R: What are we having for dinner tomorrow?
K: I don't know. What do you want?
R: I don't know. Whatever.
K: Well I can defrost something.
R: Nah...
K: We really shouldn't go out. How about chicken?
R: I guess...
This particular conversation ended with the next night's dinner being chicken; but not all conversations end with staying in. Because of our lack of planning & preparation, we end up eating out quite a bit; filling our bodies with junk & draining our wallets with unnecessary spending. As part of my new year resolution to take better care of myself, I needed to figure out something that would help me better plan my meals.
I remember seeing a few pins on Pinterest for menu planners so I thought I'd try my hand @ making one. While these fancy shmancy menu boards featured on Pinterest are great, they are way too complicated to make & too intense for my purposes. I really don't need handmade gemstone magnets to know what I should eat for the next 2 weeks. I then did some Googling and saw these really cool menu planners that use a picture frame & you write on the glass with a white board marker. That's a great & simple idea but I am picky & wanted to have something that will let me see my meals @ least 2 weeks @ a time. Besides, a decent 10x14 frame can cost about $15. I wasn't sure what I was going to do until I was walking around Target & saw a white board calendar on sale for $4. This was perfect! Nothing fussy, just a straight forward calendar that I can write on & erase as often as I pleased. I picked up a box of tiny magnets & a pack of whiteboard markers & that was it.
The black is the meals that we're going to eat. The blue is the starch that goes with the meal. The green is the vegetable side dish; unfortunately we don't have one for everyday. The red is for eating out. The ? is for when I have run out of ideas so we are going to just wing-it the day of. I also like to look up recipes that I want to try ahead of time, write them down, & keep them on the board with a little magnet.
This is working out really well so far. We are not eating out as much, we only buy the stuff that we need from the produce market, & I have been trying out new recipes. As a nice little bonus, my knife skills are getting better. The entire menu planner "kit" - calendar, magnets, & markers - cost only about $12. I am pretty sure it has saved me that much already & I haven't even had it for a month.
So why is this menu planner so OCD-satisfying? Other than allowing me to excessively plan out my life? If you know me, you know I have this thing about my handwriting having to be perfect so the white board gives me the freedom to easily erase a day's meal & write it over again if I didn't like the way it looked. I am slightly ashamed to say this, but I have erased the whole board & re-written it before...several times.
No comments:
Post a Comment