Today I’m going to ramp up for October 1st by doing some basic meal planning, which I’m hoping will be the organizational framework that will allow me to succeed in this challenge. I’ve been thinking about meal planning for a while, but it’s been a hard thing for this seat-of-her-pants gal to implement. I’m just going to remind myself that my first hurdle in sensible meals- shopping from a list that I remember to take to the grocery store- has been conquered for a year or two now, so it’s really past time to move on to a new growth experience in this area.

Before I post about the fun of meal planning, though, I’m going to post a little bit about my general background and goals with this challenge. I’ll save the actual meal plan as a separate post. So… here’s my preliminaries. Enjoy.

My Background: Boons and Obstacles

I’m aided by the fact that we don’t have a microwave. While I have found it easy in the past to heat up leftovers or make a quick frozen dish, it’s actually perversely satisfying to have to cook something over flames in a metal pot or wait 10 minutes for a frozen veggie burger to cook in the counter-top convection toaster oven. While the jury is still out about whether microwave cooking is inherently dangerous, it’s pretty clear that most microwave convenience foods are nutritionally bankrupt.

I don’t buy junk. There’s no soda, no frozen pizzas, no high fructose corn syrup, and no hydrogenated oils in this house. Our eating is already pretty honest, and we’re not going to have to change our buying habits very much. If you, dear reader, ARE someone who buys junk, I strongly recommend that you read Michael Pollan’s Food Rules. Not only is this book a very quick read, it’s very concise and simple to put into practice. It would be the first book I’d recommend to anyone wanting to change their eating habits.

So I have those two things going for me, but I have a couple of problem areas to address as well. First of all, I’m kind of lazy when it comes to cooking. I don’t really like the idea of spending all day in the kitchen, and I avoid recipes that seem overly complicated or require multiple steps or long cooking times. I start thinking about dinner when I start to get hungry for dinner, and it’s very hard to get motivated to cook when I’m not hungry. I’m hoping that meal planning and whatever reward I derive from that will be the ongoing motivation to get past this obstacle.

Finally, I’m also boring. Thankfully, I’m okay with eating the same foods all the time, as is the other person I cook for, but wouldn’t it be lovely (I think, wistfully), if I could cook all sorts of different… things? I’m always impressed when my friends post fancy delicious-looking meals that they’ve prepared themselves, and I certainly feel a swell of pride on the rare occasion that I do such posting myself. It would certainly be nourishing to my ego if I could expand my repertoire.

The Grand Plan and My Sub-Goals

I want to include in my weekly planning 7 dinner meals, making enough that I’ll have leftovers for lunches during the week. Even though I’m shooting for 7, I’m just not going to turn down the opportunity to eat out once in a while.

I’m not bothering with breakfast planning as we eat the same things every day and any tweaking I do there will be minimal. Though, I would like to try my hand at making my own English muffins so as to actually use the muffin forms I bought months ago. And give bagel-making another try (the first two attempts were tasty, but fraught with difficulty, culminating in funny, hard little mutant bagels). This leads in to my first sub-goal for the challenge:

I will bake a bread product once a week. I generally use the no-knead approach and recipes from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but I own a bread maker as well and have enjoyed using that, too. Recently I’ve fallen off the bread-making bandwagon (except for a recent banana bread), and I’d like to climb back on. With this goal I want to expand my baking prowess to include the aforementioned breakfast breads, as well as muffins, biscuits, pizza crusts, and flat breads. I know that I can bake for the future, too, which leads me to my next sub-goal.

I will make a freezer-friendly double meal once a week. I know that this challenge will only get more hectic as time goes on, and pulling meals out of the freezer will help prevent the temptation to backslide. The likely candidates for cryogenic preservation will be casseroles, chili, stews, pies, and breads, but I’m open to further suggestions. Someday I’d actually like to fill the chest freezer in the basement.

I will make a new recipe once a week, or focus on tweaking and reflecting on an existing recipe to hone my general cooking skills. Ideally, this will be my opportunity to learn new techniques, become more familiar with flavors, and develop the understanding of cooking that will allow for more daring improvisation. I’m hoping this sub-goal will also let me learn to recreate recipes from around the world.

I will incorporate local and organic products into my meal plans each week. I’m going to focus initially on the list of best to worst offenders for produce with pesticides as reported by the Environmental Working Group. I’ve been very impressed with the produce selection at Whole Foods, so I’m going to try to get out there more often for my organic produce. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) has a great website for Southwestern PA that highlights the farmer’s markets around the Pittsburgh area where I live. Slow Food Pittsburgh is another resource I’ll investigate, especially their laptop butcher program. I’ve been meaning to improve our carnivorous choices around here. I’ll also be following YumPittsburgh, a Penn State sponsored blog striving to keep consumers in touch with local producers.

I will keep it frugal. I will use my own herbs and vegetables where possible, and take advantage of loss leaders at my local markets. I’ll be combing the circulars for good deals and as always, keeping in mind cheap healthy foods.

I will eat a meatless dinner once a week and a fish dinner once a week. I have to get better at cooking fish. I have one recipe that works, and that’s just not cutting it. I have plenty of vegetarian recipes to choose from.

Ramp-Up Wrap Up

So that’s where I’m coming from. I’ve looked around online at various meal-planning sites and services, but nothing stands out to me as being a silver bullet for my own personal goals. I like the idea of starting with a list of meals that you enjoy, so that’s my first step. I’ll give you a run-down on the whole process when I’m done, but in the mean time, I’m off to spend some quality time with Google Documents, doing a basic plan for next week.