Menu Planning

Do you menu plan?

We have menu planned ever since we first got married.

Buying groceries each week and making meals for two people on a regular basis was pretty new to both of us at the time. 

I also wanted to know what I was going to buy at the grocery store for what I needed to make for dinner. 

Personally, I hate running errands (Kenton totally doesn't mind), so if I want to cook/bake something in the moment and I don't have everything I need, I'm so irritated!

Especially on days where it's cold and gross out and Wren and I need something fun to do, like make cupcakes. If I don't have eggs, I'm not hauling everyone out to the store to get them. Not happening.

 But I know everyone does it differently. We like to shop once a week, get everything we need to make 5- 6 nights of meals. Some like to shop every few days. Some don't mind picking up what they need that night. And some eat out. We like eating out too :)

But food is expensive, and it's expensive to eat out, or order in a lot, so we hardly do.

When we first got married, I didn't really know how to make anything but pasta dishes. With a jar of sauce. There wasn't much variety in our house. It wasn't until Wren was born and I was home with her, that I started to take on making dinner most nights. 

I had so many dinner-making disasters- some winners, and lots of experiments that were hit or miss. But it wasn't until we bought this cook book that I actually formed a baseline for cooking that I could expand from.

Jamie Oliver has lots of cookbooks with complicated and crazy recipes, but in Food Revolution, he dumbs himself down to help us start from scratch. I learned the basics for making soups, roasting meat, and preparing salads. It was the biggest help!

Now 4.5 years later of practice, and two of them spent at home on maternity leave with more time to hone my skills, I love cooking and baking from scratch. Don't get me wrong, we enjoy our Delissio pizzas, but because we have made it habit to cook from scratch, we find we enjoy making food more that way on a regular basis.

Yes, it's more effort, but I have found the more you work at it, the faster and better you get at it and therefore you can make it happen even when you have a little family to feed :)
When I make new recipes, I see it almost as a small challenge for myself- like I'm competing against myself to make a great meal. I get a lot of gratification and joy from doing it, even if it's just for the 4 of us.

I still use Food Revolution every single week for at least 1-2 of our meals, but have enjoyed using other cookbooks like Jamie's Dinners, Chef at Home, Smitten Kitchen and my newest one, La Tartine Gourmande. (and of course the internet is an endless resource too!)

I mostly use cookbooks as a guide when I make food. I admit, I typically need to stick to a recipe in front of me and not deviate too far from that. 

To make my life easier when I sit down every week to pick the meals I need to shop for, I made a list of all of the dinners we typically enjoy and wrote down the cookbook title next to it so it could easily be found to make. That way, we don't pour through stacks of cookbooks on the kitchen table looking for something to make. 

Some favourites are things like pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw, beef stew, pasta with garlic bread, asparagus risotto, blt's, homemade soups, roast chicken with veggies and potato fish cakes. 

Can I just say, food tastes so much better when you're cooking with fresh herbs? It's frustrating how expensive they are in the grocery store. I try to grow my own, but I'm not great at it. I'm going to try again this year though and hopefully I can keep them growing year round eventually!

One of my biggest motivators for continuing to try new recipes and make good food is that I want to pass a love of food to the girls. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting down with your family and everyone going "Mmmm! This is so good!" to a new meal you tried. Well, Wren is fairly picky but we are trying really hard to get her to try new foods, even if it's just a bite. 

I like to have Wren cook with me when possible and try mixing, rolling, patting and whatever else she can help with. In our society of technology, I think it's good to get your kid's hands dirty in whatever they love to do, and cooking is one of them in our house :)