Menu plans can save so much money and time, however, some homemakers are just not menu plan types of women. For these women, Mrs. Andelin suggested another way to make sure one’s family eats healthy and time and money can be saved. She shared this in the Fascinating Womanhood Workbook for Students, where she wrote the following, quoted with permission, on page eighty-eight:
“If you weary at the thought of planning menus a week or so ahead, you may be interested in this alternative: Organize a list of foods your family likes. When shopping for the week’s groceries, use this list as a guide, and as you plan each day’s menu, look over this list for ideas. Menus are best planned the evening before. When you complete the list, put it in a plastic page cover. This list can be updated from time to time.”
She then gave six or seven examples of foods that a family liked under each of the following headings:
Casseroles
Meats
Vegetables
Salads
Hot Breads
Desserts
Soups and Stews
Sandwiches
Beverages
One 2012 Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska Fascinating Womanhood course student shared the following about this plan, how she tweaked it for her family, and how it’s worked for them:
“I am glad that FW mentioned menus. A few weeks ago I noticed that we were basically eating the same thing over and over again. No one had any ideas when I asked them what did they want and it was getting annoying. So I sat down with my cookbook and looked at all the recipes that I had made that I knew we liked. I wrote everyone down and came up with at least 40 different recipes. I divided them into categories (Chicken, beef, fish) and made sure we didn’t have the same kind of meat as the night before. I printed it off and I go shopping for “Just that week” I must say that in the three weeks I have been using it not only is everyone more excited about dinner but I save at least $50 a week. Everyday I check it, decide what time I need to start dinner and defrost, marinate, or soak anything needed overnight for the next day. Now I will admit this did take some time to sit down and do it but if I keep up with it in the future it is going to save me a lot of time and worry.”
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In addition to what she shared above, the FW~A 2012 student shared a wonderful and inspiring thing that she did:
“I also wanted to add that a few years ago I had so many cookbooks I didn’t know what to do and I could never remember which recipe was in which book. So, I started my own cookbook in a binder (crediting where I got the recipe from of course), paper, and page protectors. Everytime I cooked a recipe that we ended up liking I typed it on a word document, saved it, printed it off, and stuck it in my binder. It has helped me so much.
“My daughter is graduating high school next year and askedwhen she moves out would I please print all the pages for her.”
In our day and age we can save our menus as computer files to pull and edit as needed. If a recipe gets ruined, it’s just a computer print-out away! We can also, like the wonderful Fascinating Woman from the course, print our own unique family recipe books to share.
Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”… So whether you’re a menu planner or a day-by-day kind of homemaker, there is a way to plan healthy meals for your family – the Fascinating Way!
A Bit of a Sidenote:
In writing of recipe books… A Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska free, high-quality, healthy cookbook is in the works for readers! It contains recipes from Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska course alumni as well as our family and *should* be available to women who follow this blog within a year, God willing! It will also contain a few articles and some helpful tips!
It’s exciting that such a book is coming into existence – thank you to all of you for providing the moral support to FW~A which makes such things possible!
If you are not already a follower of FW~A but would like to know when the recipe book is ready or receive updates on it, just click the “Sign Me Up” button on the right or join FW~A on Facebook.
I hope to never forget to comment on how handsome he is when he wears “good” clothes.
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