The way I shop is different than the way most people do (ie buying almost everything once a month with just a couple of trips mid month to buy produce), and not surprisingly, the way I menu plan is different as well.  It’s a pretty simple process that works well for me in making meals with a good amount of variety while staying within a fairly strict budget.

The main difference in my approach to what is typically recommended is, most people make a menu plan and then go shopping for the ingredients. I go shopping, make sure I have basic staples on hand and supplement with whatever is a good price, and then I make a menu plan based on all of that.

Here’s what I do:

Step 1 – Make list of available ingredients.

When I’m ready to write up the weekly menu plan, I first take a look to see what is in the fridge. Are there any leftovers that need to be used up, vegetables that are getting soft? I look in the freezer and see what I have there – is there anything taking up space that needs to be used up?  I make a list of all of these things, and this becomes the basis of my menu plan.

This week my starter list looked like this:
fridge – hardboiled eggs, sprouted green lentils, sour milk, beet salad, carrot kugel
produce – napa, baby bok choy, jicama, apples, carrots
freezer – 1.5 lb ground meat, sweet potatoes, strawberries, peaches, bananas

I also look to see if there’s anything in the pantry that I have a large amount of – I try to keep basic supplies in stock and rotate through it regularly. This week I noticed that I have several boxes of rye noodles, so that went on the list.

Step 2 – Make list of recipes that use available ingredients.

Next I look for recipes that will use what I have on hand. I have a few recipes that I make somewhat regularly, but nothing that I make week in and week out.  Months can go by before I make the same recipe again!  As I see recipes that look interesting, I write down the name of the recipe, as well as where I found it.  If it’s an online recipe site (eg food.com is the one I usually go to), I note the recipe number, and if it’s in a cookbook, I note the page.  On recipe sites I do a search for the key ingredient that I want to use up (eg green lentils); I also ask myself, ‘what can I do with x ingredient?’  Not infrequently I’ve made up recipes that have turned out very well based on that question!

Step 3 – Fill in chart with recipes from list.

On this same paper where all the available ingredients and recipe ideas are listed, I quickly make a graph that will have room for three meals a day, Sunday through Friday.  Once I know what ingredients I have to work with and which recipes will use them, I start filling in the graph. The more perishable something on my list is, the sooner it gets scheduled. Sunday lunch or dinner almost always includes leftovers from the weekend. I don’t like to have things sitting around in my fridge, because the reality is that they’ll get forgotten and turn into interesting science experiments that get tossed at the end of the week. 🙂

Very often I have a basic framework for my weekly meals that I set up once a year, though I don’t always stick to it.  It will look something like this:

dinner – Sunday – leftovers (meat); Monday – vegetarian; Tues – dairy; Wed – meat; Thurs. – vegetarian

Then I match up the main dish I’ve selected with the day that it best fits for (eg, pizza would be written down for Tuesday).

I don’t usually use all the ideas that I come up with for the week. Some get transferred to the following week, some don’t. This week I had the following listed on my sheet:

• warm lentil and potato salad
• roasted garlic quinoa and vegetables
• baked sweet potatoes and apples
• curried chickpeas with vegetables
• spicy peanut sesame noodles
• jamaican rice and peas
• braised lentils with sausage

If you look at my menu plan for this week that I posted yesterday, you’ll see that I didn’t use half of these ideas.  For example, there are two lentil recipes listed though I knew I didn’t need more than one, but I don’t know how the week’s recipes will go together overall until the menu is put together.  I like to have several good options to choose from and then I pick the one that works best in the context of what else we’re having that week – for example, I wouldn’t want to have potatoes every day, so I’d choose the recipes in which the ingredients were more varied.

A couple of things I also took into account this week: yesterday I was just finishing writing up the menu plan, when my mother walked in and said she had lunch for us! She had attended an event yesterday morning and the hosts asked her to take as much of the leftovers as she could (they know she’s the grandmother of a lot of local grandchildren!), so she brought us a couple dozen bagels, egg salad, and tuna salad. Because I use whatever is prepared first, that became a much enjoyed lunch an hour later.

Because of the fiasco with all of my milk souring thanks to my forgetfulness, I needed to find ‘sour milk recipes’ (in most quick breads, sour milk/buttermilk is a baking enhancer).  To use some of the milk, I scheduled muffin loaf, biscuits, and cornbread for this week.

So that’s my basic three step process – once the menu plan is done, it eliminates the ‘what should be we have for dinner’ question, as well as the need to go shopping to pick up some groceries needed for that night’s planned dinner.  Truly, I credit making a menu plan and sticking with it one of the biggest factors in keeping things in the house running smoothly.

Avivah