How Meal Planning Saved My Life

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I didn’t used to be in desperate need of structure. I bought food, I made sure that house had enough toilet paper, paper towels and tissues that there’d never be a TRUE emergency, and I figured that I could always go out to get whatever I needed if I was out of something.

And then I had kids.

Suddenly, I was blowing my lid if there was even so much as ONE DISH in the sink. It offended me. It was something that needed to be controlled, so I had to wash that sucker and get it out of my sight.

Since both DH and I work full-time, it’s always difficult trying to manage the dinner schedule. It was actually easier when our DD was a baby – she didn’t eat the same thing we did, so we could prepare whatever we wanted. Once she started eating table food, then it became a race against time: could we manage to get food to the table before she melted down? Not enough parents warn you that melt downs have a domino effect; once the kid melts down – and refuses to calm back down for you – melt downs are catching. Someone snaps at someone else. Snapping is returned. Maybe someone cusses. Dinner goes to hell in a handbasket *quickly* and you can’t even remember how it got that way.

And this is where meal planning came into play. Along with my BFF, the crock pot, planning the week’s meals has made it possible to add back sanity and get things under some semblance of control. By the time we finish grocery shopping on Sunday, our meal plan for the week is DONE. We know what meals will be when, and there’s always some flexibility, so if we need to swap something in/out, we can manage it.

Three simple rules govern our meal planning. In no particular order:

Pick meals that are appropriate for the time available. We often seek out crock pot meals that are 8+hrs in duration, because we can set them up before we leave for work and turn off the crock pot when we get home without expecting (or having) the entrée be a dried out mess.

Set up at least one meal to generate leftovers. Again, this is where the crock pot comes in so handy, since it’s easy to make meals that will last more than one night.

Have a stable of reliable sides and “one-offs”. Sides are those perfect yet somewhat generic accompaniments for entrées (couscous, rice mixes, instant rices, egg noodles, for the starches; frozen veggies in various forms to satisfy vegetable requirements). “One-offs” are meals that we know are really only designed to last for a single night and won’t typically generate leftovers; this covers things like quesadillas, tacos, pastas, etc. When I say having, part of that means knowing what works for you, and the other part is keeping at least a minimal amount in stock at all times, so you can easily substitute a side or a whole meal if your plans are disrupted during the week.

When we write down our grocery list, the upper right-hand corner is devoted to the short list of meals, and we plan things out so that we don’t repeat the same meal two nights in a row. The menu below is fairly typical of our summer meal planning:

Sunday – Grilled fish with fresh corn on the cob

Monday – Crock Pot

Tuesday – One-off, like pasta and garlic bread or another Crock Pot

Wednesday – One-off, like tacos or quesadillas

Thursday – Repeat of Monday

Friday – Grilled hot dogs/burgers/chicken with veggies or repeat of Tuesday (if a crock pot meal)

Saturday – open day; we’ll decide when we get there

The key is to push the uncertainty off to the weekend, when there’s a minimal impact from not knowing what we’re making. When DD was very young, neither of us would get home to start dinner until 6pm, with dinner expected at 6:30pm. The crock pot became a key component in our strategy to get dinner to the table on time; meal planning helped the rest of the way, removing some of the random from the work-week and moving it to the weekend, where it’s less impactful.

I know that meal planning may not work for everybody, but it certainly has helped us get our lives under control and keep the dinner-time meltdowns to a more reasonable level.

Kredit Krunch Bark

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OK, so admittedly, this is not one of my healthier recipes. BUT, it is yummy. And it can disappear quickly if not watched with a camera and security guard. AND it’s highly customizable (if you don’t like dark chocolate, consider mixing it up with some milk chocolate). The impetus for this was the “credit crunch” that hit a few years back. Trying to come up with an inexpensive way to have holiday presents for the teachers at day care, we bought some tins from our local craft store and filled them with waxed paper and this bark. My apologies for the lack of picture; as soon as I make a batch this fall, I’ll load up one. For now, just imagine…yum. It’ll come to you.

Ingredients:

24.5oz Lindt 70% dark chocolate (seven 3.5 oz bars)

10.5oz Lindt 85% dark chocolate (three 3.5 oz bars)

2 cups Rice Krispies cereal

3 cups Rice Chex cereal

Make it Happen:

1. Put the Rice Chex into a ziploc bag and roll a rolling pin over it to crush it. Set aside.

2. Get a cookie sheet that has sides; line it with wax paper.

2. Chop the chocolate finely and place it into a bowl.

3. In a double-boiler set on a low temp (and with a small amount of water in the bottom of the double boiler), add a tablespoon of the chocolate to make sure the pan is hot enough for melting the chocolate. Once that’s assured, add a cup or so of the chocolate at a time, mixing it in thoroughly to coat it with the melted chocolate. Stir continuously with a spatula.

4. Once all of the chocolate has been melted, pour half of it into the cookie sheet. Use a spatula to distribute it around the sheet evenly.

5. Sprinkle the “krunch” mix over the chocolate until it’s fairly evenly coating the chocolate.

6. Pour the remainder of the chocolate onto the sheet, pouring it to distribute it as evenly as possible.

7. Place the cookie sheet into the fridge and let it cool/set for 3-4 hours, until it’s no longer liquid.

8. Overturn the bark onto a cutting board (or just pick it up by the wax paper and move it to a cutting board). Roughly break it up using a heavy knife, like a butcher knife.

9. Store in a wax paper-lined container, like a cookie tin. Store in the fridge when not going OMNOMNOM.

Note: if you are the type of person who wants to mix up your chocolates – milk and dark, white and milk, white & dark, etc. – go for it. Make sure you melt them separately and clean the top of the double boiler in between meltings. The big concern here is that if you don’t remove every speck of moisture from that top pot before putting in the chocolate, your chocolatey goodness will seize. Seizing is bad and to be avoided at all costs. Alternately, you can melt one chocolate on the stove and another in the microwave – just watch BOTH carefully. And remember that white chocolate is mostly cocoa butter and won’t melt the same way as other chocolates but WILL seize with impunity at the drop of a hat.

Let’s talk about fish, baby…

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I love fish. I’m an unabashed, unapologetic omnivore, and I have no desire to cut fish out of my diet. Trouble is, between PCBs and other contaminants on the one hand, and overfishing devastating future fish populations on the other, it’s hard making educated decisions about how to get some yummy fish to the table on a regular basis.

Our first stop is the Seafood Watch program offered by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They have guides available for all areas of the US, and you can even get apps for mobile searching on your iPhone or Android device. Their guides (whether browsed on their web site or in the printed guide, or browsed via the mobile app) can help you identify which varieties of fish are the best to get, from both a health and viability perspective.

For example, I love salmon. But, up here in New England, the most common salmon you can get your hands on is the Atlantic salmon. At this point, these salmon are all farmed, and there are known issues with the PCB content (high levels of contaminants in the fish) and with dumping of farm waste directly into the ocean. So, Atlantic salmon is pretty much off our menu until something big changes. Sockeye salmon is still okay, and anything that’s labeled as “long line caught” is often more sustainably fished.

Not sure if your fish at the grocery store or fish market has been sustainably fished? Best thing to do is to ask. If the fishmonger isn’t sure, or is cagy, then the odds are that they weren’t. Our grocery store has gotten A LOT better about trying to acquire sustainable fish, and they are in the process of overhauling their entire fish program to eliminate sales of any non-sustainable fish. Lest you think that I have to go to a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s or other specialty grocer to get this…let me assure you, I go to a mass-market grocery store. A chain, even! (gasp) My point is, it’s possible to get fish that you won’t have to feel guilty about – and an ounce of education on this may ensure that you can continue to have yummy fish for a longer stretch in the future.

Other issues that parents often run into with fish: bones and mercury. Bones are easy enough to avoid if you remember to purchase fillets; fish steaks often have bones in them (although larger fish, like tuna or steak, would have bones that are large enough to be more easily spotted and avoided). For mercury, the key issue there is that adults can handle the mercury in fish far more easily than kids can; mercury poisoning in a kid can create developmental problems in addition to illness. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) came out with some nice recommendations about what to do with respect to fish and mercury a few years ago, and the advice is still good. Note that their recommendations apply to pregnant or nursing women, as well as young children.

So, the bottom line is that you can have sustainable fish, healthy fish, and generally guilt-free fish as part of a healthy diet for you (and your kids), with only a modest amount of up-front research.

Remember to consult with your doctor or your pediatrician if you have any concerns about adding/increasing fish in your diet, and certainly take plenty of precautions if you have family allergies to fish and/or shellfish.