Meal Planning

Premise about meal planning: If you know twenty ways of seasoning and preparing twenty different entrees, and have twenty different sauces, you have the potential for preparing 8,000 different meals.

Formula: 20 prep methods x 20 entrees x 20 sauces = 8,000 dinners.
Not all of the suggested dinner menus will work but that is a very subjective thing. You be the judge. Think of your prep center as a test kitchen and experimenting with signature recipes as a cooking game.

Stocking your pantry

Shopping is the BIG time and money waster (and often one that cookbooks don't mention.)

Broths and stocks

Spices and herbs - and no, they won't last forever either. Make certain you have only one of each by keeping a list of spices tucked away with your spices, checking which are missing, dropping empties into your purse or pocket to take to the grocers.

One company - I'll look up the name of the company - actually sells a handsome wooden unit that can be stacked one on top of another. It's doubtful that you need as many as I have - a cooking website makes for a lot of experimenting - but here's a picture of mine:

Or, here's a more general list for your meal planning needs.

rice, onions, potatoes, bread, and pasta.
oils- olive, tarragon, and perhaps a luxury one, truffle oil or walnut. Most oils do not last forever, especially those made with oils from nuts. Make sure you don't keep yours too near a heat source as you often see in decorating magazines. It doesn't help them a bit.
acids- white vinegar, red wine vinegar, tarragon vinegar, cider vinegar
wines- Sherry, Marsala, Madeira, Port, red wine (Burgundy, perhaps), white wine(chardonnay)- don't buy the cooking wines, they cost more per ounce. The wines you use for cooking can be one step down in price from the ones you drink. Unless Emeril's coming over!
how NOT to have four tins of cinnamon- like I did recently before I learned the "purse trick." When an herb or spice is used up, drop the jar (they're always small) into your purse or pocket right then and there.
a post-em pad taped to the inside of your busiest eye-level cabinet- put several pens on the bottom left hand side of the shelf. When you run out of something that is not a staple, put it on the list. Rip off the top post-em off, stick it in your purse or pocket, and you're on your way out the door.
a separate printed staples list of what should be in your pantry closet or a condiment in your fridge for things that have a nearly unlimited life. Don't forget to put the list back after grocery shopping!

New concerns about meal planning and cooking for a family are brought to the foreground.

Saving money

There is a significant prevention of waste by assembling and properly storing multiple meals.

The importance of proper storage containers in meal planning - My favorite is Pyrex with plastic lids that "burp." These eliminate the necessity for transferring leftovers from one container to another one. Directly from buffet table to freezer, and back to the oven and the table later. How easy is that?

There are advantages to "buying clubs" for economizing. The disadvantage is dealing with huge packages of meat, fish, or seafood, but there is a workaround. Here's Case Study #1- Julie's use of the FERC Method

Importance of rotation in the freezer and actually USING your foods stocks and leftovers.

Save on work by planning meals better.

Quantity cooking. As long as you are going to make a mess in the kitchen, why not make eight meals at once (two proteins times two marinades times two sauces)? No more half can of tomato paste pushed to the back. Now that's meal planning "exponentially."
Fix enough plain rice (seasoned only with salt and pepper early in the week for several meals and divide into four zip locks. Rice actually tastes better slightly dried and after chilling and can accommodate to herbs, spices, and sauces well after the fact.