2012 - a year of Conscious Self Care

I create a menu plan for the week!
Creating a menu plan for the week not only helps you to get organized, it also helps you save waste. How much food do you throw out because it has expired or you bought it thinking you would use it at some stage and never did?

Every Sunday I sit down with some favorite recipe books and create a menu for the week. It only takes half an hour and at the end of the process I know not only what we are going to eat for the week but also what I will need to buy. This saves me money at the grocery store because I don’t buy things I don’t need.

You need to look at your upcoming week and decide who is going to be home to eat meals and how much time you will have to cook your meals.  If Ian is away for a few days, then I know that I only need to cook for myself but I’ll make a serving for two so that I can eat it the next day for lunch or dinner, saving me time. This is great if you know you have to work late one night. You already have the main course cooked and you can vary it with a different side dish.
We have provided you with a great little tool called the ‘Enrich Food Planner‘.

On the front is a shopping list and on the back is the menu planner. When you work out what meals you will be preparing then you list the ingredients you will need to buy on the shopping list. This way you know that you will have all the ingredients needed to make the recipe on the appropriate day instead of wasting time racing to the supermarket to get what you need that day.

It may seem like a hassle to have to sit down and prepare for the week but believe me the energy it saves you in regards to time, money, environment, health and stress is enormous and once you get into the habit you will never want to stop.
My menu plan excites me
Food nourishes the body.  It is the fuel for life so you need to be excited about what goes in it. When planning a menu for the week, it’s good to look at recipe books and pick the recipes that make you look forward to that day. When you give your meal planning attention, then you are consciously making healthier choices instead of deciding at the last minute what to feed the family and then making the decision based on limited time and choices. This leads to eating fast food or what I call ‘same old same old’, meals that you revert to because they are quick and easy and you’ve cooked them a thousand times.

Exciting meals doesn’t mean restaurant quality or Masterchef induced dishes.   They are simply meals that make you go hmmm, because you know that they are healthy and that they are easily prepared according to your love or lack of it, for cooking in the kitchen. You don’t have to enjoy cooking but there will be meals that you love to eat that are not that painful to cook. With a little preparation and organization you can sit down to food that excites you.

My menu plan fits into my life and is realistic
This is where you need to be totally realistic and tell it like it is. If you have little time to cook then it’s no use planning a three course menu.  It’s not going to happen. If you have children that don’t eat what you like to eat, you will find yourself preparing two or three different meals.  Then it’s futile to cook a recipe that takes two hours to prepare because you will be too tired to eat it

When you decide on a recipe make sure that it fits into your lifestyle and your commitments for that day. There are so many cooking shows and websites now dedicated to great healthy easy options that don’t break the budget and don’t require a university degree to cook it. Spend some time finding recipes that you love to cook and eat and then create a filing system so that you can easily find them when you want to make them again. It’s also a good idea when trying new recipes to rate them so that you know if it was a winner or not.

I only buy food according to the menu plan and to replenish low stocks of staples. By sticking to the shopping list, you will know exactly what you need to buy so you won’t be tempted to throw in that extra packet of biscuits as you walk down the biscuit isle. It definitely saves you money at the register and prevents unnecessary wastage.

I don’t have junk food in the house
If you are trying to lose weight then you are tempting fate by having a junk drawer full of all those forbidden goodies that tease you every time you walk past. It’s like sticking a bone in front of a dog and then telling it not to eat it.  It’s darn cruel, that’s what it is. If it’s not in the house then you can’t eat it.  Unless of course you get into your car and drive down to the 7/11 in the middle of the night and then I would say there’s a  bigger issue than a chocolate craving going on.
My kitchen is clean
The kitchen is sometimes the heart of the home. There is so much energy happening in that space and so it’s important to make sure that there is no energy loss happening as well. That’s why it’s important to have a clean and tidy kitchen. There’s nothing worse than walking past a sink full of dirty dishes and thinking, ‘oh I must get to those’.  Because each time that happens you’re losing energy.  The Fly Lady is a great website for learning how to keep your kitchen and house clean.

When you are preparing nutritious, loving meals for your friends and family you deserve a pleasant environment to work in. This space should be clean and free from germs that spread disease. Imagine if you went to a restaurant and after your meal you walked into the kitchen and saw dirt and grime and cockroaches. You would probably be sick so you wouldn’t want that kind of environment in your own home.

It may take a little time at the start but trust me, when you are organized the amount of time you save during the week far outweighs the time spent at the beginning.

The more organized you are in the little things means great rewards for the big things!

Filed under: Health and Wellbeing, Peak Performance

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