Menu Board

Pinterest really is a great way to come up with new ideas for how to solve simple grievances around the house. For example, Robbie and I struggle with our grocery bill. We are determined to eat healthy, organic and local food because it is better for us, will help Mattimeo to grow up strong and healthy, and because it supports what we believe in and value. It is one way we can help the environment and support local businesses, and try to lessen our carbon imprint. However, eating healthy can come at a price. Especially when you are guilty of poor meal planning. Uneaten, rotting vegetables seemed to be composted on a regular basis because I either never made something I thought about trying, or simply forgot it was there. Sometimes I feel like I am just composting money. Because Robbie and I are trying to live frugally right now, wasting money is unacceptable. Robbie was tempted to start buying cheaper food, as we have cut our expenses done in every other possible way and all that remains is our unreasonably high grocery bills. While I agree that our bills are too high, I am not willing to sacrifice not eating well, and stubbornly hold onto this lifestyle while Robbie supports me. In the summer we grow our own food, and that helps a bit. But what would really help, is for us not to waste the food we already spend money on!

Here is where Pinterest has been really helpful. I couple months ago, I saw an idea for a menu board that would suit us perfectly. Last week I finally got around to getting the materials I needed and actually made it. What I like about this particular menu board is it encourages variety in your diet, you never have to wonder what you are going to have for dinner, and most wonderfully it creates a shopping list for you (so you only buy what you need). Here is what it looks like:

Now to explain how we made it. Robbie and I spent several hours one night brainstorming all the different meals we like to make for dinner and wrote them all down. We tried to make sure we included a lot of variety: lots of different vegetables, lots of different protein sources, lots of foods rich in iron, etc. One of the struggles we face as vegetarians is when we are feeling tired or not particularly creative, it is easy for us to fall back onto the same foods for dinner time. But in order for us be healthy and well-nourished, it is essential for us to have variety. So it was fun coming up with dozens of meal ideas, and we can add more as we experiment with new recipes or are introduced to new foods.

On a table in my word processor, I typed in all these different meal ideas into separate 1"x4" cells in once column. Then, in a column beside it, I made lists of all the ingredients I would need to make each meal. I also included the name of the cookbook I got the recipe from (if applicable) and the page number so it would be easy for me to look up the recipe when the time came. This table then got cut up and I pasted the meals on one side of a piece of card-stock and the ingredients on the other side.

The actual board it an 11"x14" picture frame. Inside the fame I used scrapbook paper and gardening twine to create a backdrop that would compliment the decor of our kitchen/dining room. On the outside of the frame, I decorated the bottom portions of lasagna boxes with a paper bag and the words "eat" and "ate" and affixed them to the glass using a hot glue gone. I then decorated clothes pins with the days of the week and glued them onto a flat portion of the frame.

How it works is all of the meal cards are stored in the "eat box". Each week, we go through the cards in the "eat" box, and create a dinner menu for the week, trying to keep things varied, balanced, and time appropriate (some days we need quick meals, and other days I have time to cook). We then have our menu for the week. I can then just flip all the cards over, look at the ingredients and see what we already have and what we are going to need to create a shopping list. As we finish a meal each day, we take the little card and put it in the "ate" box. Ideally, these will stay in there and not be used again until we cycled through the "eat" box, ensuring we have substantial variety in our diet.

So far we have used the menu board for a week, and love it! It was a lot of fun for us to create menu, found the shopping to be much easier, and I actually enjoyed preparing dinner more this way. For some reason, it didn't feel so daunting to make dinner this week, even though the meals were on the whole more complex and time consuming. I think it takes more energy than we gave credit to just in coming up with things to eat, and with that out of the way we have more time to enjoy the cooking process. I really believe it will help us manage our grocery shopping bill more effectively and help us to eat in a more balanced way, and I feel very enthusiastic about this new menu board! I highly recommend making one if you are suffering from any similar maladies.