Menu Planning for Busy Cooks

Depending on your answers to the quiz, you could gain 12-20 hours or over $150 (or both) every month with menu planning!

Did you know that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American family spends more than $2000 a year eating out? Not only does this hurt our bank accounts, it often hurts our bodies, too. From larger portions and more fat to calorie-dense foods and less vegetables, eating out falls far below home cooking in terms of health. We save time by eating out or buying processed food that takes little preparation but can be heavy on cost and light on nutrition.

On the other hand, we try to save money by eating at home and cooking from scratch and we end up spending too much precious time in the kitchen every night. This leaves us frustrated when it takes 15-20 minutes to eat what it has taken so long to prepare. There is an alternative! Menu planning can give you more time and money.

If you cut out one fast food meal per week for the whole family, you can save about $100/month depending on the size of your family. If you cut out two sit-down restaurant meals a month, you can save $80/month. That is a total of $180/month and it doesn't even include the amount you will save by planning easy meals around sale items instead of picking up prepared foods at the grocery store.

On the flip side, moms on a tight budget have no choice but to save money, so their strategy of cooking meals at home can leave them spending hours in the kitchen. Someone who is preparing 6 home cooked dinners per week (not from packaged prepared foods) is probably spending at least 9 hours a week just preparing dinner. I am going to show you how smart menu planning can cut that preparation time in half, giving back 4-1/2 hours each week to use for something more important than meal preparation.

The Busy Cooks Pyramid contains 5 pyramid building blocks that, when combined, create great meals with little stress and time. First let's focus on the base level, the part that will have the most impact on saving time and money. The base of the pyramid is formed with the strong foundation of Cooking for the Freezer. If you have tried bulk cooking and are shuddering in horror, fear not. Cooking for the freezer can be as simple as doubling recipes and freezing the extra or cooking ground beef and chicken in bulk so that it is ready when you need it.

One of the most important features of Menus 4 Moms' Busy Mom Menu is bulk cooking ingredients for the freezer. Cooking for the freezer is where you will save most of your time and money. When you buy meat in bulk, you can stock up when it is on sale. Watch the fliers in the paper or online and have specific price points that you want to hit. When you find a sale that meets those price points, buy in bulk and prep the food for the freezer first - browning, boiling, grilling, sautéing, whatever you prefer. Why brown 1 pound of ground beef 5 times if you can brown 5 pounds 1 time?

To give you an idea of how Cooking for the Freezer saves you time and money, think about buying 10 pounds of ground beef at $1.69/pound when it is on sale instead of spending $3.29/pound. You save $16 by purchasing it on sale, and by cooking it all at once in 25 minutes or less, you save two hours compared to cooking 10 pounds separately for 15 minutes each time.

When you are planning meals, take into account dishes that freeze well and double them as you make dinner, freezing the extra. Many pasta is dishes freeze well (it is best to slightly undercook pasta and rice when it will be frozen in a dish), but it is best to avoid freezing anything with real cream since it tends to separate after thawing. The more you prepare in bulk for the freezer, the less time it takes to prepare a meal another night.

You can see that a regular practice of this kind of freezer cooking will quickly add up in time and money savings. This doesn't include the savings not going to Taco Bell because pulling meat out of the freezer and serving tacos at home costs a fraction of the money (and probably about the same amount of time) it would have taken to feed the whole family at the Taco Bell drive thru!

I often buy a large bag of frozen chicken breasts from Costco and marinate and grill the entire bag at once. When it is cooked, we have grilled chicken for dinner and chop the remaining chicken for the freezer. Onions and green peppers can be chopped and sautéed before freezing, saving time and tears later. We do this in late summer almost weekly when our green bell peppers are ready for harvest and then we have enough in the freezer for the whole year.

If you have a rice cooker, try cooking a large batch of brown rice and freezing it in 2 cup portions. It makes a great addition to soups and casseroles without having to wait for an hour for it to cook. Beans are another time-consuming but easy ingredient to cook for the freezer. Cooking beans once and freezing them in 2 cup portions saves hours of time later when you need them for recipes.

Planned leftovers are essential for saving money because not knowing what you are going to do with leftovers from a roast or a ham usually leads to waste. The Busy Mom Menu incorporates planned leftovers almost every week and is one of the most popular features of the menus. A baked ham will later get used in Hawaiian pizza or ham and pineapple shish-kabobs.

A roasted chicken is used later in the week by making broth from the bones and skin and making chicken and dumplings or chicken noodle soup. When you subscribe to the Busy Mom Menu, you get immediate access to our bonus report, Roast Chicken, which will gives some great recipes for a roast chicken and planned leftovers. Not only is there less waste, but when you plan your leftovers, there are less meals to plan for the week.

Planned leftovers are great for scheduling conflicts, too. Usually the initial meal involves a roast or other meat, so if you use a crockpot recipe you can account for those days when sporting events or piano lessons keep you out until dinnertime. Also, you can do some of the prep work for the second meal before you put the leftovers away, saving time later in the week.

The third building block in the Busy Cooks Pyramid is Quick and Easy Recipes. Although occasional elaborate meals are fun, the bulk of a busy cooks' recipes should be ones that use 5 ingredients or less with simple preparation. The mainstay of every busy cook's repertoire is a collection of recipes for quick dishes that practically make themselves. The trick behind these recipes is that they do more than just provide fast food. They take advantage of easily prepared, quick-cooking ingredients and minimum equipment so you are in and out of the kitchen fast. Keep a list of the easiest dishes that are family favorites. Always having the ingredients on hand for these dishes is an effective way to prevent eating out when you are running late or have an especially busy afternoon.

Having a collection of quick and easy recipes isn't enough, however. Keeping your recipes organized is vital to menu planning because a messy overstuffed recipe box will discourage you when you are browsing for quick and easy recipes.

Because most cooks have recipes from a variety of sources including magazines, recipe cards, and online printouts, a recipe box isn't always the best choice for organization. Instead, I use a 3-ring binder, and have pocket dividers with tabs. I keep a section for each recipe category (Casseroles, Soups, Chicken, Beef, Pork, Vegetables, Pasta, etc.) and keep page protectors in each section. I really like this method because dishes that I haven't tried can go in the pocket for that section, and tried and true recipes go in the page protectors. When you have time, go through your recipe book and separate out your recipes into tried and true and those that you want to try. It makes it much easier to plan when every recipe that looks good isn't vying for space in your recipe box, and you know which recipes are reliable.

Cooking for the freezer and planned leftovers give you a head start on the 4th building block, Fast Ingredients. Fast ingredients allow you to quickly put together a main dish using frozen meat that you can thaw in the microwave. There are certain ingredients that are the busy cook's best friends and should always be on hand in your cupboard, freezer or refrigerator for quick meals. These staples have several advantages in common. They are basic, but very versatile, so they can be dressed up or down. They are popular with young and old alike. As a bonus, they generally tend to be inexpensive. Most important, they are quick and easy to prepare. Make sure that your pantry is stocked with these items at all times. For me, they include broth, rice, pasta, canned or frozen meat and vegetables, cheese, and cream of chicken or mushroom soup. With items like these on hand I can put together a pot of soup or a casserole that will go from preparation to table in 20-30 minutes. For more information on fast ingredients, check out The Well-Stocked Pantry, my list of what is always on hand in my kitchen.

I am a big fan of frozen vegetables. Because they are flash frozen shortly after harvest, they retain most of their nutrients and are easy to steam. I have a great steamer from Tupperware, but if you don't have a steamer, you can buy vegetables designed to be steamed right in the bag, or even buy the new vegetable steaming bags. Steaming frozen vegetables keeps their beautiful color, and then they can be sautéed with a small amount of butter or oil and some seasonings. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes. By starting with cooked meat from the freezer and making a side dish from frozen vegetables along with a bag salad, I can put together a nice meal in about 30 minutes.

The last block in the Busy Cook's Pyramid is Tools and Techniques. My mantra for cooks is to get the best tools you can afford. If you are only going to buy a crockpot once, if you can afford it, get the nicer programmable model rather than the cheapest stripped down model. In the long run you notice the difference in convenience every time you use it, and the savings in convenience is worth way more than the price difference. Good tools save you time and frustration every time you use them.

Your tools should be easily accessible. For me, that means on the counter for the big tools like my crockpot and my knives. It looks a little more cluttered than if everything was put away, but the reality is that I won't use them if I have to get them out each time I want to use them. Some of the tools that are essential for me are my grill, crockpot, microwave, good pans, good knives, and large stainless steel bowls. There are many other tools that are nice to have but not essential. Some larger ones are a bread maker, a rice cooker, and the powerful all-in-one mixers. Smaller tools that make life easier are items like the Tupperware marinade container, Pampered Chef food chopper, a garlic press, and other specialty tools. Whatever the tools are that you prefer, invest in them if you will use them. Don't fill your kitchen with a bunch of unused accessories, but for the tools you will use regularly, invest the money to purchase quality products.

Kitchen appliances and cooking techniques have come a long way since our mothers' days. All these hi-tech gadgets and cooking methods can save you lots time in the kitchen. Without planning the use of these tools and techniques into your day, they will sit useless on the counter. An article I read pointed out that while we do not have servants like the Proverbs 31 woman, these tools are the modern day equivalent to the "servants" mentioned in Proverbs 31. By giving your "servants" their instructions for the day, you allow them to serve you while you attend to other matters. This was an enlightening revelation to me and has motivated me to make more consistent use of these electronic "servants".

Here are some of my "servants":

Microwave - my favorite tool for defrosting all those prepared ingredients and meals from the freezer

Crockpot - used weekly and almost always on days when activities keep us on the go until dinnertime

Bread Machine - I prefer to make large batches of bread by hand, but this can come in handy for those who prefer one loaf at a time, and it is great for getting pizza dough ready just in time for lunch

Recipe Software - there are many available for purchase or free to download online (just google "recipe software")

Shopping list software - I love this because once I have prices at my local stores programmed into it I can drag and drop my list from a selection of items and it will not only print it by category (saving me time running back to an aisle where I forgot something) but it gives me a total price for the trip right on the list

Grill - good tool for quick meals but also for preparing ingredients for the freezer like grilled chicken or vegetables; it keeps the kitchen cool in the summertime

Pressure Cooker - although this isn't one of my personal favorites it is useful and some cooks couldn't live without the convenience of a pressure cooker

The last item in the pyramid is techniques. Learn quick and easy ways to accomplish routine tasks. Know how to cut an onion, seed a pepper, mince garlic, or anything else most recipes call for. If you don't have a good basics cookbook, get one.

I personally love the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. It is a classic illustrated cookbook that covers all of the basics plus things you might not be as familiar with. Now that the Internet has changed the way we obtain information, you can go online for just about any technique you want to see illustrated. I googled "braising meat video" and immediately found an instructional video from the executive chef at the Wegmans website showing how to braise meat from start to finish.

You can see how the Busy Cooks Pyramid saves both time and money. The last key to making a great menu is having a back-up plan. One mom was just starting to use the menu plans, and the very first week, one of her kids unknowingly let the roast for the next day fall out of the refrigerator and it sat on the kitchen floor all night. Those kinds of things happen despite the best planning, and that is when your back-up plan comes into play. She was able to save the day by rearranging her meal plan to include some back-up meals.

I have several meals that I can put together in 10-15 minutes with items I keep on hand all the time and I use those as my crisis meals. These crisis meals use either frozen or canned ingredients along with pasta or rice so I don't have to worry about perishables that I don't have on hand. (I don't consider frozen vegetables perishable unless we have a power outage.) A good example of a crisis meal that everyone in my house loves is Hash Brown Soup. With just a bag of frozen hash browns, a pound of Velveeta cheese, some chicken broth and a couple of cans of cream soup, I can put together a hearty, filling meal that can be served with bread and a salad. Even men who think that soup doesn't make a meal love this one.

Hash Brown Soup

- 1 sautéed Onion (from freezer)
- 3 cans chicken broth
- 1 large bag Frozen Hash browns
- 1 can cream of Celery Soup (substitutions)
- 1 can Cream of Chicken Soup (substitutions)
- 1-1/2 cups milk
- 1 pound Velveeta Cheese

Combine onion and broth, bring to boil. Add hash browns, bring to boil. Add soups (don't dilute) and evaporated milk, bring to boil. Add Cheese. Heat until cheese melts. Optional, serve with bacon bits on top.

Rachel Ray suggests keeping a few index cards in your glove-box with the ingredients listed for easy dishes. In a pinch you can stop at the store and grab the items you need to make a quick meal. If you don't work outside the home, you could create index cards with the menu on one side and the ingredients on the other, you can laminate them and let your husband keep them in his car. When you call him in a panic to pick something up at the store, he can be the hero when he brings home all the makings for a nice easy meal. Examples of quick fix meals include rotisserie chicken with a salad, fruit, and bread; ready-made pesto with pasta, salad, and bread; pizza on a ready-made crust with your favorite toppings; tacos with corn and rice; subs with veggies and dip; and cheeseburger pie with frozen vegetables.

Thanks to Lynn Nelson who developed the Secrets of a Busy Cook and the Busy Cooks Pyramid. Used by permission.

With today's busy lifestyles, most women find that putting a home-cooked dinner on the table each evening has become an impossible challenge. By providing the tools necessary to make delicious home-cooked meals while still saving time and money, Menus4Moms has been helping busy moms enjoy stress-free family dinners since 2005.

Menus4Moms.com not only provides a variety of dinner menus, but also offers home organization help, bulk and frugal cooking articles, local grocery deals and a growing social network for busy moms. Born out of the busy lifestyle of Mary Ann Kelley, a work at home mom, Menus4Moms is the result of years of refining cooking and shopping techniques to save today's busy moms both time and money. Our goal is stress-free, happy moms who have time to enjoy their families!

The Busy Mom Menu is a weekly dinner menu plan for busy moms that uses the Secrets of Busy Cooks to save you time and money. Try it for two weeks for only a penny!