Simplifying life (or at least dinner and shopping)

Around eight years ago, sometime after I married my husband, but I think within that same year, I started doing twice a month dinner menus.  It started on Saturdays.  I would pull all the frozen meat out of the freezer, count it up, and then proceed to build a menu based on what we had first, then filled in the remainder days.  Then the following payday, I'd do the grocery shopping.  This was after months of just shopping for things, and then when it came time to cook dinner, not having one or two ingredients, and having to find something to cook that we had the stuff for.   

My thought was, if I made a menu, we could shop for what we were going to eat, and not have to wonder what was for dinner.  That worked really well.  Every Saturday I sat and scored through my many many many cookbooks, and recipe cards.  I'd throw in old favorites, and new dishes I'd never made.  I enjoyed cooking, and loved to try new things.

Then we had a child.  The nights got busier, it turned into cooking what was quick and easy.  I stopped shopping on payday, and shopped only on Saturday.  Friday became menu and shopping list night.  And over the last five years that has turned into this chore that I hate.  The worst part of the month is the two days I have to sit down and figure out what we should eat for the next two weeks.

When you don't have the time to experiment, you really end up eating the same list of things. With school starting this year, it seems to be an even bigger hassle.  It's just a feeling of, I have so little time to just relax, that I don't want to spend it trying to figure out what to eat.  

All those thoughts had a lightbulb go off in my head.  A way to simplify matters.  Naturally this happened after I finished this weeks shopping list and menu.  But I did extra work on Saturday to set this experiment into motion.

I sat down, and went through my most used cookbooks, and my most used recipe cards and wrote down the recipes.  I came up with six weeks worth of recipes, put them in the calendar, and told it to repeat each one every six weeks.  We already eat these most of the time anyway.  Now it's not a case of, we just had that and I forgot we ate it.  Every six weeks, green chili.  Every six weeks, fajitas.  and, all I have to do is look at the upcoming week the night before I do the shopping and put what is needed for the next couple of weeks.

Naturally, on special occasions whatever is planned for that day will be skipped.  I mean, we aren't going to have taco soup on Thanksgiving.  And as usual with my menus, somedays you just feel like .... (insert random food you enjoy all the time here)...  but for the most part, I think this will work great.  Plus, the six week timeframe offers a lot of variety.  So I don't think we'll get board with the stuff we eat anyway.  

Sometimes you have to find ways to make time for yourself.  Now maybe I can get that long soak in the tub I keep telling myself I'll have.  😂