An Obscenely Long Post - Lesson 3A - Simplify Your Lists - Start with Your Menu

Happy kids ready to eat. Leave it to the littlest to make faces over the food.

If you couldn’t tell by now, I am a rambling writer, meandering around wherever my last epiphany ended. For that reason, keep in mind that I’m not sharing these lessons I’m learning in order of importance. Instead, I’m sharing them in the order that they occur to me, and while I know this is not the most logical, orderly way to proceed, I can’t help but stop to note the concepts as they come, even if it means backtracking later. You guys are all along for the ride on this experiment. Occasionally, I clean house and put posts into labeled categories on the side bar. If you’re looking for something in particular, I hope you find it there. If not, email me at nomoregroceryshopping@gmail.com.

Now, after your long, patient wait through my sprawling scrawl, I’ll get on with it. In my month of minimizing holiday mayhem, here is lesson three -

Simplify Your Lists - Start with Your Menu

We already talked about the liberation that comes from limiting your expenditures, but what are your lists? Here’s a look at one of my more complicated lists, my menu, and how I‘ve simplified it.

My menu used to be a mess. It was a long list of all the stuff we’d eat in a month of dinners and I’d plug one meal in for each day of the month, maybe hitting some of them twice, but always feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the list and the inventory of food that accompanied it. A few years ago, I decided to simplify my process. To do this, I had to go back to that messy list and turn it into a master list. Then I assigned a category like Pasta Night or Bread & Salad Night to each evening of the week. Click here to see my big list of main meals and how I’ve categorized everything.

Now, rather than plugging meals in all over the calendar, each night of the week has it’s own theme. The order may be slightly different each week but the outcome is the same. We eat simpler meals that require very little fore-thought. Now, my week looks something like this.

Sunday - Pasta Night
I am Sicilian and we love our pasta. Almost every Sunday we make up a couple’a pounds of pasta, a couple’a types of sauces, a big loaf of bread or foccacia and a giant salad that never gets eaten all the way. Sometimes there’s meat, sometimes the whole meal is vegetarian. Always, we feed a small army, work up a hearty appetite, and share lots of good laughs in the process. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen,” you can imagine my house on Sunday’s.

Monday - Soup or Salad Night (depending on the season)
Here we choose the soup we have ingredients for or feel like having that night. Sometimes our choice is motivated by the leftovers in the fridge, or the cream that is going to expire in a few days. When we do salad as the main course we make a salad with lots of colors in it besides green. Sometimes we add bacon or chicken, other times we go vegan. Whether we have soup or salad, I always try to make some sort of bread, a nice wheat or corn bread, tortillas or scones, to go on the side and give us a little more substance.

Tuesday - Pasta Night Replayed
Sometimes it’s leftovers from Sunday’s meal, other times it’s a completely new concoction, but almost every week we have pasta more than once. Sometimes I serve bread on the side, sometimes a veggie like braised green beans, always there is a green salad to go with all our carbs.

Wednesday - Multi-Cultural Cuisine (other than Italian)
We love Thai, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and European traditional foods we’ve Americanized. We choose from the list, depending on what we have and what we’d like and that’s that.

Thursday - Potato Bar or Sandwich Night (again, depending on the season)
Again, we always try to provide plenty of fresh color to counter the copious amounts of cheese, bacon, butter and sour cream we smother our potatoes in.

Friday - Fun Food and LeftoversUsually I’ve used leftovers in other meals, but occasionally we have a surplus and we’ll have those along side one of our favorite fun foods so we have our own sort of smorgasbord. Sometimes we have pizza (frozen or homemade) or buffalo wings, sometimes burgers and fries. Always quick and easy fun foods.

Saturday - Date Night
Kids eat kids food like ramen or mac & cheese. Mom and Dad eat out.
So, to reiterate the simplification process: Make a master menu and put individual items into categories. Now, give each night of the week an assigned category and go from there. Have at least one vegetarian meal and one soup or salad night. A well stocked pantry makes this process easier and more enjoyable.

Maybe you have an easier way of doing the whole meal planning process. How do you do it and what makes it work for you? According to the USDA we spend almost an hour preparing and cleaning up dinner each day. What if we could cut that time in half? What would you do with an extra 3+ hours in a week? Share your ideas with us we could all use a little more time.