I attempt to plan our menus a week in advance, but it never fails that I become totally overwhelmed. Eric suggested that I come up with a menu for an entire month and then just use the same one every month. I'm going to give it a shot, but 31 days worth of meals is a lot!
Will you help me out by sharing your family's favorite recipe(s)?
We just started this
ReplyDeletehttp://balanceinme.com/most-popular/cheap-and-healthy-grocery-list-for-a-bad-economy/
and we're liking it so far.
About 85% of the meals in the Hermans' house come from the freezer section at Trader Joe's: pizza, fried rice, fish, etc. I wish there was a TJ's in Temple, you'd love it! Right now we're big fans of frozen fried rice with an egg thrown in. You could add chicken or shrimp too.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, we eat a lot of baked potatoes (Jud likes his with chili, I do broccoli and cheese) and salads. Sometimes we throw a brisket in the crock pot and make sandwiches or tacos. Although I rarely cook, I do have two good enchilada recipes I can send you, one cheese and one chicken. Both make a lot and freeze well, so they're good for several meals.
In grad school I ate couscous with garlic and parmesan for dinner almost every night. It's faster and easier than rice, but similar in that you can do anything with it.
Also, check out this blog of meals for a year. They're all vegetarian, but I'm sure you can still find lots of good options:
http://mealsforayear.blogspot.com/
Happy cooking!
One comment about the above cite (and I do like it quite a bit) is that it is quite lacking in crunch. The meals in it need a little tweaking, especially if your palette is geared more towards the tangy. Overall, though, it lends itself to easy modifications (for example, the chicken plov is quickly switched to a semi-marsala with the addition of coconut milk and 7 spice, or to a chicken/turkey/beef chili if you add ground meat to the sauce with the spices given).
ReplyDeleteAnother great source of inspiration is allrecipes.com, especially if you pony up the nominal fee for the membership. The thing we love about that is that it organizes your shopping list for you, for the most part, and has a wealth of ideas. Many of these can be incorporated into the balanceinme.com's website's ideology. Cae is having a little issue adjusting, but that is more because she's wanting "choklet" instead of, ya know, food. However, she took some nice chunks out of her green risotto tonight, and I made some rough-cut hash from the potatoes that you're told to get.
31 days is a daunting feat, if you are indeed attempting to create 31 unique foods, but I find that many people naturally recycle basic ideas/recipes. If you've about $25 burning a hole in your pocket ($15 if you've a nook or kindle), then the book COOKING FOR GEEKS is a wonderful investment. It explains the scientific reasons why food does what it does in a very easily understood format. It's like America's Test Kitchen meets Alton Brown's Good Eats. Many recipes, but, more importantly, it helps you understand the WHY of things so that you can experiment with confidence. Oh, you'll still mess things up, but, perhaps, you'll be able to salvage it. Worst case happens and, like it says more than a few times in chapter 1, order a pizza. It's just 1 meal, after all=)
when you make the menu you must share. I am not a great cook. We eat quite a bit of beef since my parents buy a cow every year. I mostly just keep a bunch of sides (rice, pasta, veggies..) on hand and then i defrost whatever meat (pork, chicken, beef) we want season cook and serve. i am interested in what you come up with.
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