In the last week of June, a week that was my family's busiest week of the year, I decided to test-drive a cookbook I recently had received to see if "7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies" (Susan Nicholson, Wiley Publishing, 2010, $19.99) really could make mealtimes easier.
I'm not yet willing to own up to being a dummy, but I did concur that I was in the book's target audience. I'm chief cook for a busy family with enough activities on the schedule to cause me to all but abandon meal planning and preparation time on weekdays. "Something from the refrigerator" had become an all-too-frequent response to the question of what was for dinner.
Nicholson, a registered dietitian and syndicated columnist of 7-Day Menu Planner, promised solutions with a Dummies cookbook that outlined supper strategies for the entire year, night by night and week by week. I hesitated at first to commit to the planning ahead and following through that would be involved in the seven-day plan, worried that I wouldn't have the time for it. Then I decided that this approach might just make sense and I should give it a try.
"One reason to love the '7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies' is that it requires no thinking on your part. I've done it for you," Nicholson writes. "The truth is, I've been thinking nonstop about you and your meals for years and years (no kidding)."
Seven days spent with the pages of Week 27 proved the value of the approach and the challenges to it. I deliberately had chosen a week when I knew I would be particularly busy. Each weekday, a full day of work was followed almost immediately by getting into costume to perform in our church's Vacation Bible School, then getting the children and myself to church for the evening's activities, which concluded by 8:30 p.m. most nights but lasted until 10 p.m. on one night. I would be lucky to have 15 minutes to cook and eat dinner.
Clearly this week was going to be a challenge, so before the week began, I took my cookbook with me to shop. An hour and a half after I entered the grocery store, I pushed my cart of groceries to the car and remembered the cookbook I was supposed to bring in with me. (No wonder it's a cookbook for dummies!) This led to a trip to the grocery store early Sunday morning, at which I bought most of the ingredients needed. Almost a dozen items weren't available where I shopped, however, setting up another shopping trip and shifting the Sunday lamb chop dinner to another night.
On Monday night, I was too busy to cook or even eat dinner, and just skipped it. On Wednesday, I finally cooked the lamb chops, which were delicious and served as late dinner for two of us and breakfast for daughter Alison. They weren't going to please everyone, though: "I never want lamb chops" was the unambiguous text response from the man of the house to the menu for that night.
Those challenges aside, I was enjoying how the cookbook worked for me. The beef and bean chili verde was easy and delicious and, because it proved not to be a kid favorite, available for a second meal. Cornbread muffins boosted with fresh corn were a hit. Corned beef roll-ups went together fast, in only a minute, and were terrific. Picadillo-stuffed peppers were quickly mixed together at lunch, then cooked in the slow cooker all afternoon to be ready to serve for supper. Again, not a kid favorite in our house, freeing up servings for future adult meals. The baked chicken with Yukon gold potatoes made a big hearty pot, enough to enjoy all weekend and share with family. The job of marinating the lamb chops fell to a budding cook from the next generation, who did it beautifully so the chops were all ready for me to cook when I finally had the time.
On a week that isn't quite so busy, I hope to do a better job of preparing the main dishes on the assigned nights and getting the side dishes and desserts on the table. I'll be looking at other weeks in the "7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies," because I agree that planning ahead is an approach that works. You can always create your own weekly meal plans and menus, but often that's not an option and it's nice that someone else has done it for you.
Have you tried the "7-Day Menu Planner for Dummies"? Let me know how it works for you. We'll revisit the cookbook in a column later this summer.