Good evening,
I feel it only right and proper to follow-up on my Meal Planning tirade of a few days back.
Here’s what it looked like. Prepare to be impressed.
That’s right. Two and a half DPSs (double page spreads. Is this term still used in publishing? I’m a late 90’s year book geek.) from my calendar with main dinner dishes scrawled into the inner margins for each week/dps. There are a maximum of two per week. Nothing more. But nothing less either! And you know what? It helped my life and sanity level, but only once I remembered that I had written my Menu Plan in to my calendar. Never mind that for several days I haphazardly wondered 6.3 times per day what the heck to serve for dinner. Eventually, the horror of my Menu Planning Escapade of a few days back re-surfaced, and I actually used the Plan! And I had already shopped for the items needed! Win win!
Despite the major mental whiplash caused by me, of all people, menu planning, I am pleased and peaceful with a couple things:
1) For one menu, I planned an actual menu! “Chix and chocolate cake.” There it is, in writing, for all of history. What more does one need in a meal than chix (ie chicken) and chocolate cake?
2) I gave myself lots of freedom within the structure. Having learned that over planning can produce stress just as often as under planning, I didn’t assign certain dishes to certain days. I just knew, given our schedule for the next couple of weeks, that cooking twice a week would be reasonable.
3) I didn’t matter much what meal went on which day. If I remember correctly, I simply put the dish with veggies that would go bad most quickly on the first page of the first week. And chocolate cake with chix, naturally, went on the day when we were having friends for dinner.
That’s it. That’s all I have to say about Menu Planning.
Love,
Miss Mary Clare
Miss Mary Clare 