Chop Suey, for example, and I just don’t feel like “Chinese” food that night, I’ll just say F-it and we’ll go out for burgers or pizza.  There needs to be some flexibility built in.

Not everyone who plan meals ahead of time does it the same way, but the following is the way that works for us:  One dinner each with fish, vegetarian and white meat as the base.  One meal every other week of red meat, on off weeks fill with another category.  One meal of leftovers or something quick and easy, like frozen chicken nuggets, etc.  There’s one dining out option per week.  And one “wild card” which is usually a homemade option, but leftovers are common and dining out does sneak in there sometimes.  I also want to try to implement one big breakfast per week, since virtually every other day begins with cereal.

Starting with those categories, I’ll find recipes or come up with ideas to fit them.  Here’s this week’s plan:

Fish – Olive oil poached salmon with Indian spices, wilted spinach and rice on the side

Veg – Homemade Caesar salads with Romaine lettuce from the garden and other veg from the store

Wht – Turkey breast roulade with homemade stuffing and canned cranberry sauce

Red – Seared goat chops (yes, goat!) with garlic scape mashed potatoes

Wild Card – BLT’s with Van de Rose farms bacon, local tomatoes and garden lettuce

Bfst – Peach and yogurt parfaits with granola on top

There was also plenty of leftover lentil soup from last week to fill some spots, and we haven’t gone out yet, so I don’t know where that will be.

To an outsider, this may sound very structured, and maybe it is, but the key to me is not assigning days of the week to the various meals.  I can come home from work, choose between up to 7 different options, and have all the ingredients right there to make any one of them.  Granted, towards the end of the week your options become more limited, but in general we make food that we like, so there aren’t that many cases where we flat out don’t feel like anything on the plan.

And it’s not a big deal if the plan runs over, either.  There are lots of occasions where more than one of the planned meals ends up providing us with lots of leftovers.  We can take those for lunches instead of our usual sandwiches, or just make another dinner out of them, pushing one of the planned meals back a bit.  The plan doesn’t so much lock us into certain meals as it just ensures that the ingredients are there to be able to make something if we want to.  Ideally we’d follow the plan exactly, but I know that will virtually never happen.  Much like vacation planning, the best way for me is to make a perfect plan and then assume that things will come up to change it.

I don’t suppose I’ll post meal plans on here, since that would get pretty dull, but I’m thinking I might start using my newfound Twitter account to update the meals as they happen.  The more interesting ones will warrant Kitchen Zink posts, but maybe I’ll do a quick tweet for them all.  Or maybe not.  The important thing is that we’re meal planning again, and that means less time sticking my head in vain into an empty fridge.  And that’s better for everybody.