Menu Planning: Cooking For a Week

Menu planning for a week can be a challenge at first. But with a little bit of time and energy, it's well worth it. Here's a list of things we do to plan for home cooked meals.

1. Look at what you have - make a visual inventory.
2. List all the meals (main dish, vegetables, salad etc.) for cooking this week on paper.
3. Write down some of the extras you might want to cook (we love oven fried zucchini).
4. Start a shopping list.
5. Plan your cooking around your schedule. On Monday's, Tuesday's and weekends we have more time; but on Wednesday and Thursday we have small groups at church.
6. Plan how to use leftovers. We use them for lunch and for one of the busy nights.
7. Be flexible and switch things around.
8. Make cooking a fun, family activity.

Our family makes our cooking plan on Saturday's. We have a tradition that goes back to my family's restaurant of cooking Phifer burgers on Saturday nights, but that's another post.
Planning helps us in so many ways. It keeps our cooking interesting and tasty. We can better control what and how much we eat. You've heard the old joke, "I'm on the sea food diet, I see food and eat it all." That's me and planning helps keep my proportions in proportion. Plan home cooked meals and you'll be less likely to eat out or eat fast food and you'll save money. Now how good is that; good cooking, family fun and saving money. It can't get much better!