Home organization and food are topics that I enjoy reading about and putting into action. Last week I had a stroke of genius in implementing the two together to solve a major problem that I face every weeknight when I arrive from work: What’s for dinner? As progressive as my husband and I are, the kitchen is still the woman’s castle in our place, so this means I’m generally saddled with the bulk of this problem. I’m also a person with a tight biological schedule, and my body needs food preferably before 7pm. So, to battle this problem, I came up with a plan that, on its second week of implementation, seems to function well and keep my tired body sated.

The first thing that is necessary is a way to access recipes. “Recipe” used loosely here, you can make them up in your head, copy them out of a book, or print them off of a website. I personally have a few standby cookbooks in our apartment that I refer to often, the “best of” which I keep documented on a website called Meals Matter. Occasionally I go over a new (or old) cookbook, bookmark recipes I’m interested in trying, and then either use them for that weeks’ meal plan or save them for later. I’ll note my favorite cookbooks at the end of the series. The important definition for “recipes” here is that it contains a list of ingredients. (If you need something to start from, check out my tagged RSS posts for recipes.)

Once you’ve got a collection of at least 20 recipes (to start), you can pick out 5-6 that you think you’d enjoy having over the following weeks. From here, you need to make a shopping list. The best way for me to do this is to print out a list with every single ingredient on it for all my 5-6 recipes, then go through the kitchen and scratch out what I already have. You might prefer to only write down the ingredients that you are pretty sure are missing from your pantry, but double check! You might have thought you had a bag of shredded cheese, only to find out that – oops! – you used it 3 days ago for something else and it completely slipped your mind. It will not be convenient for you to do this if you are constantly running to the store for missing ingredients. (In fact, the missing ingredient factor generally causes me to skip that particular recipe and make something else…like Kraft Mac and Cheese.) Also check expiration dates on something you haven’t used it awhile or on items like milk and bread that expire quickly.

So you’ve got your list and you are ready to go shopping! A note here: try to stick to your list. We always keep a running list of everyday items that need to be replenished, like butter and detergent. Add these to your grocery list, but don’t toss extra food into your cart. Without a meal plan to belong to, it may sit in your refrigerator or pantry for months, forgotten. It may have been on sale, or just looked delicious, but if you can’t think of an exact time or occasion you will prepare it, leave it.

When you arrive home, put things away in a way that will not inconvenience you later. Peter Walsh, in his book Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?: An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More has an excellent section on putting food away, including putting fresh produce in the front where you can see it (and use it before it goes bad) and portioning out anything you bought in a more-than-one-serving size. I do this immediately when we return from the grocery store with things like ground beef or chicken, which we tend to buy in value packages. Consult your recipes to see how to group things like chicken breasts. If your package comes with four, but your recipes only use 1 or 2, package them individually per recipe amount, then use a permanent marker (I keep a sharpie in the same drawer as our freezer bags) to indicate which recipe you intend to use it with.

This next part is my recent addendum of genius. I was doing my meal plan for several months as above, and just picking and choosing meals the night before or the day of. But unfortunately this was problematic, because since I didn’t have a schedule to follow, and I often forgot to take out food or waited until ingredients had expired. This is where a weekly planner came in. I chose the Post-It brand weekly planner that contains 52 paper sheets of 1-week-at-a-time planning and 6 Post-It pads attached to the side of the calendar. I chose this because I liked the colors and design, and also because I’m a huge Post-It note fan. Why is this important? Because if I like the product, I’ll be more inclined to use it. Seems lame (and just a way for me to justify buying Post-It brand merchandise), but it actually works more than you think. However, a dry-erase board weekly calendar or even a nice patterned piece of paper will work just fine. You want the paper to stick out so it will be noticeable, and you definitely need to place it where you do your food preparation. I would advise sticking with a weekly (nothing more than two weeks at a time) set-up so you can plan around your social commitments. You might have an idea of what you are doing two weeks from Tuesday, but it could change by the time you get there.

Use the planner to mark out which days you know you will be eating away from home, and then estimate nights you think might be spent eating leftovers. Then, decide based on your schedule which meals you can prepare and when. If you always do yoga on Thursday nights, pick something light and quick. If you are going to be out of town, don’t plan a meal and try to have any leftovers consumed before you go. You can also note ingredients that you need to pick up before certain recipes, for example, if they must be fresh, or you somehow drank more milk this week than you had estimated when you crafted your list. The most important aspect of this is to schedule recipes according to your life. If you are busy on a certain night, don’t choose that night to prepare a huge chicken dinner with all the trimmings.

Have fun with the planner! Choose a wide variety of foods to keep your palate (and any others who’ll be eating your food) interested and satisfied. Bon appetit!

Next in” What’s For Dinner?”: Taking your meal planning to the next level by introducing heat and eat meals.

Tags: Food, organization, planning, post-its

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.