Busy Life Tips from Readers

As a former professional chef, I will admit to having a certain advantage when it comes to planning our family meals. Where my advantage ends, is that I have 4 children under age 10! When I first became a stay-at-home parent, I read many interesting articles that attempt to help us with organizing our family menus. Especially frustrating are the suggestions of monthly meal planning, coupon clipping, and menu planning based on weekly supermarket sales. I find all of these to be counter productive and bump the costs of cooking up unnecessarily. Our family's grocery budget is $60 per week. The most cost effective measures I can suggest also happen to be terrific time saving tips as well. Here are my favorites:

1. My menu is never planned more than 3 or 4 days at a time, no specific dates/days ever used. This is a key mistake with most menu planning guides because as our busy lives change and plans get cancelled, we get off track. By only planning a few days at a time, we can control our schedule and coordinate menus based on our daily plans.

2. My menu MUST consist of at least 50% items that can be made from items I already have. I feel that my restaurant background helps me here. Our pantry gets bogged down with items we don't use, forget about, and end up wasting space and time we don't have! Clean out your cupboards and use those boxes that got pushed to the back. You can probably plan several meals around foods you have forgotten about.

3. My menu MUST use items that have been in my freezer more than a couple of weeks. This is the same principle that applies to using items in my pantry. Keep your freezer in order so you know what you have.

4. Display your menu on your refrigerator and let your family "order" each meal. This allows great flexibility with each meal. Family members like to choose too!

5. When an item is "sold out" you cross it off!

6. After a couple of days, write out your next menu. Use this to develop (and stick to) a grocery list. This keeps your grocery list simple and keeps you accountable to your purchases.

A typical menu in a typical week at our house:
Breakfast: