Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Day 149 and Menu Planning

As you know, I've been rereading my Tightwad Gazette book to get inspiration on our journey. Today I was reading about the Dacyzyn family's "pantry principle" where they shop to replenish their pantry, not for a specific menu. I like that idea in theory, but I've never been very good at following it. The way it works is that they have a price book to watch the rotation of items on sale and when it goes on sale, they stock up on it. Then each night whoever does the supper dishes decides what tomorrow night's supper will be (this gives them time to set it out to thaw, to soak beans, or whatever). That has just not worked well for me. I do better with the menu planning by making up a menu for a couple of weeks before I go grocery shopping by checking the sale ads and our freezer/pantry and working from that. I think this is a prime example of doing what works for you and your family. Right now with the heat, I'm having a hard time motivating myself to stand in the kitchen and cook so I need to be finding cool recipes or crockpot recipes that I can just throw together. Share with me what works for your family!

A true confession: We ate Sonic last night. There it is. No excuses, we just did it. At first we were going to do it because the power was out, but the power came back on so we didn't have a good reason/excuse, we just did it anyway.

1 comment:

Mom Thumb said...

I do best making a week's worth of menus and then a grocery list for the ingredients and strictly sticking to it. But I check Jumbo Food's sales in Wednesday's paper and stock up on stuff that is on sale. Like Knorr sides when they are ten for $10. So I end up with a lot of stuff sometimes, but it always gets eaten eventually.