Menu planning help

[katrack]

I said in my intro post that I'd put up some ideas I use to help with menu planning.

I subscribe to lots of emails from various food companies that send recipes and meal ideas, such as bettycrocker.com. Often I see a recipe I want to try, but I don't have all the ingredients on hand, don't necessarily want to make it THAT night, and don't want to print the recipe out just to add it to my paper piles.

My solution: my blog. I have a post almost every week that includes my menu Mon-Fri. It does several things: it gives me a place to link back to interesting recipes I find on the 'net so I don't lose them, it helps me be organized and know what I'm cooking each night, it lets me keep the links so if my family really likes something I've made I can go back looking through my posts to find the recipe when I want to make it again, AND dh can go online and have an idea what he can expect for dinner on any given night.

My blog is simple and family-oriented; if anyone wants a link to it in order to see what I'm talking about, pm me.

If you do something like this or have a menu-planning site you like, will you link to it here?

[3 ladybugs]

I belong to 2 meal planning services. I like both of them for different reasons and while I do get 6 dinners, a soup, a breakfast, 2 deserts and 2 ferments every week, I certainly don't make it all. I have also belonged to E-Mealz in the past and they were good, we just don't eat that way anymore.

The meal service plans that I have now I am printing out all the recipes because then I can figure out what to use when I join a CSA (basically a farm share) next summer. The meals should match but the services are from Colorado and Oregon and their growing season is different then New Jersey. I also print out other recipes because for some reason there are not a lot of cookbooks on the way we eat. So I am making my own cookbook! Today I got a chocolate cake recipe for my son's birthday (end of the month). Basic Chocolate Cake (Sourdough) | GNOWFGLINS Here it is if your curious. It uses no gluten (wheat) or refined sugars... even in the icing! My cake will have a bit of gluten because my sourdough is whole wheat.

[katrack]

Here is a monthly one from a blog I like: Monthly Meal Plan – September 2011 You'd have to be a subscriber or keep checking her blog to see how her new ideas work out.

[3 ladybugs]

That looks like a nice service. However we don't eat that way and what we subsitute (coconut oil for margarine, whole wheat flour for white, rapadura for table sugar) doesn't always translate well. I also like to soak my grains and I am not proficent enough yet to modify a recipe to soak them.

I made banana bread the other day with soaked grains and it said that you need to soak them for 12-24 hours, however if you soak them for closer to 24 hours your bread would be lighter. So I soaked them for about 26 hours and BOY that bread overflowed out of my pan! Talk about light! Learned that I need to put a pan under the loaf pan next time I make those! Either that or turn them into muffins.

[Twinkle]

Hey Katrack, I'd love the link to your blog. School starts next week and I'm really motivated to start doing more advanced menu planning and less flying by the seat of my pants scrambling at 5 pm!

Btw, I love the $5 Dinners websites, too!

[Caro2]

I would love the link to your blog too! I do plan in my head but I am not ridge with my plan. Love to see your plan menus.

Caro