Strollerderby : meal planning

Strollerderby Playdate: What Are These Things You Call Grocery Lists?

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:47:00 GMT

While I love to cook, I am not what you'd call a meal planner. And even though I love to write out a nice, long, comprehensive grocery list, the contents rarely take into account specific recipes. In fact, I like to rationalize all this laziness and ill-preparedness by thinking of myself as a stellar impromptu chef, whipping up healthful and happiness-inducing dinners in thirty meals without any sort of Rachael Raying or ramekins filled with ingredients prepped and planned the previous Sunday night. Really, though, I am just lazy and ill-prepared. Not so with these mamas. These mamas have their meals mapped, their meticulous Whole Foods list checked off and probably know where all the proper lids to each Le Creuset pot and pan is in the pantry.

For that, I honor thee, ye who put your wedding china to good use and house at three kinds of salt in sealed canisters, ye Meal Planning Mamas. I bow to you and I wonder if you have any crushed tomatos I could borrow for tonight's pasta:

CityMama's foodielicious family meals that realistically incoporate sandwiches, deep fryers and date nights. Love her love her love her.

Lucky Charm and microbrew overloads don't stop Foodmomiac from getting all organic with the kids.

Diva Mom Vicki is insistent about staying out of the kitchen on the weekends. But during the week, it's on yo.

Post-holiday schedule re-entry means loads of meal planning delight for An Ordinary Mom.

And when all else fails, Mommy Cracked's embracing my kind of supper spontaneity.

Photo credit: grocerylists.org

Kitchenista: Good Enough For a Potluck in Mumbai

Madeline Holler — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:32:00 GMT

For the tastiest curries, I'm all for grinding and mixing your own spices, and pounding crisp aromatics into thick pastes using a mortar, pestle and all the seething anger that built up over the weekend. But sometimes, you just need to make dinner. For that, we go to whatever's in one of the jars that we have on hand.

But that doesn't mean soup or spaghetti and sauce again. You can still have curry -- which, incidentally, I think are the most forgiving and easiest vegetable hiders, take that Ms. Seinfeld! -- and it's very easy. Like, 15 minutes from thought bubble to table.

Just stock up on these (especially the stuff in the jars): Patak's Taste of India.

No need to venture into your cities Little India (though, by all means, go!), because these are available in the most meat 'n' potatoes suburban supermarkets -- look in the international aisle. There a lots of variations and please, try them all.

My favorite, though, is Patak's Original Mild Curry Paste, cilantro and cumin. You can do anything with it, but here's the best. (Don't worry, "mild" still has a little heat, which I think is good to get even little kids used to. Just blob on some plain yogurt if the kid starts wailing.)

Dice and saute an onion, if you have one, no big deal if you don't. Throw in some chicken, diced or hard vegetables like carrots or parsnips or potatoes or whatever. Any, all, none of it, doesn't matter. Just wait with the delicate leafy stuff for the final step. Throw in a can of garbanzos, any size can, but the more you make the more leftovers you have and you'll want leftovers of this for sure.

When the garbanzos seem heated and the optional onions are soft and, even better, kind of browned, scoop out some of the curry paste, one heaping spoonful at a time. Stir after each spoonful. You're trying to make sure you have enough to coat all the garbanzos and/or optional chicken. Keep dumping. You can't overdo it and you can always add more later, so don't sweat this step.

Now, dump in a can of diced tomatoes -- any size. Stir. Add some water or chicken broth to make the amount of curry that you want. Taste. Add more paste if you want. Here you can throw in bell peppers or spinach or fresh tomatoes -- any other kind of vegetable that wilts quickly or should be done, at most, al dente. Let the whole thing simmer until the rice is done.

Serve in big bowls over rice. Dollop some yogurt on top for extra richness/coolness. You'll love it so much, you'll want to bring it to your next potluck in Mumbai. But don't.

Open Your Mouth: Menu Planning for the Disorganized Parent

Patti — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:28:00 GMT

Once my sister and I hit middle school or so, every night was "fend-for-yourself-night". Mom was in grad school, we were tall enough to reach the stove, 'nuff said. We didn't plan meals, they just sort of happened.

In the interest of both my sanity and my budget (I'd rather spend money on shoes and lipgloss than waste it at the grocery store, if you want the whole truth), I've made a concerted effort to plan my menus and my shopping lists more carefully. Inspiration comes from all sorts of places: blogs, magazines, Food Network shows. But I wouldn't be reading food blogs or watching cooking shows if I didn't have a general interest in food and cooking, and I wouldn't necessarily have the time to scour through magazines or cookbooks looking for interesting ideas if I weren't an at-home mother.

Websites that help busy families plan their meals are stepping in to help bridge the gap between the desire for a home-cooked family dinner and the reality of modern family life for a monthly fee of five bucks or so. Recipe databases, shopping list builders, and other tools are par for the course with these sites, many of which were launched by other parents looking for a way to solve the problem of the dinner hassle.

Dinners In A Flash (turn off your speakers, 'cause that's one annoying little animation they've got) has a free trial and some demos of their user interface. They've also got a forum, which seems like a great idea to me.

If you've ever gotten to the point where you've had to turn to FlyLady to get out of a household funk, then you've probably heard of Saving Dinner, one of the original meal-planning sites. More flexible (and more pro, for that matter) than many sites, you can subscribe to vegetarian or weight control options, among others. I have the Saving Dinner cookbook, and can vouch for the recipes as well as the relief of having the pre-selected menu choices to do the thinking for me.

Real Simple magazine reviewed six menu-planning sites in a recent issue, including Saving Dinner. Based on title alone, Dine Without Whine sounds like a winner (although never, never without wine. Perish the thought!). The others all have different stand-out features that make them suitable for just about any need, except maybe the need to just make reservations.

Open Your Mouth: Dinner for the Week of 4/15

Patti — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:11:00 GMT

An auspicious start to this week's dining at my house: after a late snack of pizza and cupcakes at a birthday party, we had a light "breakfast for dinner" this evening that included pancakes topped with marionberry sauce, fresh strawberries, and tomatoes topped with cottage cheese. It was either that or boxed macaroni, and really, I'm glad we erred on the side of nature.

Having spent my entire weekend dealing with an ailing pet, I haven't made my usual detailed menu and shopping list for the week. I do know that I'm still thinking about those pitas from last week, and souvlaki will definitely be on the menu, with my sister's tzatziki (or maybe just Trader Joe's, it depends). On a quick milk run, my three-year-old asked me to buy yellow squash, so that will be featured one night this week, possibly just sauteed with garlic and tomatoes and tossed with pasta.

And while last week was the never ending hardboiled egg story, this week it's six pints of strawberries bought from a neighborhood vendor, and we're only one pint into the box. My kids will love a salad that includes strawberries and feta cheese, maybe with a grilled salmon filet. And I'll bring back an old favorite that ran a few years ago in Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine, a recipe for strawberry bread that uses fresh or frozen berries and makes a great treat.

Beyond that, I haven't thought. I have been trying to include 2-4 vegetarian dinners, to cook fish more often (at this point, once a week is much more often), and keep other meats to once a week or less, and we limit dining out to weekends most of the time. So that's the general pattern I'm going to shoot for when I sit down to work out the rest of our week. I know we've got plenty of potatoes to use, some mushrooms and some cauliflower that need to get eaten soon, and a freezer full of chicken breasts. I can work with that.

How do you plan your family's meals, or do you just play it as it lies?

What's Cookin'? Weekly Menus, That's What

Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 13:02:00 GMT

The Zero Boss (Hi Boss!) thinks they're BS, but I am a huge fan of weekly menus. Everyone knows that organizational junkies get off on making yet another list each week, and weekly menus are perfect for that. I'm not that "together," so I like meal planning for a different reason: they help me avoid having The Dreaded Leftovers. Which I haaaaaaaaaaaate.

When I was a kid, I am positive I drove my mother to pour her nightly glass of Carlo Rossi full to the top by asking her what was for dinner as soon as she picked me up from school. Every. single. day. Whenever she responded "leftovers," I was pissed. Fickle is my middle name.

I'm sure that particular childhood experience was the catalyst behind my wanting to cook something deliciously different every night, and my weekly menus help to accomplish that goal. Weekly menus mean you don't have to cook seven nights a week. We have sandwich night one night a week and we usually go out or have take-out one night a week. Only five nights left to cover. W00t!

When I know what I am cooking for the week, I cook exactly those things. I go to the store with my list of ingredients and buy and cook pretty much only what's on the list. (Another benefit of weekly menus is that they help you stick to your budget at the grocery store.) Sometimes a particular ingredient like a beautiful piece of fish or brilliant tomatoes will inspire me to change my mind mid-stream, but for the most part, I know what I feel like eating that week, I know what my family favorites are, and my weekly menu helps me not to have to think about what to make for dinner.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you get in the hang of sitting down on Sunday to think about what to cook, you'll become addicted. If you need a little push, these sites are here to help.