Flexible Menu Planning

You might have noticed that one of my goals for August was to plan menus for at least one week this month. After several months of unofficially having that as a goal, and failing, this time I've jumped completely in and made some changes that I hope will make the process easier.

One of the greatest issues with our menu planning is that we eat lunch out almost every (work) day, and have little control over where we go on those trips. In all honesty, what we have for lunch is determined by what's nearest when we get our chance go break. So I might end up having pasta for lunch on the same day I planned to have pasta for dinner. I'm not the best when it comes to eating pasta, a little bit goes a long ways for me, so that doesn't work.

So, this time around I'm making more of a guideline than a plan.

I bought six of these Rubbermaid boxes with lids (some have been scrubbed out already, but I didn't have time to attack all of them) and filled them with most or all of the ingredients for one meal. It's my goal to find a way to label the boxes (at least with what other ingredients go with that box), but I haven't put much effort into that yet.

Also, you might have noticed the box containing pickles and sugar cookie mix? Those are going to be used on the same day, but they are not going together.

Five of the boxes are sitting in the fridge, holding the tools for Slow Cooker Korean BBQ Tacos (2 days worth), Stir fry with spicy basil chicken, bbq pizza, buffalo chicken pizza, smothered burritos (2 days worth), plus the box with pickle dip ingredients and the beginnings of the birthday dessert ingredients. The sixth box is sitting in the pantry with our 'I cannot cook today' options: a couple soups and a pasta idea.

So, in theory, we've got at least ten meals and some snacks in the fridge, hopefully divided up into ways that will be easy for us to make a choice, grab and go. I'm hopeful this will be useful - especially after spending for the boxes (though to be fair, they were less than $1.50 each, which is why I went with the purple ones, rather than the clear which were more).

Feedback to come!