On the Menu

I’m a girl who loves me some menu planning.  Remember last year, when we were all posting 25 Random Things about ourselves on Facebook?  Number two on my list was “making a pre-grocery-shopping menu plan is one of the highlights of my week*” and oh, how true that statement is.  A blank slate, limited only by that week’s food budget and how much guilt I have about the languishing kale in the fridge…to me, bliss.

There is a ritual, of course.   I gather a few aggressively flagged cookbooks, check the open tabs on the kitchen laptop (shorthand for “to try” at my house) and peruse the weekly specials at 5 different grocery stores.  I check the calendar to see who will be where at dinnertime.  And I peek in the fridge and pantry to see if anything is glaring at me, pouting as neglected foodstuffs tend to do.

Then I draft.  Generally, there are several drafts of the menu and accompanying grocery list, as I realize that we’re too heavy on the cheese or that some salads are in order.  I do a lot of prep at night, after the kids go to bed, so midweek complicated dishes aren’t out of the question.

We eat according to the menu plan at least 80 percent of the time.  The ingredients are in the house, there is no 5 o’clock panic about what to make, and I’m able, for example, to make extra marinara for the pasta on Tuesday to stash in the fridge for pizza on Friday.  It saves us money, both on bare-fridge-based takeout, and on produce saved from a slow decay while awaiting its dinner destiny.

But for me, it is a half hour a week that I can unabashedly obsess about food…and that, to me, is an end in itself.

Just because, here’s my menu for the next few days:

Sunday:  Gorgonzola burgers, oven fries, kale slaw with peanut dressing (yeah, the kale guilt did me in)

Monday:  Marinated grilled shrimp salad with grapefruit, avocado, and spinach, sourdough bread

Tuesday:  Orange bourbon chicken with cornbread crust, napa mango slaw, steamed green beans

Wednesday:  Kung pao shrimp, Szechuan eggplant, rice

Thursday: Short order eggs, sweet potato hash, fruit salad

*The pleasures of grocery shopping are a post in and of themselves