Monday Q&A | Meal Ideas, Menu Deviations, and Table Waste
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
How do people come up with fresh ideas for their menus? And how do you grocery shop for menu planning Kristin - do you plan the menu based on what you have available in your freezer/pantry? Or do you buy groceries based on your menu plan?
I'm in a rut, and I'm so sick of my own cooking. My hubby used to do the majority of our cooking, but his work schedule has changed. It's just the two of us, and we mostly use chicken, ground poultry, and seafood for our meats. Honestly, when it comes to chicken, I'm about out of ideas. I'd love some input on menu planning - any fave book or website recommendations? Help!
-Deb
First, sympathies on the menu planning...I totally understand the difficulty of coming up with a variety of meals on a budget!
I'm not the sort of cook who can just think up wonderful new meals on my own, so I rely on recipes. My favorite recipe source is Cook's Illustrated (I subscribe to their website, which contains all the recipes they've ever published). I also get some meal ideas from Taste of Home. In addition, I sometimes check out recipe books from the library.
I've gotten a few recipes from AllRecipes.com (stick with the highly rated recipes there to avoid a dud), and of course, I browse through the cookbooks I own to find new recipes as well.
Maybe some of the main dish recipes I've shared would be helpful to you. I've also posted several pizza recipes, and when I post my menu plans each week, I try to link to any recipes I've posted or that are available online.
And I'm POSITIVE that some of my readers will have some recipe ideas and recipe sources for you.
As far as menu planning and shopping go, I make my plan partly based on the food I have in the house and partly on what is available cheaply that particular week (though not everything I buy is cheap or on sale). I elaborated on this a little more in the posts I wrote about menu planning. I published those in the early days of my blog, so those will probably be new to you (and to most of my readers!).
What do you do when you deviate from your food plan? How do you accommodate changes in plans without spending a lot of money?
-WilliamB
That sort of depends on the reason I'm deviating from my plan!
Sometimes, I'll forget to buy an ingredient for a particular meal, and when that happens, I usually try to come up with a substitution or a different meal I can make with the things I do have on hand.
Sometimes, I forget to start a meal early enough (I forget to take a roast out of the freezer, I forget to put something in the crock pot, etc.) and in a case like that, I usually have enough time to figure out a new meal idea before dinnertime.
So in situations like those, my deviations from the menu plan don't cost us any extra money.
There are some days, though, where I am too busy or too tired or too stressed to put a real meal together. When that happens, I throw together a very easy dinner (like canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches), we order a $5 pizza from Little Caesar's, or I make something very easy for the kids (leftovers, a box of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti with jarred sauce) and Mr. FG and I get some takeout for ourselves.
This actually happened this past Thursday...I had a dreadful day and wasn't at all up for cooking dinner (I posted about that on Facebook!). So, I fed my kids a smorgasbord of leftovers and the husband picked up some sushi for the two of us from a sushi restaurant just down the road.
If we were in a situation where money was super-duper tight (and we've had lots of years like that!), we would probably have managed to figure out something to eat at home. But, in our current situation a box of sushi was a very manageable expense, and eating sushi on my deck with my husband made my bad day a little better. 😉
I think the key thing here is to not do this too often. If I was scrapping my meal plan and ordering takeout every other day, that would get to be insanely expensive. Since this only happens once a month or less, though, it's not a budget buster...instead, it's an occasional sanity-saver!
How do you have so little food waste with four kids? Don't you have the serve-them-something-then-they-take-two-bites-and-refuse-to-eat-anymore syndrome? Or do you eat all their leftovers? And do you never leave sippy cups of milk out for too long and have to dump it? I'm in awe...
-Jodie
We do have a little bit of this type of waste (I called it table waste), but it's not a big problem. And this sort of waste was never our largest food waste issue....back before I started trying to reduce my food waste, I was the biggest problem, not my kids!
I was buying too much food, not paying attention to my fridge, not eating enough leftovers, not planning well enough, and I was throwing away lots of food from my fridge each week (in case you missed it on Friday, you can go look at some of my early food waste photos on my original blog!).
So, the Food Waste Friday thing has mostly been focused on that type of waste. I don't take a picture if someone leaves a bit of cereal in their bowl, for example.
That said, I do strive to reduce table waste as much as possible. Here are a few things that have been helpful to me:
- I give my children small portions to begin with. They all start out the meal with a small, appropriately sized helping of all the dishes we're having at a meal. If they finish everything on their plates and are still hungry, they can choose to have more of any food I'm serving, of course, but I prefer to start them out with amounts I know they'll be able to eat.
- On a related note, we don't give our children other things to eat if they refuse the meal we're serving. We never make them eat anything, though, so occasionally a child-sized serving of a meal (or part of a meal) gets left behind. Because no other options are offered, most of the time our kids choose to eat what I've served, especially as they get older. Zoe, my youngest, is just coming out of the phase of choosing to not eat all of her dinner (all of my kids went through this somewhere around the age of 2-4), and so we are now at the happy place where all 4 of our kids can usually be counted upon to eat their dinner without a problem.
- We don't do a lot of snacking. I'm not opposed to snacking as a rule, but I find that my children are more prone to eat their meals if they've not been snacking. If they're hungry before dinner, I usually give them baby carrots, a banana, grape tomatoes, or cucumber slices, since those aren't very filling. This gives them something to munch on but still leaves them hungry enough for a meal.
- I give my kids water to drink between meals. Of course, when my children were babies, their sole beverage was breastmilk, but once I weaned them, their main beverage was water (though they do get juice with breakfast). A large advantage to water is that it doesn't go sour at room temperature like milk does, and it also doesn't fill up my kids' stomachs, which means they're more likely to eat the meals that I serve.
- I try to use their leftovers if possible. For a pretty long while, Zoe was eating all of her dinner except for her salad or her vegetables (though she is now eating them! Yay!). Since I'm not sure I could possibly ever eat too many vegetables, I usually just ate her small serving after it became clear that she wasn't going to. On a similar note, Lisey decided to bite into a whole apple the other day, and about ¼ of the way through, she decided she'd had enough of that. So, I cut off the bitten part and used the apple to make Dutch Apple Pancake for breakfast the next morning.
I hope that's a little bit helpful. I know I have lots of readers who are parents, so I'm sure they'll have some advice to add to mine.
For meal planning, I try to be flexible. I usually put a few meals into the plan that won't go bad if we don't eat them that week (like spaghetti). This gives me the flexibility when our schedule changes without food going bad.
I have to tell you that this week I spent $100.50! That makes several weeks in a row of sticking close to a $100 budget! I used to spend $209 a week, between my grocery shopping trip which usually cost $150-$165 and whatever fill in orders my husband and I did. So, this is much better.
Meal planning, and going to multiple stores was my biggest help--which I learned from you =) My mom things I'm a little crazy for running around to three grocery stores. But when one store is selling strawberries for $3.99--and another one is selling 3 packages for $5, the difference is huge!
Some of my meal ideas come from things I've always made, and some come from the Weight Watcher's cookbook, "Make it In Minutes!" All of the recipes in that book are delicious, and easy.
Because I'm in love with Excel, I keep a running log of my weekly menu there. Usually the last two weeks, current week and next two week. It's easier to avoid repeats that way. I also have a (long) list of favorites on the same page, so when I'm in a run I look to it for inspiration. There is usually something overthere that I had forgotten about or haven't made in a while.
Side note: I have long loved CI's website as well and there is a recipe I tried recently that was fantastic and super simple that I'd like to recommend. The lemon basil spaghetti which I simply paired with a side of arugula. Yum!
I am happy to read that another parent does not offer other food/dishes if their children don't like what is being served (although I know there are lots of parents out there who do this as well). I know too many parents though who cook special foods for their kids, or offer them something different if they don't like lunch or dinner, and the children control the menu and mealtimes, or eat separately from the parents every evening. Some are very picky eaters who won't try anything new, or won't touch the food at other people's homes.
I have not looked at Cook's Illustrated, but I'm going to check it out! I keep notebooks of recipes I cut from magazines, the newspaper's FoodDay section or find online, and use them a lot. I glue the recipes to sheets of paper and then put the paper in plastic page protectors, and have them organized by type of dish or type of meat.
Being kidless myself, I have to be careful here, but I always chuckle inside when I hear a mom asking her kids what they want to eat. Kristin, I love that you're bring up your kids the way we were raised. You ate what was being served (or a least a bite of it), No one got their own personal menu, except on their birthday.
The notable exception was my brother, who did have legitimate food allergies. Unfortunately, he used them to claim intolerance of mom's (in)famous Liver & Onions. Now, none of us cared for it, but she made it exponentially worse by preparing BACON(!!) just for him on L&O nights. Oh, the outrage! Fortunately, L&O finally came off the menu a few years later as family fortunes improved.
Years later, he confessed and this story is now a standard part of the family lore trotted out for major holiday gatherings. One of the true benefits of being a vegetarian for the past 22 years is that I never have to eat L&O again!
So funny. I am also childless and so impressed at the way Kristen manages to feed four children a healthy menu that they eat. When we were young, we ate what was served (or not). No dessert if not, and no other options. Of course, I have many friends who make separate meals for their children, ensuring that they will never discover they actually like healthier foods because they only tried something once when they were three. It also makes mom a fry cook, plus makes "family dinner time" much more difficult.
The funny thing is- the one exception in our house was liver and onions. When my mom occasionally made that for my dad, she made us hamburgers.
I know this is a late reply to this post. (Surfing for menu planning tips) 🙂 But I really laughed over all the liver & onion stories. I truly thought our family was the only one that had liver & onion night!! I married into a family that loves liver & onions. Visiting them one time I was the only person at the table (of seven) that did not order liver & onions. Unfortunately (or not) my children will never know if they like L&O unless they order it out. I do take every oppurtunity though,to let my husband know when it is on a menu where we are eating out. 😉 I can't even handle the smell enough to cook it.
It's easy to say kids should be forced to eat whatever is served---when you have a "normal" kid. I have a special needs kid, whose Sensory Processing Disorder (among other health issues he has) makes it torture for him to eat foods with certain textures or spiciness. Sometimes he's able to eat all or part what I've prepared for my husband and myself, and sometimes he can't. It's just one of the millions of adaptations, small and large, we've had to make to make life bearable for him. So don't judge other parents without knowing their situations. And as a sensitive child, I was forced to gag down a bite of creamed tuna on toast. This was about 1973 or so, and I've never forgotten how powerless, humiliated, and desperately sad it made me feel when my parents forced me to eat it. Do you really want your kid(s) to feel that way? Or could you whip up a box of macaroni on the night you're serving their most hated dish?
For a cookbook full of simple, frugal, generally tasty chicken receipes, I can't recommend "365 Ways to Cook Chicken" strongly enough. Haute cuisine it ain't, recipes for weekdays it is. It's one of the two cookbooks I learned to cook from, back when I was broke and ignorant. The recipes call for frozen veg, canned soup, other simple ingredients; and include estimated prep and cooking time. It has a good index, too.
Yesterday I made Swedish Meatballs. from CI. Dang they're good. It's a mix of beef and pork (and other stuff) with baking soda(!), mixed to total submission in a standing mixer. Bizarre but incredibly good. They're so good I might tempt the wrath of heaven by fiddling with my sainted grandmother's meatball recipe. Instead of pan frying, I made 2T.-sized meatballs and baked them at 350F for 20 min - simpler, less messy, healthier. They may not last long enough for me to make the sauce as well.
LOL William - my sister in law has that chicken cookbook! When she calls us up to invite us for dinner, she asks us if we want to come over and have `Chicken #43!' or 'Chicken #28'! Never fails to make me laugh! And I'm with you on the Swedish Meatballs!
I am actually one of those parents who lets their kids snack, and pick meals for that matter. It comes down to a couple of things. One, I believe kids know when they are hungry and when they are not. So as long as what they are having is healthy, cheese sticks, fruit, veggies etc, I don't mind. Two, I have 2 children who are autistic and both have extreme challenges with textures. So that fact that my one son only eats 10 things actually makes me happy, its 2 more than last year. So he never eats what we are having for dinner, and I don't force him to. We encourage him to taste it, and greatly praise him when he does try something, but I don't make it a battle, we have enough of those. My kids are also on a different time schedule that my husb and I are. They eat dinner by 5 pm, sometimes earlier, because they are asleep by 7pm. I rarely get lunch before 2pm (naptime) and my husb has a late lunch break as well. Although we sit with them while they eat, my husb and I eat after they are in bed.
My parents had a nice way of working around picky eaters when I was growing up. If we didn't like what was offered, we could have 1) a bowl of cereal, or 2) PB and J. Both were things we could get ourselves, and we could do that only once a week, so we had to be sure we wanted to eat the meals the rest of the week.
I think what you do with your kids is totally understandable, especially given that they're autistic!
I was just sharing what works for me and my family, and we've obviously got different needs than you do. 🙂
On my menu plan here at home generally stays away from chicken (due to the fact my hubby eats chicken day in and day out at the (drilling for ) gas rig he works on for 35 days straight) but once in a while we like going down to the farmers market and buying pre-seasoned chicken breast for $2 a breast. I'll make a stir fry out of the spicy thai ones or use them in a curry, the terriaky tends to get cut up, cooked and tossed into a tomato/pasta dish. Occasionally some of it ends up in chicken salad for sandwiches for the week.
One of my favourite chicken dishes is Baked Chicken Parmesan. I first had Chicken Parmesan when I worked at a banqueting room. This was one of my favourites of the different menus they served. When I found a recipe somewhere, I tinkered with it until it seemed somewhat similar. Baking is a lot easier than the deep-frying (or pan-frying) most recipes call for.
I'm sure I've got the original recipe somewhere, but by now I just dump things in without measuring. Basically you take raw chicken breasts, dredge them in flour, dip them in an egg wash or in melted butter (butter tastes best!), and then coat it in a breading mixture (fine dry bread crumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, Italian spices, garlic powder, etc.--you can experiement). If you like a crispier coating, you can spray the chicken pieces with cooking spray or oil. Then bake in a greased baking dish at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes (check for doneness with meat thermometer--time depends on the thickness of your chicken pieces). While it's baking, heat up spaghetti sauce or make your own from scratch. When the chicken is cooked, spoon sauce on top of each chicken piece, sprinkle with grated mozza cheese and more parmesan if you like. Place into the oven until the cheese melts and then serve. This is delicious served with a green salad and herbed linguine.
It takes a few dishes to do the coating process, but other than that, I find this is a fairly quick, easy prep dish. I love using the oven so I don't have lots of pans to clean up after the meal.
If my kids refuse to eat dinner, I don't let them have anything else, uless I've made something I know one of them doesn't like. My daughter Alia hates chili, for example, so on the nights I make chili, I give her a bowl of healthy cereal with soymilk and raisins, or bananas. My daughter Bella hates mushrooms, so if I've made a meal that has a lot of the offending fungus, I just make her a PB sandwich or give her some cereal.
As for the meal rut, my remedy is to just think of something we really like to eat and then make it, even if it's an unconventional meal idea. The other day I made corn on the cobb and an almond milkshake for dinner. One of my favborite easy meals is rice, roasted vegetables, cucumber tomato avocado salad, turkey sausage, and chilled apple cider! One very compelling reason to plant a garden is so you will have fresh food all Summer. Nothing is more depressing for me than to have to make ANOTHER meal out of canned and frozen components.
I have a rule that my kids must try whatever has been prepared. I only serve them a tablespoon or so, and if they like it, they get more. If they don't, no waste.
It's been a long time since my kids have said they won't eat anything because of the way it tastes, simply because they've eaten so many single tablespoonfuls of it by now, it's just routine.
On the rare day that they just don't feel like eating what we are eating...say red beans and rice and cornbread on a 85 degree day with 100% chance of humidity....I'll let them choose between a bowl of cereal or maybe soup and grilled cheese. It's something they can prepare themselves and not take away family dining time.
As for leftovers, I can't recommend highly enough the "bread-pudding-to-be" box. That's a tupperware box you keep in the freezer, and anything bread-like or sweet that the kids didn't quite finish (cereal, muffin pieces, fruit, milk, etc.) gets dumped in there immediately. When the box is full, defreeze the contents, make a regular bread pudding recipe, and mix it in. I figure that the second baking will hopefully kill all germs that might have gotten on the food when it was served. This method has saved me from so many gained pounds! (Because I used to eat my kids leftovers - I'm really really bad at throwing edible food away.)
Some people do the same with a "soup-to-be" box, but since I usually eat all the leftover vegetables myself (not as much weight gain there), I rarely do that.
I can't tell you how much I love you (even more!) because you don't cater to picky kid eaters. My husband and I weren't raised that way and we don't do that either. Unless the person has food allergies or food sensitives (diabetic, vegetarian, etc.) and then we cook the whole meal with food that person can eat. Along with us. It won't kill us to eat a low sugar or low vegetarian meal more often if we have guests.
Although it did freak me out a little the first time, "This is not a restaurant" came out of my mouth - just like my mother!
Deb,
I'm terrible about menu planning. However, reading recipes is one of my favorite things to do. I read my cookbooks like novels. All that to say that my absolute favorite and definite number one go to website is recipezaar.com. Although, like Kristen said, you need to look at the ratings and reviews to avoid a dud. Every recipe I have tried from this site is wonderful.
We eat a lot of chicken too. I have found some good recipes for chicken and come up with my own things that I do with chicken. One of our favorites is chicken breaded with panko crumbs (I know panko is more expensive but worth it for the extra crunchy breading). Also, one of my daughters loves it when I simply bake chicken with some Italian dressing poured over it (I use Wishbone Robusto it is the best for this). Cranberry chicken is good to (whole berry cranberry sauce, 1 pkg onion soup mix and 1/2 c catalina or russian dressing). All of these "recipes" are easy and tasty. The baked chicken "recipes" are great served with baked potatoes and salad. the cranberry chicken goes well with rice (so you can justify eating all that yummy cranberry) and salad or cooked veggies.
I hope you find inspiration to "spice" up your menu, Deb.
Thanks so much, everyone! And thank you Kristin for posting my question, I appreciate it - was so nice of you after I sassed you about your wasted chicken thighs! :o)
Today I spent a bit of time perusing some of my cookbooks - I'm fortunate to have many cookbooks because my good friend is a manager at a huge bookstore, and she gets slightly damaged books for free. I get the cookbooks. Yet here I am, whining over my lack of ideas! The nerve of me! I stuck post it notes to several recipes to try. I guess sometimes I just get tired of cooking - but our budget is tight and eating out is a rare occasion.
I'm going to check out the CI website, sounds very interesting. I do look at All Recipes, have also experienced a few duds.
Again, thanks to all. I think I just need to put a bit more effort and time into the menu planning. Btw, I too was raised to eat what was on the table. If I didn't like it, I could drink the milk - no dessert. Fortunately, I liked about everything. I have a friend who caters to her kids and I cannot believe the amount of food waste they have! Her kids have her well trained - sometimes I nearly have to staple my mouth shut when I'm there for dinner.
I also like reading cookbooks. When I read one I mark recipes I want to try with a Post-It Small Flag; so far so normal. Then I go a bit psycho and take it a bit further. I write the recipe on the flag - really brief, such as "braised chix shrooms" - and put the flag along the top of the cookbook. If I like the recipe I move the flag to the right side of the cookbook; if I don't I throw out the flag. Noting the recipe on the flag means I can quickly survey the recipes in that cookbook. More upfront work, much more convenient in the long run.
(Now I'm going thoroughly psycho with my method and putting it all into a spreadsheet - cookbook name and recipe. I was spending too much time trying to remember which cookbook had what recipe. It's taking less time than I anticipated,100+ cookbooks notwithstanding. In a few days I'll be able to tell you exactly how many recipes are in my "to try" file. Well, if I also add in the CI recipes. And the ones I have only electronically. And the paper clippings in my recipe binder.) (Yup - totally psycho.)
WilliamB LOL! 🙂 I too can be a total recipe junkie. I even talked my hubby into getting me a software program called Master Cook 9. It is awesome for collecting recipes in, and it comes with thousands of recipes already included. I also use post-it flags in my cookbooks as well!
Kristen, you are a gem, and I always love reading your posts. I to was raised with "you-eat-what-you-are-served-or-do-without. My husband and I did that with our kids too, but with a twist. We had them eat/try new or less favorite foods in an age related quantity method. For example they would need to eat the number of bites (normal size bites for their age) per how old they were. So the four year old would eat four bites of the food in question, the six year old six bites, etc. They were always welcome to have more if they wanted, but we wouldn't force the issue past the "required" bites. For foods that they absolutely had no tolerance for, they didn't have to eat it, but there was no substitution for it either.
I don't have kids, so take this for what it's worth:
With table waste, I usually take the uneaten food (because sometimes I just serve myself too much) and either put it in a covered container or I put a towel over whatever plate/bowl I used and stick it back in the fridge. I put it in a conspicuous spot so that I know I have to eat it, and I ban myself from eating anything else until it's gone.
When children used to live in my house (those children belonging to roommates, siblings, etc), I basically did the same thing w/ their table waste. It pained me to eat it, but I did it anyway. After a couple weeks I learned to give the children a quarter of what I would serve myself, and if they ate it all and wanted more, I would give seconds, usually a quarter of the original serving size. For as many as it took until the kids were full. By making smaller serving sizes for the kids, and even smaller seconds, it was unlikely for much to be left. Or if there was just the tiniest amount of food remaining, I would go ahead and toss it.