Okay, so the M and I are the ultimate in laziness. When it comes to grocery shopping, we have to go to at least 2, at most 4 places. Therefore, we prefer to go only every two weeks. This requires a LOT of planning on my part, deciding which recipes I want to eat two weeks from now, trying to look at my planner and determine exactly how stressed I am going to be and how much the M will need to help me.

Also, the M eats 6 meals a day. Granted, they're relatively small meals. But still. And I cook all of them. And I make bread. And almond butter. And I cut up carrots for us (no baby carrots for us!!). It takes a lot of work. To cut down on it, I make 4 family-sized meals every weekend. To keep things healthy, I try to make 2 meals chicken, and two some other type of lean meat. That means I need a total of 8 recipes--I try to do 4 chicken and then one each with a choice of turkey, lean beef, pork tenderloin, fish, and chicken or turkey sausage. To top that, I have to balance easy with flavorful and interesting, and I try to make at least one new recipe every two weeks. If I like it, I add it to my "tried and true" 3-ring notebook, if I don't, I toss it. I then look at my list of 8 recipes, decide which recipes will be good for week one, and which will be good for week 2, and mark them so I don't forget.

I have several staples that I rely on--some of which I make at least once a month, and most of the time every two weeks, because they're just that easy and just that good. I'm going to try to post my "menu" every two weeks, and slowly put up my staples and then maybe some new recipes. As I go, I'll start linking to my recipes (hopefully) so if you want to try it, you can!

Okay, here is my "menu" for the next two weeks. I usually just plan the main dish, and we make enough rice/potatoes/pasta/whatever for these meals to last us the week, and then we just dip in them as we need them. We like fresh veggies over cooked, so the M grabs some raw broccoli and a tomato after each meal and eats them like apples, and I make myself a side-salad or eat some fruit--that way, I don't have to cook as much!

To make this weekend:
Chicken Soup
Chicken Andouille Sausage and Bulgur Wheat
Mexican Black Bean Sausage Chili (adapted)
Chicken in Yellow Curry (from Madhur Jaffrey's From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail) with onions, mushrooms, bell pepper, and green beans

Next weekend:
Chicken Gunk (more on this later)
Cilantro Chicken with snow peas and bell pepper (my new dish this time, probably with a little less cilantro, and omitting the carrots)
Salmon with Asian Lime Marinade (really, I can't recommend this highly enough. I'll have a post on this by itself)
Crockpot Stiffado

Most of the time, I do a pretty good job of balancing, but some times (like this time) I notice too late that whoops! This week seems to be ALL poultry. Oh well. Then, if I like the layout of the menu, I save my little piece of paper with the menu written out, and maybe use it again.

Okay, time to return to studying. First test of the semester a week from today. Blech.