Cooking: The menu of the week

I  have been writing the week's menu every Sunday since January of 2010. Doing this has helped me stay on track with our goal of not eating out as much. I also found that I spend less money when I plan what we are eating and buy the ingredients I need on Monday when I grocery shop.


My friend gave me a to do book that makes my list making heart sing. And I spend about 20 minutes every Sunday making a list of what we will eat, where the recipe is located and what ingredients I need to buy. We have eaten such a better variety of meals since I started to do this. My fellow blogger over at A Barefoot Day does this as well. She is the master homemaker and makes the rest of us want to be just like her.

My family is full of eating "issues" and I always end up cooking a meal with "options". For instance, I am a pseudo vegetarian ( I eat fish), my husband has been eating vegan for about 8 months and just recently decided to try paleo ( no beans, grains, sugar, dairy, fun) and the kids eat pretty much everything and resent not getting lots of steak.

 So my menus usually something like this weeks:

-baked fish with mustard marinade, roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed kale

-spinach quiche (girls)/ spicy tuna and spinach frittata for the grown ups

-roasted tomato and kale soup with ricotta toast (again, girls) and green salad

-Thai soup with shrimp and snow peas

-Chicken tacos ( taco salad for the grownups- mine sans chicken)

We try to eat all organic and definitely buy all hormone free beef and poultry. Fish is harder, wild is first choice and hard to find. I try to buy local as much as possible, so we eat seasonal. Meaning lots of kale, squash and citrus now and strawberries, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers in the spring and summer. Canned tomatoes get us through the winter and I froze lots of strawberries  for our cereal this past summer. So, my menus reflect this.  I appreciate a home cooked meal at someone Else's  house so much because I know the work and planning that went into it. 

Does everyone do this? I managed to be a full time homemaker for almost 10 years without doing this. I am amazed at how much more efficient  I have become in the past two years.  Must be my age.