Menu and Meal Planning

Meal and Menu Planning

When it comes to dinnertime, PLANNING is the key to less or no stress!

---The Food Nanny

1.  Dinner is About The Family!

Nothing can replace family dinner. The most important thing you will do each day is cook dinner for your family and sit down together to eat. The smells and chemistry that permeate the home throughout the dinner hour are without substitute. Research has shown that kids who eat dinner with their parents are healthier, more advanced in literacy, and less likely to get involved in drugs and alcohol. You can make a more unified, happier family in just one hour a day.

2.  Dinner is About Planning!

The key to a successful family dinner all comes down to planning. If you plan in advance, it liberates you from the hassle of last-minute meal planning. Never again will you be faced with inventing a meal at 5pm!  Your family will have something to look forward to if you choose consistent weekly themes. As you plan it will also simplify your shopping efforts and reduce trips to the store.  This helps keep you within your financial budget and opens up time for other things when you would have been cruising the grocery store aisles! 

In the time it takes to go to a drive thru restaurant or order take out, you can make a healthy and satisfying dinner.  Really.  It just takes planning and practice.

Only go to the grocery store ONCE a week.  This saves time and money.

3.  Dinner is About Good Food!

The proof is in the pudding. Or in the cinnamon rolls. Or in the pot roast. Whatever foods your family loves, learn and use the recipes to put smiles on the faces of even the pickiest eaters. Find cookbooks you test and love.  Often the best bet is going through your mother's and grandmother's or aunties recipe boxes/files and finding the dishes you have loved growing up.  Almost all recipes can be adjusted for 1, 2, or a family.  Be creative and don't be afraid to try new things.  You don't know when something you thought you would never like just might become your favorite!

**Keep a list taped to the inside of a designated cupboard door.  Keep a pencil there too.  Get in the habit of writing down when you run out of something and GET IT ON THAT LIST.  In my home, if it doesn't get on that list, it doesn't get purchased.  My family has learned to write it down!  (toothpaste, shampoo, deoderant, floss, etc.)

**Pick a day of the week that will be your grocery shopping day.  Keep it consistent.  Only change it if you see a pattern change in your weekly schedule.  This way you know what you will be doing on that day.

**Take your list down from the cupboard door, turn it over and write down the days of the week.  Look at your calendar for the week.  Does one night need a crockpot meal?  A fast dinner? You might want to organize the days by theme:  comfort food night, Italian night, Mexican night, etc.  This gives you a variety of recipes to try and a diverse menu.  It is hard to get tired of the 'same old thing' this way!  Check the weather too:  if it's going to be a rainy day there is nothing better than a pot of hearty soup simmering away on the stove and some rolls or biscuits in the oven!  Or if it's hot, a nice main dish salad could be just the light dinner you were looking for.

**When you make your weekly menu, list all the ingredients you will need for each recipe.   Check it against what you already have in the pantry.  This avoids duplicates and unnecessary buying.  Write down what you need on the list.

**Before you start:  get all your ingredients and kitchen tools out.  BIG TIP:  Clean up as you go.  Nothing is worse after you have spent your time cooking than to look at the messy kitchen and feel overwhelmed.  Put things away and wipe down counters as you go along.  It is a small thing that doesn't take that much time.  It is merely a habit.  Make it your habit!

**Set the table, even if only for 1.  It makes whoever sits down at your table feel special and important.

A Home is More Than A House It is A Sanctuary

It has been a long day for everyone. The family has been scattered in all different directions throughout the day, but at last, the time has come for all to converge on the sacred refuge, separated from the challenges of the outside world, called home.

"Actually, a home is much more than a house. A house is built of lumber, brick, and stone. A home is made of love, sacrifice, and respect. A house can be a home, and a home can be a heaven when it shelters a family" stated,Thomas S. Monson, prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons.

There are many fixtures that are found in this sanctuary, but none that are quite as important as the dinner table. It is a multi-functional magic place. It is here we are fed, nourished, and replenished from the demands of the day.

 The dinner table is a multi-faceted location.

It is the gathering place or the "Hub" of the house. It is here that we exchange ideas with one another, tell stories and jokes, and just plain chat. There are times when we will sit for hours after the meal is actually finished just chewing the fat and hashing over business.

It functions as our board room table where we discuss matters that affect us as a family unit. It is a school room table where we learn and grow in many areas, including gospel topics. Sometimes we just clear off all the dishes and break out the games and enjoy a television free night, making it a game table, too. Another of our favorite "table" activities is putting together an old fashioned jig-saw puzzle.

The table is a place of celebration, many a birthday candle are blown out on it, while choruses of Happy Birthday ring through the house. Whatever the activity we choose, we find that as we gather around the table, the bonding and building starts to take place.

 The Eternal Family

·         The Eternal Family
The home is where we are nurtured and where we prepare ourselves for living in mortality. It is also where we prepare ourselves for death and for immortality because of our belief and understanding that there is life after death.

Families Are Forever, A Traditional Mormon Belief

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), we believe in the continuation of the family unit for all eternity.

We feel lucky to have the wonderful relationships with each other that can be shared for time without end. These relationships are not just given to us without work. We are required to learn to live with one another in a way that we would desire to be together forever. This is a job, but it is worth it.

Practicing to live together now, in love, and finding joy with one another, is what we are trying to do. Spending time together is part of that process. We are so thankful for that scratched up, second hand, wooden fixture we call a table because it acts as a gathering place of love for our family.

 "It is vital that frequent family dinners become a permanent fixture for children, not only when they are young, but throughout their teenage years," said Dr. Wade F. Horn, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "The frequency of family dinners decreases significantly as children enter and go through high school– and that's just when the benefits of family dinners may be needed most."

·         Compared to teens who have family dinners twice a week or less, teens who have dinner with their families five or more nights in a week are:

·         32 percent likelier never to have tried cigarettes (86 percent vs. 65 percent).

·         45 percent likelier never to have tried alcohol (68 percent vs. 47 percent).

·         24 percent likelier never to have smoked pot (88 percent vs. 71 percent).

               Teens who have family dinners twice a week or less are three times likelier than teens who have dinner with their families five or more times a week to say all of their friends use marijuana (9 percent vs. 3 percent).

            Teens who have dinner with their families five or more times a week are almost twice as likely to receive A's in school compared to teens who have dinner with their families two or fewer times a week (20 percent vs. 12 percent). Teens who receive A's and B's are at half the risk of substance abuse as those who receive grades of C or lower.

(some quotes and material taken from The Food Nanny, Thomas S. Monson, In The Doghouse, Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse: Columbia University.)

The two worksheets I gave them were these:

BEEF       CHICKEN         PORK        OTHER

(on one side)

SOUPS      SALADS      BREAKFASTS    SIDES/VEGETABLES

(on the other side)

This is where they wrote down under each category what they liked, knew how to make, or wanted to learn.  I have it on landscape in my documents and it is what I use.  Mine used to be handwritten, but now it is all nicely typed and I keep it in a sheet protector in a drawer in my kitchen so it is at my ready.  (see above handout)

And then this handout from Real Simple: