Definately NOT a Domestic Goddess, HELP!!

emmaleigh47

Ok people who cook alot ... how do you decide on your menu for the week? Whats steps do you take as you decide? How do you quickly write out a grocery list? Do you do any prep over the weekend? Like cook once and eat many times? I may be an adult but I kinda suck at these domesticated things... can anyone help a girl out. Hubby made the comment that we should "eat better" which is a miracle since he loves JUNK food ... he even offered to start going grocery shopping?

MikeSEA

Planning ahead is a good idea certainly. When we're being good, we'll plan a list of meals out on the weekend for the up coming week and go shopping for that list. If you don't cook a lot, I'd suggest going to Skinnytaste.com for recipe ideas. There's lots of good stuff there. I'm not so good at cooking ahead of time, but others swear by it.

rockieschick

I cook every Sunday. If a made too much a freeze some for frozen dinners type meals. Its great for the one day you dont have time and need a quick fix!

Saffyra

I tend to cook once ( a big batch of soup or stew or stirfry) and then eat it for the next three days.

I plan the meals for the week first, write down all the ingredients I need, then head to the store.

The meal with the most vegetables gets made first.

Casseroles are also a nice option to bake and then eat for a few days. Enchilada casserole just taste better each day.

Of course, its just me and hubby so it works. Kids would make it more difficult.

You can also make a big batch of meat (chicken, turkey, lean beef) spaghetti sauce and freeze the extra to pull out and add noodles to later.

thirtyandthriving

I am on a budget so I buy in bulk when things are on sale. When Chicken breast is <1.88/lb I buy tons of it. I buy tons frozen veggies when they are <0.88/bag. It is super easy just to defrost a piece of chicken and thrown it in the oven with a little Italian Dressing and spices. Are usual meal is some kind of chicken breast, veggies and a baked potato. I mix it through the week but we have some variation of this several times a week. I don't plan ahead, but I use what I have.

cheeksv

The only thing I really plan is the meat for dinner. I get mostly chicken and fish, make sure I have enough for the week and then go from there buying fresh veggies and stuff I like. I always make sure to have a few staples in my pantry though just in-case. Things like stocks ( for soups) rice, pastas, canned beans and some canned veggies like tomatoes. This way you aren't out buying every single ingredient for every meal every week.

leomom72

i plan meals for 2 weeks at a time, and it is definitely hard to find new and healthy ideas, but i make my meal list, then see what i have in the cabinet, and what i dont have, obviously is what i pick up at the store..sometimes the dinners i make are on the unhealthy side, but i usually plan what i eat for dinner first, then plan the rest of my day around that..good luck

1953Judith

There are two of us. We plan a one day menu that takes us through three days. Day 1 we cook all three meals for four. Day 2 we eat the leftover full meals identical to day 1. Day 3 we utilize pantry items and left over ingredients to make healthy meals or go out with friends for a meal. We can alternate days 2 and 3 depending on our schedules. Say I have a lunch meeting at work on day 2. This way we have some pretty major cooking only 2 or 3 times a week. It has worked exceptionally well for us. Yo-yo cooking and yo-yo dishes but no yo-yo dieting.

We have done this for almost 1.5 years. It is amazing in so many ways. One morning we suddenly felt like we were in a cooking show and burst out laughing. In our tiny kitchen spouse was prepping lunch on one cutting board and I was doing the same for breakfast on the other. We have been married over 35 years so it is really nice when you can find new things to laugh about. So I'm really glad you husband has offered to take on the shopping. Planning and implementing a healthy menu is a lot of work with a lot of rewards.

StaceyL76

One person you could check out is.. www.savingdinner.com

She has menus and grocery lists all prepped.. she has meals you can prepare in one day and freeze... lots of help.

PegasusDeb

I'm not a big fan of eating the same thing for several days in row, so I try to have items on hand that I break down into serving sizes, like chicken breast. It's too easy for me to over-do the serving size if I have a big casserole staring at me! Single serving of a chicken breast will thaw quick, and then I go from there. I have found that I am making more little trips to the store for fruit & vegy's though. I just try to stay focused on my list.
I'm probably not much help, but it works for me.

ILiftHeavyAcrylics

Hubby and I are both cooks, which we thought would make weight loss hard but it's actually helped. We discuss what we'd like to have for dinner by week and usually plan for at least two nights of "easy" food, like sandwiches or soup. We sit down and write out a grocery list for what we're going to get to make our chosen menu. If there's stuff already in the pantry (like say we have leftover canned tomato sauce, or carrots in the fridge) we try to plan a meal that will let us use things we already have so we don't waste food and we save money. We buy in bulk if we can (we have a small kitchen so storage is a problem). Whatever we can replace with a low sodium or whole wheat or sugar free option we do. After the dinner list we each decide what we want for breakfast and lunch because we do those separately. When we're in the store we're each allowed one "impluse buy" and that's it (you can guess we're on a strict budget). Make sure you read and compare labels, remembering that the food industry isn't always forthcoming and they like to use buzzwords that don't mean anything. Then we take turns cooking throughout the week. We try to make sure and have a variety of things as far as types of food and protein sources. I try to push as many veggies at him as he'll eat :P but really he does better with fruit. Hope that helps-- I like the food network website for recipes and then I adjust them to be healthier. Some things you have to learn by doing-- ex. fat free cheese just doesn't melt into a nice soup texture so if I'm making my cauliflower soup I get 2% or full fat cheese. You also have to learn by trial and error which things you can buy generic and which things really need to be name brand. Good luck; it takes practice but you'll get it.

shawnscott5

I don't know if you have children or not, but we have 7 total in our house. Before I go grocery shopping for the week, each person names one meat and one veggie for "their" dinner. It gets everyone involved and I only have to figure dinner 1 night a week. I also learned to not isle shop. Stay on the outside 4 walls, everything you need is there, veggies and fruit, meat, and dairy. I only go to the cereal isle as I have 5 children! Good luck

emmaleigh47

Thanks for all of the advice!

grassette

We shop according to the lost leaders in the supermarket flyers, and freeze the extras. There is also a wonderful fruit and vegetable market nearby where we buy our veggies and fruits for the week. When we hit the supermarket, shop the perifery, and the aisle with the ingredients for baking, the canned and frozen veggies. We are from-scratch cooks, and will freeze a meal for what I call a "too exhausted to make supper"day.

Your shelf of cookbooks should include the Joy of Cooking. This is a basic reference that will tell you how to cook anything you put your mind to. There are chapters that will give you basic information on how to make a good food stock, how to butcher beef, and all kinds of useful things. Other excellent cookbooks are those put out as fundraisers by community groups. These are books where women share their best recipes. These tend to be basic but good, featuring locally available ingredients. On of our stalwarts was one put out by the Mennonites years ago, which gave a frugal, ecologically sustainable approach to cooking.

Add to that whatever your lastest food enthusiasm is. Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks on Indian cuisine give exquisite recipes. There are excellent cookbooks on Italian and French foods. Chinese is another of the world's great cuisines. As you work through the cookbooks, and your library has shelves of them, favorite recipes become family favorites, and you learn how to combine ingredients together, so that over time, you learn to freelance.

One caveat: not all recipes printed in magazines are good. Find the magazine where the recipes are excellent each time you cook them. One of my favorites is a little magazine called Homemaker's, which you buy at the supermarket for about $3. I have never encountered a bad recipe in that magazine. The same goes for cookbooks. Some cookbooks are not worth the paper they are written on. That is why the public library is a good source. Once you find that keeper, you can order it from Amazon.

Cook with butter. Life is too short to do without. Eat less if you have to. Butter makes everything so good. Ask friends for their recipes. Cooking is something you have a lifetime to learn, and once you find out how delicious the from-scratch cooking is, you will never want to eat the prepared stuff again.

Debi907

PLAN AHEAD. I read the grocery ads & decide my weekly menu by what's on sale. If you have time on the weekend, that would be a good time to make a few meals for the upcoming week. Today I'm making taco meat & sloppy joes to freeze - 93% lean hamburger was on sale. It takes a little work to plan ahead for me because being organized isn't a trait that comes naturally. However my days are less stressful, more healthful & I spend less on meals than I would if I didn't plan. You can do it - get in touch with your inner domestic goddess! Then send her my way - I still need a little work.

Debi907

Cook with butter. Life is too short to do without. Eat less if you have to. Butter makes everything so good. Ask friends for their recipes. Cooking is something you have a lifetime to learn, and once you find out how delicious the from-scratch cooking is, you will never want to eat the prepared stuff again.

I agree! Margarine seems to be a few molecules away from plastic to me.

CharlieBarleyMom

I am on a budget so I buy in bulk when things are on sale. When Chicken breast is <1.88/lb I buy tons of it. I buy tons frozen veggies when they are <0.88/bag. It is super easy just to defrost a piece of chicken and thrown it in the oven with a little Italian Dressing and spices. Are usual meal is some kind of chicken breast, veggies and a baked potato. I mix it through the week but we have some variation of this several times a week. I don't plan ahead, but I use what I have.

^this. But I buy turkey too when it's on sale. I also hit the grocery stores just before their circular changes... I can usually get a couple of meat selections that have $1, $2 or $3 off TODAY coupons attached. I just found Perdue chicken burgers (4/pack) 2 for $6... each one had a $1 OFF today coupon so I got 2 pounds of ground chicken for $4. I added spinach and low-fat feta and pepper and red pepper flakes and mixed it all together and remade the 8 burgers... 8 burgers for $4. Can't beat it.

I do not pre-plan... I just have a few things I like to make. When I see a recipe I want to make, then I have to preplan because I usually need ingredients.

klewis81

DH and I sit down on Sunday afternoon and plan a list for the week. We also plan 1-2 nights for restaurants when we know we will be tired/hungry/lazy. We assign dishes so the work is evened out for the week and the cook also has to clean. I use allrecipes.com for many of my recipes, it has nutritional information and an active community that reviews and rates recipes, which makes it easier to find good recipes. I have a free account so I have saved hundreds of recipes to my recipe box. Each week we use a few tried-and-true recipes and we try to cook one new recipe. At this point in time, our basic pantry items have already been purchased, so with many recipes I only need to purchase meat and veggies. Our grocery bill is usually around $50 (we both have access to free lunch so we save money there). Also, measuring cups and a food scale have been indispensable to this weight loss process.

Samerah12

I cook one afternoon on a weekend (or a friday night) and just make 2 or 3 meals (spaghetti, curry, beans n rice, stir fry, greens, mashed potatoes, grilled chicken, squash, all easy stuff) and stick em in tupperware for the week. I also keep easy to grab healthy stuff (yogurt, cheese and crackers, baby carrots, apples, bananas) and plenty of salad stuff (boiled eggs, peas, beats, nuts, avacado) in the fridge. Right before I go to bed I put everything I'm going to eat the next day in my food diary. I end up feeling guilty if I deviate from that too much and it helps me plan.

Re: grocery shopping, if you're not used to eating a lot of fresh stuff don't buy much and don't buy stuff you don't have a specific plan for using. It sounds stupid and basic but you will end up wasting food at first because its easy to not cook it or forget about it until after its gone bad.

servilia

I love cooking but don`t plan ahead much. I have all the staples at home and usually we`ll get some meat on the weekends for the coming week. Then during the week I will call my husband from work and ask him what he feels like that night. Once I know what he wants for dinner, I drop by the grocer on the way home to get any veggies or odds and ends I might need for that meal. He gets home later than me so that works for us.
I will cook a dinner big enough to last two days so the next day we`ll have leftovers . Or I can freeze some if I made a lot.

california_peach

I am a stay at home mom, so what I do may not apply to your life. I have a good friend who works and like some others here on the thread she does a lot of cooking on Sunday. She also utilizes her slow cooker a great deal.

I plan my meals at least a month in advance, but I also have a cooking blog so I do this because I need new recipes for the blog. I print out a calendar and I write the menus on each indivual day with some days set aside for take-out, and left-overs. At the bottom of menu calendar I put a key for the recipe source (cookbook, website, etc), and then I have that code next to the recipe with the page number if using a cookbook. On Saturday I can just pull out the cookbooks, etc that I need and I can write out my grocery list pretty quickly.

Hope that helps.

tiedye

I eat beans and rice for lunch almost every day which I cook all at once on the weekend and divide into serving sizes ahead of time. I use a lot of frozen meat from TJs also which is flexible and always cooks well.

also, try allrecipes.com because they have a search engine where you type the ingredients you have and it comes up with recipes that includes those things.

Qarol

I am the uber nerd. I loathe grocery shopping. Here's what I do...

I have a spreadsheet which has every grocery item we've ever bought, organized by aisle. When I plan the meals for the week, I mark how many of whatever items I need. Then I print it out and take it with me.

There are two things I can't stand about grocery shopping...1. going down an aisle needlessly and 2. going down an aisle twice b/c I forgot something

tmarie2715

You got some great responses here! I am probably the only one who would love to plan (by nature I am a list-maker and planner) but SO can't ever decide on what he wants to eat until long after he arrives home from work. We eat dinner at around 7 as a result.

Anyway, if I had it my way, I would plan an entire week at a time. You can easily do this by looking at your local grocery flyer and choosing things on sale. Keep in mind it is also very rewarding to utilize leftovers. If you steam veggies for a side one night, toss them into an omelette the next morning or top a salad for lunch with them.

The best part of planning ahead like that is you don't get stuck in a food rut-- you can easily see what you've had recently, and mix things up.

GL!