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Making My Menu Plans More Efficient

Published on April 22, 2014 By Emily. Updated on April 22, 2014

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of menu planning.  I wrote about it here and I post my dinner plans every couple weeks.  Menu plans help keep me sane: I know what to get at the supermarket, I can plan for nights I know I have to go out and I can have Brian start meals when I’m out of the house.  I really have a hard time identifying with people who don’t plan menus, doing so does not work for me.

20140422_164946

A couple weeks ago, I set out to follow my menu as planned:  Black Bean and Quinoa Veggie Burgers from Food52.  But when as I began making the recipe, I realized that the patties were supposed to sit in the fridge for a few hours, if not longer.  I’d intentionally planned to make the dish on Sunday because I knew it’d be a little more time intensive, but I didn’t have that much time.  So, I finished shaping the patties, then put them in the fridge to be cooked up on Monday and made something else instead.  I was rather frustrated, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

It wouldn’t have been that big a deal at all, except that isn’t the first time I grossly underestimated the amount of time a recipe would take.  So I’m trying two new things to help me avoid that sort of chaos:

1.  Including extra-long cooking times to my menu plan.  This doesn’t apply to the majority of recipes I make, but when I try something new that takes longer than average (baking, time resting in the fridge, letting butter soften, etc.) I’m making a note under the recipe name in my menu plan.  It’s not fancy (you can see an example on the 19th, below), but it gets the job done and forces me to look at the recipes I’m planning to make before 5 pm on the evening I’m supposed to be making them.

menu plan

2.  Making notes on my my saved recipes and in my cookbooks.  Clearly, not a revolutionary idea; I suspect most people put notes in the margins of their cookbooks.  I’d really fallen out of the habit though and at the rate I try new recipes, it’s important that I write down anything I learned from the experience and how long it actually took.  Sometimes I don’t remember if I’d made a recipe before and this should help me keep track better. 

Here’s to more effective planning!

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Filed Under: menu plans Tagged With: advice, menu

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  1. Tips and Tools for Meal Planning–2015 Edition | Relishments says:
    December 31, 2015 at 9:38 am

    […] Making My Menu Planning More Efficient […]

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Emily
Last week Brian and I finally got around to hiring Last week Brian and I finally got around to hiring a sitter for a rare night out. We went to dinner at @publicna and took advantage of the opportunity with drinks, appetizers and dessert.

Pictured:
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For the fourth year, I've recapped the best new (to me) recipes I made this year in the hope that they'll give you some new dishes to try. This year's list is short, but delicious. It includes @budgetbytes My Favorite Recipes of 2022
Published on December 30, 2022 By Emily. Updated on December 30, 2022

It’s hard to believe that 2022 is basically behind us. Though overall this year found me getting back to the person I want to be (post-babies and “post”-pandemic), I did not try nearly as many new recipes this year as I used to. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I’d made note of any new-to-me recipes I wanted to share in this post. This year’s list is short, but delicious. It includes recipes from @budgetbytes, @smittenkitchen and @howsweeteats.
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Read the post by visiting the link in my profile or 
https://www.relishments.com/blog/my-favorite-recipes-of-2022/
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