I thought it would be fun to give you all a great tip this week ~ ok 2!  I’m forever talking about menu planning (and have the resources for a few great ones in my right sidebar), but there can still be some complications if you don’t have a few things organized.

Tip One ~ Organizing the meal plan:

If you are using a meal planner, print out that week’s meals and assign a day to them all, write the name of the meal on your calendar and have a specific spot you keep each week’s recipes.  It’s best if you have one day set aside that you read through, organize and shop for the following week’s recipes.  This also applies to those who would like to print out meals a month in advance and for those who are not using a meal planner.

Be strategic about the meals you assign to each day, keeping in mind variety, activities and meat thawing time (see below).  You may have family members that do NOT want to have chicken 2 nights in a row and if there are 2 mexican meals you may want to spread those out a bit too.

Tip two ~ the answer to a common problem: not getting out frozen meat in time to thaw in the fridge. 

Gone are the days where were we could pull meat out of the freezer in the morning to thaw on the counter for that evening’s meal.  Now we are supposed to thaw all of our meat in the fridge which requires a lot more planning ahead!  Most meat takes 24 to 48 hours to fully thaw in the refrigerator, more if it is a very large item like a turkey. 

There are quick ways to thaw meat and it isn’t unheard of to use the microwave’s defrost settings, but I personally don’t love the inconsistent temperature of the meat I pull out (the edges are cooked and it’s still frozen in the middle making it a funny combination of rubbery and not ready)

So, here’s my recommendation:  As you are going through that week’s recipes write a note on the recipe telling yourself what meat you need to get a day or two before!  So if you’re going to need that frozen chicken on Friday and it takes 2 days to thaw write it down on the bottom of the meal page for Wednesday.  If you aren’t using recipe pages you can also write this information on your calendar!!!

Another tip along these lines would be to plan meals using fresh and frozen meat strategically so that you are using up the fresh meat at the beginning of the week and giving yourself plenty of time to get the frozen meat thawed for the end of the week meals!

Happy Meal Planning!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 10:42 am and is filed under Large Family Meals, Mealtime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. If this post blessed, encouraged or inspired you, please feel free to "Stumble It" or submit it to kirtsy - Thank you! You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.