The Two-Week Menu

Melinda and I started something new this month. We sat down, came up with 10 dinner ideas and wrote them down on post-its. Then Melinda created a template in Word and we put one sticky note meal on each weekday (weekends are for spontaneity and restaurants).

We then made a list of ingredients we'd need and headed out to the grocery store. Now we had 2 weeks' worth of ingredients and a flexible list of menus! This way, if we don't want the spaghetti that's on Tuesday's spot, we can switch it out with something later. No more, "What do you want to eat? I dunno, what do you wanna eat? I dunno," in the evenings!

Meals have been easy to make and we've had a blast making them together.

A week of real food...

After suffering through three weeks of microwave dinners, I switched back to cooking real dinners and bringing homemade sandwiches to work for lunch. (See menu here.)

First of all, having a menu and the necessary ingredients on hand made enacting my dinner plans easy. I didn't have to think about what to make. Second, I started making dinner right when I got home from work. This way, I was able to satisfy my typical 6pm hunger and if anyone wanted to eat later, they were free to reheat any leftovers. We're all adults in the house, we can fend for ourselves! I needed to give up my "Mother Hen" point of view and re-evaluate my need to have "dinnertime" be a regularly-scheduled group activity. I have, and it feels great!

Third, I wanted to be flexible in what day I ate the meals on the list. I've found that if I make a list of menus that are not date-specific, I fare better than if I commit to having fish on Monday and chicken on Tuesday, for example, because I never know what I'll feel like eating that evening. I shopped for all the ingredients on my weekly list on Sunday and was ready to go Monday-Friday. The one day I did commit to was Wednesday when I made whole wheat noodle lasagna for everyone who came to our Project Runway finale party. Every inch was gone by the end of the show!

Lastly, I incorporated fresh meats and vegetables into the dishes. Not only did they taste much better than any microwavable food, but my hunger was satisfied longer. I managed to make everything on my list, save for the shrimp gumbo. Fortunately, that will be on this week's menu list, as the shrimp are safely stowed away in the freezer and can be thawed pretty quickly.

Back to Basics

After three weeks of nothing but The Great Microwave Experiment (blugggg) for dinner, I have planned a weekly menu of home cooked meals for the next 6 days.

• Fish tacos
• Thai chicken with string beans and rice
• Lasagna with veggies and pork sausage
• Rosemary garlic pork chops with rice and peppers
• Shrimp gumbo and jalapeño cornbread
• Chicken noodle soup and toasty ham & cheese sandwiches
  

Hopefully these slow-cooked meals will give me satiety and some pep. The frozen dinners were tasty but they never really filled me up nor did they give me the energy I need. I feel sluggish and foggy all the time now. Some real food is needed, stat!