Meal planning, part 1

True confessions: I hate strongly dislike meal planning, grocery list making, and grocery shopping.  I am not comfortable cooking dishes than involve more than, say, 5 or so ingredients, unless I have had a lot of practice.

I am not proud of these facts, and in truth, it is my goal to face and conquer these unfortunate... problems... for the sake of my husband and children, and of course, my own sake, since I have a long career of meal- fixing ahead of me.  >sigh<

Baby steps!  This blog is certainly one way I hope to face my inadequacies- i.e. trying new things and getting more comfortable cooking.  I am under no illusions that any of these dislikes will change over night, but here are some of the steps I have taken so far to make meal fixing a little easier for myself.

1. I have about a gazillion cookbooks, but I have narrowed it down to about 3 that I regularly use and know where certain recipes are.  One of these is a 3-ring binder with page protectors.  When I find new recipes that sound good, or sample someone's delicious dish that I just have to have the recipe for, I add it to the binder.  I plan on making a section in the binder of tried and true, fairly simple and quick recipes that I know my whole family likes.  (Also a section on ideas of meals to make when nothing sounds good- i.e. during the pregnancy morning sickness stage)

2. I have come up with a pretty good grocery list (with the help of my husband) that lists things in categories.  The idea is to keep the list handy, and as we run low on things we need, we circle the item on the list.  Looking over the list also jogs my memory as to what things we commonly need to replace, so I don't end up forgetting something really important, like toilet paper.  Also, at the bottom of the grocery list is a little area where I can write down the meal ideas I have, and what cookbook it came out of, page number, etc. because I hate it when I buy all the ingredients for a dish, then it all goes bad because I either forgot about it, or I can't find where the recipe is.  That little corner can be torn off the grocery list afterward, or can simply be written somewhere else (like on a magnetic calendar I bought for the purpose of meal planning which still has the menu from May 2009 written on it  >huge sigh<).

3. Baby steps, remember?  I think I will take another look at the easy recipe book blog my family made for my brother, who left 8 months ago to serve a church mission in Australia.   Want to check it out? Here is the link: Mission Recipes

So, do you want a copy of the grocery list I came up with? Click the link below.  I put it in my Google Documents, and you should be able to download it as a Word document.  Feel free to edit it to meet your needs.  If you find it useful, I would love to know! 
 
Grocery List