I'm a stay at home mom. That's five
days a week full-time at home with two kiddos and all the joys,
diapers, naps, spills, breaks, laughs, quite moments, hugs, and
nursing that go with it. Rhythm – reading about it, learning
about it, and finally trying to practice it – become a guiding
principle for planning our days. We are slowly building more rhythm
into our family life. One way we've done that is with a weekly dinner
plan.
Actually implementing a dinner plan in
our house came about after realizing that dinner planning could be
loose, a pasta day, a Mexican day, and so forth. This approach limits
my options just enough to inspire creativity. Within a set of
parameters (it must work on a pizza crust), I get to find an
interesting way to feed our family. This is the plan we are using
now:
Monday: one pot meal
Tuesday: soup
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: pasta
Friday: pizza
Saturday: Chinese
Sunday: chicken
Within this framework, I plan a menu
for the week, in pencil of course because there is a lot of
readjusting! Friday pizza is a hit. We have crust
and sauce
recipes that are great. Making both has gotten easier every week. I
made a quadruple sauce recipe to freeze for future use. Soup night
has just moved to Tuesday because that's my new bakery day (German
bakery around the corner – yum). Sunday chicken in the oven is
always good. We usually have two days of leftovers instead of one.
Recently leftovers has meant either a savory pie or ribollita.
It's a work in progress, our dinner
rhythm. But even at this early stage, I find it simplifies my life
and helps keep cooking more pleasure than pain. Since Papa started
his new job, we start cooking when Pumpkin goes down for her
afternoon nap. It's a nice part of our day together and Peanut looks
forward to it. It's really something when he asks me what we're going
to make for dinner. These are special moments – and learning
moments for Mama. We have to eat, we love too cook, and we can enjoy
it together, too. What are your tricks for feeding your family?
In other news: we should be getting a replacement dishwasher on Wednesday - hooray!
oh, I love weekly menu planning!!!!
ReplyDeleteWe do groceries once a week, and planning the week ahead helps to reduce waste.
I include in the weekly menu the lunches which are spent at home (wednesday, saturday and sunday). I really like saturday lunch: it's pic-nic style! the sunday meals have exotic names ("trattoria italiana" for lunch and "japanese gourmet" for dinner...it just means I cook lunch and my husband does the dinner). we have two fish-nights (wednesday and saturday, which are also market days!). Leftovers are brought to work in convenient lunch-boxes, while for some meals I just double the amounts and freeze in batches: no point making one lasagna only, right? Hurray for Frazer the freezer!
The exotic name are fantastic! I haven't gotten to planning lunches yet, and must - too much bread makes me an unhappy girl. We've got a microwave on the way now, and that's going to make me so much happier!
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