Like Mother, Like Daughter: The best part of being sick is getting your meal on a tray.

Like Mother, Like Daughter: The best part of being sick is getting your meal on a tray.

This was a great post about dealing with sick and potentially sick children as a mother. I need to get some trays, I'm sick enough to make use of them!

Weekly Menus

I have striven for several years to make a weekly menu, however simple, with a grocery list.  Many weeks I was successful, but we end up with pantry meals or last minute meals as often as not.  Recently, in a book I was reading about parenting, the author talked about having a plan where you make a specific type of meal on a particular night for the consistency and routine. I've also got an email that I printed out from flylady, Nov 2009, about designating each night with a theme (such as chicken, meatless, etc). I've been thinking on this for a long time, and have finally done something about it. See the tabs down the side? Those are the days of the week with the appropriate recipes behind them.

I just spent about 15 minutes doing the menu for this next week. This is record time for me. Having my food binder organized by night (which is theme oriented), it gave me a few recipes/meals to pick through, instead of the whole binder. I even spent several minutes looking through an old everyday food magazine, and I still didn't spend much  more than 15 minutes!

Here is what I did:
1. I thought of the types of meals I needed. Mondays are the day before the grocery run -- must be a pantry meal. We get home on the later side on Tuesday and Thursday, so something quick. But we are often loaded up on leftovers by Thursday. On Wednesday, we don't get home till quite late (for us) so crockpot meal it is. We usually game on Friday or Saturday, so pizza it is or something simple. But Saturday is a very open day, with time to cook, as is Sunday.

2. I sorted my recipes in to piles reflecting these themes: pasta and pantry meals, quick meals (45 minutes top), crock pot meals, and long cooking meals.

3. I created a cover page with a list of meals in a sheet protector for each night and put a tab on that page to serve as a divider.

Step #2 took the longest. Sometimes I had 2 different recipes on each side of a page, or 2 or more recipes on a single page, so I had to rewrite one or two. I did this over several nights of watching TV. And I didn't sort ALL my recipes, just the ones that were on top, which means they are most often used.

I still need to figure out how to deal with sides, but that might just mean adding notes with recipes of what sides go well with them. I imagine the ideal is to have a page per meal, with all recipes of main dish or side dish, and shopping list on that page. But that will take a lot more time (or lots of 15 minute intervals). Perhaps one or two meals an evening?  Alas, lots of ideas!

On my mind... food binders

Its only Thursday evening here, but I love participating, so here's my "On my mind..." for this week:

Its an unedited video, but explains my efforts at organizing my food binder...

Feeling Good

I feel good today. A tad distracted and aimless, but that easily fixable compared to feeling all tired and ooky. I should go about fixing it then!

Food Binder and Menus

A good friend recently wrote a post on planning menus with a reference to Auntie Leila's post on making menus. Thus, I was inspired to work on my menu planning skills.

I have a food binder that I use regularly to cook from. But it is full of recipes, not so much menus.


I write all over the recipes with notes about adjustments I made, or if we liked it lots or not at all, or if the leftovers were good or not. Plus, if we didn't like the dish at all, it gets pulled out and thrown away.

I have a few pages up front where I list the various dishes we like and where they are found. The idea was to make my weekly meal planning a quicker and easier process.

The post-its were for putting the meals on the calendar in such a way that they could be moved around as I almost never cook what I planned on the night I planned it.

I see ways that I lack finesse, though. For example, side dishes are almost always baby spinach from a box or bag with salad dressing. But that gets old. And I as often as not forget to start the rice, till I announce "Dinner's ready!" and Hubby says "Rice?" and I say "Oh, drat". 

Each week, I sit down (or at least aim to) and figure out what I can make each day for the next week. I make my grocery list from that menu and from looking in the pantry to see what is needed. But, as often as not, side dishes are an after-thought and forgotten as often as not.

I really have no idea how to get this to a better system. But if I ever figure it out, I'll let you know.

On my mind.... bellies

Everyone keeps telling me how small I am for only having 2 months till baby is due. You tell me!

Perhaps 2 or 3 months in -- Sept or Oct 2010

This was December 2010.

March 2011, with 2 months left. 

Boy was I proud of my belly in December when I first started "showing", but now there is no doubt! And I love it!

For more "On my mind..." see On my mind...