Organization and meal planning yada yada . . .

There are pockets of my life that are very well organized. Having a mac helps with that. My entire life is planned in my iCal and all my contacts are in my mac address book. Everything syncs wirelessly back and forth between my laptop and iPhone so I'm good there. Lee has helped me with other organization projects. My kitchen pantries are pretty well organized, thanks to his implementation of the system. Once the system has been implemented, I am pretty good at following it. But one area that I feel like I am falling down on lately is meal planning. I hate going to the grocery store lately because I feel like I am not shopping efficiently, mostly due to lack of meal planning. Now I DO love the Grocery IQ app (grocery list app) on my iPhone. My dry goods pantry is usually well stocked. It is the produce that I have to plan and buy. I got spoiled when we lived in Colorado because I had an organic produce delivery service that left the produce on my doorstep (after emailing me a couple of days before to let me know what they were bringing). I have not found a comparable service out here, so until I can get a raised bed vegetable garden going next spring, I'm gonna have to suck it up and go to Kroger once a week. So to avoid waste and forgetting items, I need to have my weekly menus planned. So I sat down and typed out a list of the dinner dishes that I like to cook. I will consult my iCal on Sunday and determine which nights I am cooking that week. Then I will decide (with Lee's imput) which dishes I want to prepare for dinner that week. Then I will check my inventory and compile a grocery list (in my Grocery IQ app of course) for a weekly Monday shopping trip. Hopefully this will keep the shopping trips short and easy. So here is my menu. As you can see, we could go awhile without having the same dish twice. And I'm adding to this menu as I think of other things that I am proficient in cooking and that have proven tasty.

Mel’s Café dinner menu:

Spaghetti with red “meat” sauce and Parmesan cheese
Served with garlic bread and tossed salad.

Veggie burgers served with chips or fries

Chili served with Frito chips and cheese

Haystacks: chili, rice, lettuce, tomato, onions, Fritos

Bean burritos: tortillas, cooked beans and onions, rice, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes

Tacos: “chicken” and/or “beef"
Taco shells, taco “meat” and seasoning, Mexican rice, lettuce, tomatoes

Mock meatballs and rice with gravy
Served with a side veggie

Gluten steaks served with potatoes or wild rice and green beans (fresh) or asparagus (fresh)

Mexican lasagna

Linguini al pesto
Salad and garlic bread

Mexican pizza

Lentil soup with ditalini and wilted spinach

Eggplant Parmesan
Salad and garlic bread

Veggie “Skallops” with tartar sauce
Fries, green veggie

“Chicken” and rice casserole
Veggie

Potato corn chowder
Small salad

Pasta salad

Veggie fried rice with veggie “meat”

Massaman curry with tofu and rice

Veggie Fajitas with black beans and Mexican rice

Lemon spaghetti
Small salad and garlic bread

Lasagna
Small salad and garlic bread

Southwestern spaghetti, corn and garlic bread

Spaghetti with fried zucchini
Salad, garlic bread

Spicy chickpeas and rice

Taco soup served with tortilla chips

Cold peanut noodles and oriental cabbage salad

Baked Potato "Haystacks"


So I have to give a shout out to my friend Carrie at The Healthy, Natural Kitchen and The Art and Flair of Being Domestic for lots of inspiration. This woman is the queen of organization and meal planning! And she cooks everything totally from scratch (even her CRACKERS)!