My Crazy Brain: Food, Part 2

I'm a planner.  And I'm starting to put my planning abilities to work on our food.  To be more specific, meal plans.  C and I typically make a grocery run to Trader Joes and Whole Foods on Wednesdays while G is at school.  So you can guarantee that on Tuesday nights I'm sitting somewhere in the house with a shopping list in hand, trying to plan what to feed my family for the next week and then making the list accordingly.  This can be rather daunting, especially at the end of a long day when all I want to do is brush my teeth and hit the sack.  So, I've started something new.  I'm planning meals eight weeks at a time.  I told you I was crazy.

I did this two months ago and it has made my life so much easier!  I pretty regularly "bookmark" a recipe on the computer that I'd like to try.  So, I used all those recipes and compiled a list, a game plan.  I tried to include meals that would last several nights; one complicated, heavy prep (aka- weekend!) meal and one light prep (aka- weeknight!) meal a week.  I also tried to make sure that one of those meals included meat and the other did not.  I also wanted to make sure that we ate red meat once a month, max.  We typically make a homemade pizza at some point during the week and we also have a "breakfast for dinner" night during the week.  So, throw in a grilled cheese and soup night when there's a gap, and voila!  Meal plan.  :-)

Now that I'm trying to cook breakfast more regularly, I'm finding myself needing to be even more organized and systematic about this.  I think this busy mama deserves a "no cooking" night at least once a week!  (I'll probably still end up folding laundry those nights, but at least I'll get a break from something, right?!)  I've also been reading several books about health and diet, and I have some new guidelines I'd like to follow.  Such as, I'd like to incorporate more fish, beans and leafy greens into our diet.  The best way to make this happen is to be purposeful, hence the need to plan.  I also hope that this will help shave a little money in our grocery budget.  We'll see how that works out!

I'd also like to regularly incorporate a "cooking day" into my routine.  My sweet childhood friend, Monica, over at http://www.holistichealthfusion.com/ also incorporates this and writes about it on her blog.  I'd gotten out of the habit of doing this, but I've started it back up again.  Just yesterday I made a batch of granola bars, two loaves of whole wheat bread, one loaf of whole wheat cinnamon raisin bread and I boiled six eggs.  It's good to know that we are now well stocked on some staples for the week!  I'd also like to get into the habit of making a big pot of steel cut oatmeal and then refrigerating it, so that we can scoop out one portion at a time and quickly heat it up in the microwave.  I could easily put a pot on the stove while waiting for our bread to rise.

So, here's the weekly plan (x8): one heavy prep/weekend meal (w/ leftovers), one light prep/weeknight meal (w/ leftovers), breakfast for dinner, soup night, pizza night.  A cooking day.  Fish every week.  Beans every week.  Leafy greens every week.  No more than one meal a month that includes red meat. 

I have my handy-dandy old school spiral bound notebook right here on the couch beside me.  Time to pull up those bookmarked recipes and make an eight week plan!