2.1 Overview
A basic principle of meal planning is that we need to start with a list of favorite dishes. A dish may be spaghetti and meatballs or meatloaf. Note that a dish may be made up of one or more recipes. For example, spaghetti and meatballs normally requires three recipes: one for the pasta (I know, it is just boiling pasta, but it is still a recipe), tomato sauce, and meatballs. From this body of dishes, we figure out what we can do with the leftovers. You will see that I redefine leftovers from food we have no interest in eating, to parts of delicious, brand new meals that greatly reduce how much cooking we have to do. This saves you time and allows you to get a meal on the table that much quicker.
2.2 Your Favorites List
Menu planning doesn’t work if you sit down with a stack of cookbooks and magazines and try to include the recipes from those publications in your menu plan. The process of menu planning is actually so complex, adding the element of looking for a recipe turns it into a tedious nightmare. When you start menu planning, you must have a stack of recipes, or a box of recipe cards that you are familiar with, or even just a list of dishes written on a piece of paper. This list of dishes is called your Favorites List. Each dish has a number of characteristics. You like each dish, you are familiar with how to cook it, and you have made it before. We will now create a Favorites List. This whole exercise should take no more than 15 minutes. You only need 10 to start, and you can add more as you plan your meals. Feel free to write down as many that come to mind.
2.3 Jogging Your Memory For Favorite DishesTo start, we need a tool to help jog our memory as to what we like. Write down on the top of a piece of paper five items for each of the following lists (see the sample on the next page):
Below these lists, divide the page into 3 columns and label them A-Protein, B-Carbs, and C-Veggies. In column A-Protein, write down the favorite entrees you like to eat. Use the list of proteins, cuisines, and restaurants to help jog your memory. This list might include Roasted Salmon, Pizza, Hamburgers, and Meatloaf. Then work on the next column (B-Carbs) and write down your favorite carbohydrates. These would include steamed rice, baked potatoes, and pasta. The carbs don’t have to match up to the proteins; these are independent lists. Finally, create a list of vegetables you like in column C-Veggie. If you are not big into vegetables, don’t worry. We’ll increase the list later.
Favorite List
Idea Sources
Favorite Dishes (put a star next to easy dishes)
Figure 1. List Of Favorite Dishes: To build your list of favorite dishes, first you list your favorite protein types (meats, seafood, etc.), restaurants and cuisines to help jog your memory. Then write down your favorite protein, carb, and veggie dishes. 2.4 Go Ahead And Admit You Like Junk Food
There is no shame in writing down only the junk food you like such a hamburgers, hotdogs, burritos, fried chicken, and pizza. Later in the site we will discuss how to introduce other dishes into your meal plan, or find healthier, but just as tasty, equivalents for the food you like to pick up at the fast food joints.
2.5 Your Easy Dishes
Your Easy Dishes is a subset of the Favorites List, and this is the list of recipes that you can throw together in no time. This would include something as simple as hamburgers and hot dogs but may include more complex dishes if there are certain ingredients already prepared. For example, chicken salad is easy if you already have cooked chicken. These recipes you will use for the evenings you know you will be too tired or won’t have time to cook. There is nothing wrong in filling the week with recipes from your Easy Dishes. Once you follow this plan and free up your time, I think you will have the energy and motivation to use your To Try List (explained later). For each of the Favorite dishes you know to be easy, draw a star next to the name.
2.6 Planovers: The Key To Less Cooking
2.7 Recipes Have Inputs And Outputs
Recipes have planover inputs and outputs. For example, tacos have planover inputs of cooked chicken, cooked salmon, and cooked steak. Any of these could be used as filling for tacos. Roasted salmon has a planover output of cooked salmon, which can be used for tacos. So if you record the food input or output for a recipe, and keep a list of these planovers and associated recipes, it is easy to throw together a meal plan. Sometimes planovers are just added to a dish because you have them and they would add a bit of interest to the dish. For example, if you have planover roasted vegetables, you might throw them on top of a pizza. I will show you how to build up this list of planover inputs and outputs, but first we must talk about a special group of dishes. These dishes just love to use planovers.
2.8 Universal Dishes: Dishes That Love Planovers
After you have been cooking for a while, you can get a sense of what recipe outputs could be used for what recipe inputs. For example, sautéed spinach can be thrown into a lasagna. Or baked potatoes can be used for mashed potatoes or twice baked potatoes. However, there is a set of dishes that were made for planovers. These are what I call Universal Dishes because they can use almost any planover ingredient to make a dish. These are listed in the following table.
These dishes are good to know for meal planning. When you pick a dish for a certain date, you can use one of the Universal dishes to plan a meal for another date, using the planovers from the first dish. These dishes are also good to know so when you open your fridge, you can take a look around at what you have and throw together a quick meal.
Figure 2. Universal Dishes
2.9 Finding Planovers
We will now put together a list of planovers from dishes we like.
Step 1 – Prepare Your Planovers List Worksheet
Divide a piece of paper into five columns, labeling them as follows:
Column #1: A-Dish Column #2: B-Input Column #3: C-Favorite Column #4: D-Output Column #5: E-Dish
An example is provided on the next page.
Step 2 – Write Down Favorite Dishes That Produce Planovers
Step 3 – Write Down Favorite Dishes That Use Planovers
Working down the list again, think about things that the dish could use. Pizza can use tomato sauce from another night. So write that in column B-Input. In column A-Dish write down the dish that could produce the planover in column B-Input. It is definitely OK to leave columns blank. But each dish in column C-Favorite should have at least one input or output. Indicate easy dishes by drawing a star next to the dish name.
Planovers List
Figure 3. Planovers
List: To create a list of planovers,
write down a favorite dish. Then write
down a food item that dishes produces. Finally,
write down dishes that would use that food item. Do the same for food items used by a dish. 2.10 The Meal Plan
Once we have a list of favorites, and a list of planovers, we can create our meal plan.
When meal planning, I concern myself with three types of dishes: proteins, carbs, and veggies. Proteins are dishes that normally contain seafood or meat such as chicken, beef, and pork. Carbs are dishes such as rice, potatoes, or pasta, but can also include bread. Veggies not only include vegetable dishes but can also include fruits as well. I categorize my dishes this way because I eat what I consider a typical American style. Based on your culture or diet, you may eat differently, and you can adapt the menu plan to whatever categories you like.
I also like this categorization because it lends itself to special characteristics of each category. Cooked meats can be used for a variety of Universal dishes, and you can cook extra carbs such as pasta and quickly reheat them for another night.
Step 1 – Prepare Your Meal Plan Worksheet
Grab another piece of paper, and divide it into 10 columns as shown, labeling the columns as follows (you can also use your favorite spreadsheet or word processing software, like Excel or Word):
Column #1: A-Number (or No. for short) Column #2: B-Date Column #3: C-Day Column #4: D-Notes Column #5: E-Protein Column #6: F-from Column #7: G-Carb Column #8: H-from Column #9: I-Veggie Column #10: J-from
Figure 4. A Blank Meal Plan
Step 2 – Fill Out The Date And Days For Each Meal
Next, number the list as 1 through 7 (or however many days you will be planning meals) in column A-No., then fill out the dates. I suggest you plan for no more than one week to start. Make sure you include the date you plan to go shopping. All the dates, including the date you go shopping plus all of your plan dates, should span about a week.
Figure 5. A filled-out Meal Plan. After you fill out the days and dates, write down any special requirements for each day. Write down one favorite dish, and write down an associated planover dish somewhere later in the plan. Use the meal number and column to relate the planover dish to the original dish. Next to the favorite dish, write down a carb that goes with the dish. The carb probably can also be reused on a later date. Perform the same for the veggie. Step 3 – Write Down Any Special Requirements For Each Day
In the D-Notes column, write down any special requirements you may have on that day. For example, you may write “Easy Meal”, or “no time to cook”, or “fish”. I find my meal plan is not as effective if I don’t pay attention to what is going during the week, so this part is very important. For example, by Thursday night, I am pretty exhausted, so I need to make sure I plan an easy meal. However, Sunday night I might want to have a meal that takes a little more time to cook, such as a roast chicken with stuffing, so I would be sure to note this in the D-Notes column. Also, if there are any special holidays such as birthdays or religious holidays you want to observe with a special meal, you will want to note this. Step 4 - Pick a Protein
Step 5 - Find a Planover Dish
Write down the planover dish for some later date (it is best not to use it the next night, otherwise your meals may tend to get boring). At this point, you may come up with a new planover dish for your planovers list. Go ahead and write it down on your Planovers List and your Meal Plan and continue. If you are planning for more than a week, note the later date should be no more than 7 days later, as cooked food usually does not last longer than 7 days in your refrigerator. At the later date, write down the number and column letter of the meal that it comes from, in the F-From column. This will help you to remember that night you will be using a planover. Later, you may reorder the meal, so this helps you to remember to keep the dish and its planover meal in the right order. I decided to use the planover salmon three days later on Monday for salmon tacos. So I noted on Monday that the salmon came from Meal #1 and from a dish in the E-Protein column with “1E”.
Step 6 - Pick a Carb
Pick a carb that goes with the first meat dish selected in Step 4 and record it in column G-Carb. If a carb is already part of the meat dish, just write an X. Write down the carb also for some later date (not necessarily the date for the planover dish; it doesn’t really matter where you write it). For example, cooked pasta or rice can be refrigerated (or frozen) and quickly reheated in the microwave a few days later. For the roasted salmon, I am serving baked potatoes. I decided to bake extra potatoes and use them to make mashed potatoes a couple days later on Sunday. I indicate this by writing “1G” next to mashed potatoes indicating the ingredients come from the G-Carb column from the first menu item.
Step 7 - Pick a Vegetable
Now pick a vegetable for the first dish selected in Step 4 and record it in column I-Veggie. Again, if the vegetable has a planover, write a dish that uses it for a later date.
Step 8 - Plan the next day
Working to the next date in your plan, if you have written down a Protein, Carb, or Veggie, use that as inspiration for the meal for that day. For example, if you are using rice from another dish you cooked earlier, look at your favorites for dishes that are served with rice. If you can’t think of a particular dish, but are thinking you want to use a particular ingredient, just write down that ingredient. You can find a recipe that uses that ingredient later. For example, you might write down asparagus, and then look for a recipe in your cookbooks later.
2.11 Finishing Your Meal Plan
If you have extra planovers that you can’t avoid, plan on storing these foods for your next week’s meal plan. If you can’t figure out how to store them, you may want to adjust your plan to avoid the extra planovers. 2.12 Order Meals Based On Your Vegetables
You may want to reorder your meal plan to maximize the freshness of your vegetables. You will want to use up the veggies that last only a few days first, then your longer lasting veggies. For example, squash will last longer than produce such as tomatoes or eggplant, so you will want to prepare the dishes that require tomatoes and eggplant first.
2.13 Write Down Reminders
Write down reminders to yourself on the appropriate days. For example, if you try to defrost chicken on the night you eat it via the microwave, it may take up to half an hour. If you take it out of the freezer one or two days in advance and put it in the refrigerator, it will be ready right away when you want to cook it. So if you know that you will be cooking chicken on Wednesday, next to your Monday night entry in the D-Notes column, write down, “take chicken out of the freezer”.
That is all it takes. If you look at your meal plan, you will see the amount of cooking you are doing is probably less than you are used to. You can reuse your Favorites List and Planovers List for your next meal plan, and keep adding to them.
2.14 Adding New Dishes
You may be one of those people who enjoy a small number of familiar dishes each week. However, many people will want to expand their list of favorite dishes. That is where the To Try List comes in. As you peruse your cookbooks, magazines, and the Web, write down those recipes you would like to try on your To Try List. I recommend not getting carried away. I would only write down three recipes from any source to get started. You will find you are limited to how many new recipes you can incorporate in your cooking. Think about it. A magazine or cookbook has hundreds of recipes. If you can incorporate three new recipes a week, that is only about 150 recipes a year. So I would recommend writing down three from each source. As you use the recipes, you can look through the publication for more recipes at a later date. As you try each recipe, remove it from the To Try List.
The To Try List is one of the best ways to incorporate vegetables into your diet. As you find vegetable recipes you might like, add them to the list. This way, as you plan your menu, you will have choices as to the kind of vegetables to add to each meal. I suggest if you are new to cooking vegetables, you should look for very simple recipes.
2.15 Adding Healthier DishesOne thing to look for in recipes, especially if you have a lot of junk food for your favorite dishes, are similar dishes that are a little healthier. For example, if you have hamburgers on your Favorites List, consider finding a recipe for turkey burgers. The changes don’t have to be drastic. Don’t expect to go from cheeseburgers to tofu. But little changes over time w |