Menu Planning

I love, love, love my cookbook Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely. She also has a website. Worth every penny.

VickiS

THere is a website called supercook.com that lets you input the ingredients you have on hand and it will give you choices for meals that you can fix. I have yet to cook anything from there so can't comment on the quality. Menus4Mom is a good site because they have you buy food on sale and precook or chop it and freeze it. They will also occasionally use something left over later in the week as well. I have fixed several of their meals and they are easy to use and good. I don't use every meal in the week, but I do plan my week out in advance.

Cheers,

M. D.
Team Leader
WineShop At Home

Hi A.,

I am a host of a fruit and veggie co-op. Are you by chance part of Your Health Source? If so, we get fruits delivered every other Tuesday. The week before our delivery, an email is sent out stating what will be in that delivery. I print out this list, grab a stack of cookbooks, put in a movie (a no-brainer), and plan. I will spend about 2 hours doing this, but that 2 hours gets all the menus planned, and the shopping list made for the next 2 weeks. If I really have my mojo on, I get out my calendar and see what I have going on each day, and when I need fast meals, when I need slow-cooker meals, etc. (Those times are pretty rare.)

Menu planning is definitely an art form. It takes a while to get a system down that works for you. I generally plan on 9-10 meals for 2 weeks, which allows for leftovers, a salad thrown together, and ordering pizza.

Hope this helps. To anyone interested in joining the co-op, the site is www.yourhealthsource.org.

Peace,
M.
www.yogapotential.com

I checked through your other responses, and you have some great ones. Savingdinner.com, Menus4moms.com both have great menus and ideas. I subscribe to the menus4moms free mailer which has some great menus, and they use leftovers regularly.

If you are looking for something that does more, like showing you how to cook say a 10 pound bag of chicken breasts and turn that into several days worth of meals, you might prefer Once A Month Cooking- they have 30 day menus as well as 15 day menus that are based off the same ingredients and the premade meals go into the freezer. You spend a hefty day or two in the kitchen, but then you are free for a couple of weeks with only minimal kitchen time each day for dinner.

With four children, doing once a month cooking is a chore that wears me out for days, so instead, I will do one recipe from my 30day gourmet (another OAMC cookbook/plan that also has a great website), times 4 or so depending on how much of what I have on hand, serve one, and put three recipes into the freezer. If you do this once or twice a week, you can build up a good supply of freezer dinners for days when you don't want or cannot spend a lot of time in the kitchen (or you need to save money that week and eat from the freezer/fridge rather than buying fresh stuff!).

Hope this helps,
A.

I don't know about it using the same meats over again but savingdinner.com has a great weekly menu that uses in-season veggies and I have yet to come across a recipe that takes more than 20 - 30 minutes to complete. They are also flexible enough that most of them you can change up what main ingredient you use. It does cost for the weekly subscription but she has a variety of free menus to try out to see if you like it.

Take a look at http://www.menus4moms.com

I know that some of the choices for the week refer back to leftovers or extras prepared and put in the freezer. Each week also comes with a grocery list.

Not sure if this is what you are exactly looking for, but I get a weekly menu in my email inbox (I don't pay anything). Sometimes I use them and sometimes not.

allrecipes.com has an "ingredient search" feature; though it's specific to particular recipes rather than menus, it's still one of my favorite sites.
and it's not free, but i like this menu-planning site (thanks, mamasource moms!): menus4moms.com

HTH!

edited to add: searching around a bit, i stumbled upon a great blog you might like: thisweekfordinner.com enjoy!

You may have already gotten this information, but Homemade Gourmet has as it's focus "Cook once, serve twice" meal planning. Our 4 Meals in 4 Minutes concept helps you to get dinner on the table with the least amount of time and trouble. And, in these uncertain economic times, our meals are very cost effective. I would be happy to send you a catalog or you can check us out on the web. www.homemadegourmet.com/BETTY2212 Be sure and click on easy recipes. Our "Key to the Kitchen" has over 1,000 easy HG recipes. It will even prepare menus and grocery lists for you. Call me or email me with any questions... ____@____.com ###-###-####

Hi A.,

I am a Pampered Chef consultant and we have a few cookbooks as well as cooking shows that focuses on this. In this economy it is so helpful. If you would like to learn more please contact me ____@____.com

Have a great day!
M.

www.lhj.com (ladies home journal)
www.marthastewart.com

good luck

www.allrecipes.com is a great site with a place where you can put in your ingredients and it will suggest recipes. Good luck!

Stir fry with whatever veggies you have in the house, or ad what meat you happen to have , just cut it up small, and this is a fast dish to have. Also I used to make a pot roast with potatoes and carrots, and the leftover can be beef sandwitches, or soup with more veggies added, or hash, fry some onions, and put more potatoes in with the leftover meat. Chicken can be put in with a rice or pasta dish with the leftover chicken, or a chicken salad.
Hamburger can be put in a piazza, taco, soft shell with some cheese, italian dish, etc.And I put squash tender fried in with my pasta sauce and it is very good.

Probaby not exactly what you want, but if you go to www.allrecipes.com, you can click on ingredients and put it what veggies you have and even put things you don't want in it and it will spit out recipies.

you should try www.savingdinner.com the menu mailers sound like what you are looking for.

I have found a couple of recipes like you are looking for, ie pork spare ribs one night, make extra & put it on a pizza the next day at kraftfoods.com. My other question is - how do I get on a food/veggie/fruit co-op? Thanks!

One of our family favorites: Pot roast (big) with potatoes, carrots, green beans, onions,(sometimes broccoli, cauliflower,snow peas, celery) cooked in a bag (I use the turkey size) with Lipton onion soup mix and 2 cups water. We have pot roast and vegetables for two nights, then make a big pot of stew. Depending on how much is left, we have that for a couple of nights and then make English pasties using ready made pie dough cut each circle into quarters, reshape into circles, fill with remaining stew, bake at 350 til golden brown. These are great in lunches reheated in the microwave. You can do the same with turkey breast, large roasting chicken. Have fun.

This might not be what you have in mind, but I will cook dinner 2 or 3 nights in a row and make sure I have leftovers from each meal. Then we have leftover night and all I have to do is reheat what's in the frig. Sometimes the foods don't go together at all, but my family doesn't seem to mind. We may have chicken, pasta and leftover pizza, but I don't have to cook and my family still gets to eat!

Sign up for the free Living on A Dime e-newsletter. They also offer a cookbook/tip book called Dining on a Dime that has a special section on leftover menus. My family hates to eat most leftovers, so I repurpose the meat and they never know it's what I cooked a couple of nights ago. ;-)

A.,

I highly recommend www.allrecipes.com. It provides rankings and reviews from other people who have tried the different recipes. It also suggests side items to go along with the main dish. You can adjust the recipes to the correct amount of servings you wish to make. I've actually created my own recipe book by putting the ones we liked into a binder protected by plastic sheets. It also allows you to search for recipes by the ingredients you want to use, or categories like quick dinner ideas. I hope you'll check it out and enjoy it as much as I do! Good Luck!

I'll second the recommendations for Leann Ely's Saving Dinner books and menu mailer website. You can find her "Rubber Chicken" recipe here (scroll down):

http://www.flylady.net/pages/kitchen2.asp

Try www.mealtimemakeover.com. It is $5 a month and they will email you the recipe and grocery list weekly. You can choose the servings, diet specific meals (vegetarian, points) and the grocery store you shop at.

There are samples on the site so you can try without buying.

Krista

Cambells soup has a website that has many easy and "normal" recipes that would help you.There is a spot where you can put the ingredients you already have at home and want to use and it will match them to a recipe that uses some or all of those ingrediets. So you can put chicken and green beans and it can give you some recipe ideas. Most ingrediets in the recipes I have tried use mostly ingrediets you already have at home.If you end up needing to buy something then its very inexpensive ingredients.Most importantly the recipes are easy, dont take long to make and are yummy!

A.,

I don't have any advise on the meal planning but I am curious about the fruit and veggie co-op. I would love to know more. I bought Paula Dean' magazine for this month possibly March's. Anyway I have only thumbed through it but it had what looked like some practical recipes. I was planning on using that magazine for planning next weeks meals. I too have an angel in heaven. God Bless you and the rest of your family.

Hi, I actually need this same help...a tip I read recently in a magazine was to look at the grocery ads for the week and then plan your meals around what's on sale. That would help save money, but doesn't help with the actual planning. I am definitely going to be reading the response you get! :) I have a question for you though...how did you find the fruit & veggie co-op? My sister does this in San Diego, but I didn't know they had them around here. Thanks & good luck with the meal planning!

Hi A.,

Check out www.homemadegourmet.com/KarlaDunning and click on easy recipes. I'm a consultant with Homemade Gourmet, and we now have a recipe database that lets you search by all sorts of things. You can plan your menu and print a grocery list. I'm also trained as a Homemade Gourmet personal meal planner and have been cooking using same ingredients for a few years now - I love it! Let me know if I can help in any way.
K. :)