Sunday, May 19, 2013

Menu Planning and My Weaknesses

A month ago, my husband asked me to try planning our family's menu week by week instead of monthly as I've been doing for several years.  His reasons was a good one.  He wanted to talk about the menu each week.  Our middle daughter is a very picky eater and we've trying to figure out what to do.  This was one of our ideas--to think through our meals together.  

But, as with a lot of things in life, time often escapes us and though we discussed it the first few weeks, we also stopped discussing it after another few short weeks.   And then all the other things I needed to do crowded out my weekly menu planning this week.  It was a disaster.  Each day I was stuck (except for Tuesday which is always tacos) trying to come up with something.

I have found that I plan better month by month.  I'll sit down at the beginning of the month with a calendar sheet and write a dinner plan for each day in the month.  Often I'll switch things around as we go through the week based on the needs of our family, but I have choices to choose from.  Two or thee dinner options is a lot easier to choose from than the unlimited possibilities in all of my cookbooks when meal time comes around!  

I do plan on showing my husband my monthly plan and talking about it, but I'm going back to my old habit--I like to organize and plan, but I do it imperfectly!  

PS We have made a little progress with our picky daughter--she actually ate lunch yesterday at an Indian buffet and tried several new foods.  I don't want to give up trying to help her experience different foods or sacrifice what the rest of our family enjoys.

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