The Value of Menu Planning

One of the things I started doing during the early years is meal planning.  I know that you groan when you hear that, but let me tell you how simple it can be.

Instead of writing a grocery list, I typed a complete day worth of food into my computer, along with the groceries needed.

Meal Plan	Grocery List
Oatmeal, Ham sandwiches and fruit, chicken parmesan with green beans and a salad	Oatmeal, milk, raisins, pecans, brown sugar Bread, sliced ham, pickles, mayonnaise, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes Fruit on sale Chicken breasts, canned diced tomatoes, oregano, basil, parmesan cheese, green beans, spaghetti, lettuce, tomato, dressing, cucumber
Breakfast burritos, tuna salad sandwiches, crock pot roast and a salad	Tortillas, eggs, salsa Bread, tuna, mayonnaise, pickles, lettuce, carrots Pot roast, red potatoes, beef broth, browning sauce, cream of mushroom soup, yellow onion, carrots

I normally do this for 5 days.  The weekends were always crazy with church, birthday parties, athletics, and family fun.  We’d eat left overs one day and then go out the other day, so 5 days is enough.  And they were all in separate documents, with the title of the dinner as the name.

I also planned AT LEAST one crock pot meal for the days where the Little League game started at 4:00 PM, and we’d all come home starving at 6:00 PM.  With the Crockpot (or typically more than one) we were read to eat at home.  Also, I almost always had a soup day on Thursdays.  

Before we went to AWANA, I would serve soup and salad.  The original reason for doing this was because typically braces were adjusted on Wednesday, and someone always had a sore mouth.  And then I found that extra students might be at my table as we were carpooling from one event to another, and more people needed to eat.  The funny thing is that the last person in braces was out of them about 3 years ago and we haven’t attended AWANA in about 5 years, but now we host a young adult fellowship and some of these young adults come straight from class or straight from work, and soup is something that can keep them from stopping on the way from class or work, and they can concentrate on the Bible study.  Always good to throw soup on the dinner meal plan.

The other thing to note is that I did this on my computer.  No lists scratched on scrap paper.  I had a plan.  The beauty of this is that you can start small.  Do one week.  The next week, if you don’t have time to do another week, just print out last week’s meal plan.  Sometimes your family will never notice that you had spaghetti and meatballs two weeks in a row!  And sometimes they would really love that!  At the end of the month, you could have 20 days built up, and your meal planning is done for the rest of your life!  (Or until you make the next dietary change trying to cook healthier!)  Since I had them in their own document, I could print out and mix and match weeks.  In my current Menu Planning folder, I have 90 documents.  Probably 80 of them are meals from over the years.

I also did special meal plans.  We have celebrated a Passover Seder for many years (about 19).  At some point, and I don’t remember when, I put the whole ceremonial meal on my computer, shopping list, menu, etc.  I alternated hosting it with another family.  One year, she called me on Monday, and said that she didn’t think she pull it together to host it because of what was going on in their family.  It is held on the Thursday before Easter.  I got on my computer and found:

Passover Dinner
Pascal Lamb Thin slice 2 cloves garlic and place in slits in lamb 2" apart. Rub outside of lamb with seasoning salt and paprika (generously) Place in roaster fat side up and sear uncovered in 450 degree oven for 30 minutes Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake uncovered Last hour of baking add 3 cans of butter beans with juice (Sea Side brand) Partial boil carrots in microwave 10-15 minutes, add to lamb without juice. Sprinkle seasoned salt and pepper on vegetables to taste Cover and let bake remaining hour Cook instructions: 3-4 pounds -> 3-3 ½ hours @ 325 degress Potato Pancakes Salad of Mixed Greens	Seder Plate Charoset: 6-8 apples peeled and chopped finely, 1 cup pecans chopped finely, add honey and cinnamon to taste, ½ cup grape juice Roasted Eggs - hard boil with tea bags Parsley Horseradish Grape Juice Matzah Matzah Ball Soup Unleavened Cake
Shopping list
Lamb garlic seasoned salt paprika butter beans (Sea Side brand) 2 bags of carrots pepper Potato Pancake mix Bag of Salad Eggs Grape Juice Matzah Parsley Horseradish Matzah Ball Soup Unleavened Cake Mix	8 apples pecans honey cinnamon strawberries on top of cake

I could actually print out my list on Monday, run to the store on Tuesday, start cooking on Wednesday, and be ready to host on Thursday!

I also have menu plans set up like this, with recipes, and a shopping list all on one page for:  Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas.

And I figured out a timeline for timing and put it in a document for Thanksgiving like this:

To do Thanksgiving Day:

8:00

Walk

9:00

Shower

10:00

Pumpkin Soup in Crockpot

Hard boil eggs

Set table

11:00

Make toppings for the casseroles

Make Stuffing

Make Green Bean Casserole

Make Spinach/Artichoke Casserole

Make Green salad

Arrange cranberry sauce

11:30

Prepare Turkeys for oven

Make deviled eggs

12:00

Put 1st Turkey in the oven

Put bread in bread maker

1:00

Put 2nd Turkey in the oven

2:00

Cook dinner rolls

Set up drink station

2:30

Make Corn bread

3:00

Put in oven:

Macaroni and Cheese Casserole

Take casseroles out of refrigerator, put on toppings

Make appetizer plate

3:30

Pull out Turkeys

Put in oven: Carrot Casserole

Sweet Potato Casserole

Green bean Casserole

Spinach/Artichoke Casserole

Start coffee pot

3:45

Put out drinks:

½ and ½

ice cubes

4:00

Put topping on Green Bean Casserole

Put stuffing in oven

Put out butter

4:30

Carve Turkeys

Set out at 4:55

Turkey

Stuffing

Cranberry Sauce

Green Salad

Spinach/Artichoke casserole

Carrot/cheese casserole

Sweet potato casserole

Macaroni/cheese casserole

Green bean casserole

Jell-o Salad

Dinner rolls

Light candles

That was for a 5:00 PM Thanksgiving.  I just change the timing if we’re eating at 2:00 PM! And I found it very useful to be able to cross things off as I put them on the table at 4:55. Gone are the days of finding that jell-0 salad as you are putting left overs away!

I also have a meal plan for something like a week in the mountains, where you’d rather be playing in the snow than cooking.  A meal plan like that includes frozen lasagnas and corn dogs, so don’t use it all of the time.

Anyway, we have the technology, we should use it!  There are many apps out there.  Find one that works for you.  Since I started on my computer, I haven’t really altered anything because to get into one routine that works for you is good enough.  And, what’s that saying?  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Now, some points on grocery shopping:  I have a very vivid memory of being in Costco in 1997.  Andrew was in the sling, with the carseat on a flatbed cart, Philip was sitting “criss cross applesauce” on the flatbed cart, Stephen was tethered to the cart with a leash (for those that knew him in the wandering days, this will make perfect sense), Priscilla had my list, crossing things off as we procured them, David took things off the shelves as we needed them, and I was pushing the flatbed cart.  Half way through we ran out of space on the cart, (mostly because Philip had stretched out and fallen asleep, and Stephen had joined him, much to my relief) and I needed to figure out how to get my shopping done.  10 year old David ran and got another cart and two hours later, we got out the door and then I got the opportunity to break things into smaller packages and put everything away, which took another 2 hours between emptying the car, nursing Andrew, getting the toddler and preschooler settled and finding places for all the things we had purchased.  That was my last time in Costco for regular shopping.  That was my last time shopping while all 5 of them were home.  I would only make an occasional trip when we were having a major party (and I needed 200 chicken wings) and I cut my Costco trips to one or two a year.  Seriously.

At the time, there was a new online store called HomeGrocers.com.  I decided to give them a try.  At first it was painful because they charged $10 to deliver.  The first time I used them, and paid my $10, I realized that it was REALLY worth the $10.  Over the course of the month I cut $200 off my grocery budget.  Imagine this:  you’re walking past the butter in the grocery store.  You think, “Do I need butter?  I don’t know.  Well, I’m here now, and I don’t know when I’m going to load all of these kids up again, so I better buy it.”  Sound familiar?  Now this is how the scenario goes on online shopping:  “Oh, there’s the butter that I ordered from my last order.  Do I need butter?  I should get up and go to the refrigerator and look.”  You can see how you save money from that one little scenario.  Never mind 5 kids in the cereal aisle.  HomeGrocers.com went out of business in about 2001.  It was a great concept, a wonderful website, but they didn’t know how to be a grocery store.  Since then, I have suffered through good grocery stores that have subpar websites.  Hey, I’m not complaining.  Never again did I walk into Costco with 5 little kids.  Over the time I have used:  whyrunout.com (run by Stater Bros.), Albertons.com, and Vons.com.  Don just cut out an article this summer (2013) of the following websites:  WeGoShop.com, shop.safeway.com, WinderFarms.com, Spud.com, USGrocer.com, ShopFoodEx.com, AmazonFresh.com

As we have grown into a smaller family, and have learned more about nutrition, I still shop online, but I’m more inclined to run to the store for specialty organic items.  Plus, the grocery store isn’t bad when you only have one.  But, there is nothing like having your doorbell ring, and having a man carry your groceries into your kitchen.  It went from a four hour ordeal to a 30 minute ordeal.

And for those that ask, “How do you know if they’ll bring good produce?”  First of all, I’m not an expert, so someone else knocking on a watermelon is probably just as good as me knocking on a watermelon.  However, they want to keep their customers, so I have only had one experience with an old fruit platter.  And when I emailed them about it, they called right away and brought another one out.  For the other 16 years, the produce is better than I would have ever picked myself.

Meal planning is always cheaper, always healthier, and always a good way to get your family to sit down at the dinner table.  I would encourage you to try it.

Teaching Children to Spell

Spelling is one of those subjects that either comes easily or makes you want to pull your hair out.  With five children, I got more than one of each, spanning the spectrum.

People talk about teaching your children to “sight read”.  Eventually, we all sight read.  We don’t use phonics to sound out words we have become accustomed to reading.  However, if you run across the word “otorhinolaryngologist”, chances are you had to sound it out to read it, using phonics.

With my kinesthetic learner, we walked through phonics.  Every diphthong, every blend, every sound.  We walked through them all.  By the end of Kindergarten he was reading well.  When we started spelling in first grade, it was easy for him, as he employed phonics. 

When we got to fourth grade, and we started learning more spelling rules “i before e except after c”, when to double the consonant and delineating between “hoping” and “hopping”, it was a seamless transition.  My eldest son was off to a good start with spelling.

Part of it I credited to using Bob Jones University Press Spelling.  According to the teacher’s manual I was supposed to give a pre-test, a mid-week test, and a final test on Friday.  The way I managed it without spending 30 minutes on spelling every day, was to record the spelling words from the chapter on a cassette tape.  He actually found it fun to give himself the pre-test with the cassette player and earphones.  At the beginning of the school year, it would take me maybe an hour to go through all of the words in the entire book, even with making up sentences as I went.  I said the word, used the word in a sentence, and then said the word again.  It worked well for us.  The demise came with my younger children and the cassette player broke and we were never able to replace it!

In fifth grade, he decided he wanted to participate in the school spelling bee.  Maybe that is an understatement.  He decided he wanted to WIN the school spelling bee.  We were given a list of 500 words that defied all of the rules.  At the end of the list, we discovered words that even I didn’t know!  Yes, fifth grade spelling bee words.

Now things were getting serious, and I ended up spending 30 minutes a day on spelling bee words with him.  These weren’t coming so easy to my kinesthetic learner, so we adapted to his learning/memorization style.  He needed to write out all of these words.  Since I was working with younger kids too, we used many different styles to get it!  Here are some of the things we did:

1.        Filled the cookie sheet with shaving cream and had him spell the words in the shaving cream.

2.       Spell out words in matchbox cars on the family room floor.

3.       Filled the cookie sheet with salt and had him spell words there.

4.       Used the sand box to spell out words.

5.       The most messy, but effective?  We had brick columns in our front yard, along with a brick porch.  In each individual brick he would write a spelling word with chalk.  As he got more advanced, and we had to look up more words, he would lump them into groups, or roots.  “Theism” had its own section, as did “neuro-”!  And then you had all of the “-ologies”!  Latin roots, plurals, you name it, it had a section.

Everyday I’d set the timer for 30 minutes, and he would work through the list of words.  Needless to say, he was very successful at the Spelling Bees.  And even more importantly, the vocabulary on the PSAT.  More on that later.

Student number two was visual.  Sight reading was easy for her.  By Christmas time in Kindergarten she was reading chapter books.  Phonics got pushed to the side.

I started noticing trouble with spelling in Second grade.  Since we hadn’t done phonics, it was hard for her to decide when to use an “i” and when to use an “e”.  The schwa sound was foreign to her and she didn’t know how to manage it in a word. 

Much to her dismay, I insisted on going back through phonics with her.  It took us about ½ a year, but in the end, I totally felt like it was worth it.  The spelling bee for her was a natural.  No writing hundreds of words on different textures.  She would read it, sound it out if she had to, look up the definition, the origin, and maybe make an index card.  I worked with her for 30 minutes on spelling bee words starting in 5^th grade.  When the timer would go off, she would continue working on her own.   She was VERY successful at the Spelling Bees, and again, more importantly on the vocabulary on the PSAT.

In fact, she was the one who called it to my attention.  When my eldest got his PSAT scores back, he was strong in math, which I expected.  I was surprised when he did really well in the vocabulary section of the PSAT.  The next year, she took the PSAT and had a perfect score on the vocabulary.  As I was comparing scores, I commented on the perfect vocabulary scores.  She said, matter-of-factly, “Well, of course mom, those were all of the spelling bee words.”  Something my younger three didn’t want to hear, because it gave me the resolve to work through the spelling bee words with all of them!  Over the course of 4 years, we would cover about 2000 words.

Two more of mine have taken the PSAT, and so far, only one vocabulary word has been missed!

The verdict is still out for my fifth student.  My elementary spelling program fell apart when the cassette player became obsolete.  I have one more that learned to sight read, and we’re still struggling with spelling because I didn’t go back and do phonics with him like I did the older one that learned to sight read.  We also skipped the spelling bee for the most part.  I’m hoping that with some diligence, we’ll get through the elementary spelling program, and get the through the words on the spelling bee lists.  I’m hoping that reading out loud will still help, and we can walk through pronunciations, origins, and meanings of hundreds of words before he has to take the PSAT.

I have 1 year.  Let’s see what I can get done.