I’m beginning to think about what I’m going to eat on the December challenge. I like to plan menus in advance because (a) raw food can take a lot of pre-preparation that needs thinking ahead (b) I’m anally organized and (c) I do better at sticking to a plan when there is a plan in place.
The biggest thing I’ve learned about menu planning is to incorporate left-overs into the planning. It eliminates waste. I don’t want to be throwing away expensive organic produce thank-you-very-much. It also adds variety. Huh? How do you get variety when you’re eating leftovers? By using them differently. Given that I’m the only person in my family eating this way I do end up with a lot of leftovers. I need to switch it up so I’m not bored senseless.
The easiest way for me to deal with left-overs is to do theme cuisine. Regional/ethnic themes work best since they have the same flavor profiles. Italian food, for example, makes use of garlic, oregano, basil. A marinade from one meal can transform into a dressing for another.
A sample week of dinners might go something like this:
- Cesar Salad, zucchini angel hair pasta and marinara
- Antipasto with bruschetta
- Lasagna
- Minestrone, greens with vinaigrette
- Pesto-stuffed portobello mushrooms
- Pizza
- Fettuccine raw-fredo
And one could alternate some desserts like: gelato, biscotti, pine nut cookies.
The marinara sauce does quadruple duty in the pasta, bruschetta, lasagna, and pizza. There is rawmasan in the cesar salad, bruschetta, pesto, and fettuccine. The antipasto becomes a layer in the lasagna, or it can be chopped finer and thrown into a minestrone.
You get the general idea. Now, making 7 different meals is way more work than I can realistically handle. I’m ok with repeating things so I try to do only 2-3 meals per week. For an Italian week, I’d make a Cesar dressing, a vinaigrette, a marinara sauce, a pesto and hope like hell that I already had rawmasan and seed crusts on hand from a monthly prep session.
Guess I just started planned one of my weeks.
