Monday, April 27, 2009

Spring Cleaning #3 Kitchen

We are going to stay in the kitchen today.  I hope you enjoyed your Sunday break :)  In all actuality I never got to that troublesome countertop yesterday.  I did finish it up this morning but still need to wipe down all the counters and polish them.  Which brings me to a little PSA (public service announcement) If you have a carbon monoxide detector plugged in your kitchen you will want to unplug it and remove it from the area if you are going to be spraying any aerosol cleaners.  If you don't it will go off and loudly :0
Today being Monday we are going to talk about Menu Planning.  It pertains to spring cleaning.  I feel we often get in a dinner rut and start making excuses for eating out or convenience meals that are not the least bit healthy.  I totally cheat in the menu planning arena and let someone else do it for me.  Menus4moms.com provides a weekly dinner menu for 5 nights with included shopping list!  What can be easier than that?  She also goes by the premise of preparing ahead.  For example you will often see 5lbs of ground beef on the list.  Out of this she will have planned hamburgers and then the rest made up into meatballs, divided and frozen for a later meal.  Another site is SavingDinner.com  this one is a paid service.  We did it for awhile but the menus4moms site was more our tastebud.  So today your challenge is to make up a at least a dinner menu for the rest of the work week. Lauren is ahead of the game on this one as she got so inspired by her clean laundry area attached to her kitchen that she posted a weekly menu on her whiteboard.     Post your menus in comments for all to get ideas.  Our weekly menu is on the menus4moms site.  Beef Burgandy simplified is whats for dinner tonight. 

5 comments:

Lauren said...

I have a good dinner idea... It's really tasty, really easy, requires only 1 pan, and it's a complete meal. It also costs less than $2 per person to make! It's Zatarain's Dirty Rice. We make it per the box instructions with lean ground beef, then we add a chopped green bell pepper, onion, and some frozen corn. We spice it up with some chili power too. Sooo good, and soo easy. The last time we had it, Josh whipped up the entire meal by the time I got home! Love it!

Tiffany said...

I'm stopping by from SL. Some weeks I'm better at menu planning than others. This week I'll be making BBQ chicken fajitas, sausage burgers on the grill (adapted from a Rachel Ray recipe) and I'll probably have to wing the rest!

Lona said...

Just checked out the menus4moms--I'm going to try out their basic weekly menu. Thanks!

Missus Wookie said...

I do my menus six weeks at a time to fit in my bulk food co-op shop. Ours is written on the calendar - with pencil circles and arrows to move it around if necessary.

I did a blog post on my system earlier this year:
http://mrswookieswanderings.blogspot.com/2009/01/organizing-recipes.html

Did you get your junk pile sorted? I've not finished my junk drawer...

Traci said...

Thanks for all the great ideas on menu planning. Mrs W I did get my junk pile sorted. Now to maintain the pile :) Now the junk drawer is another story.