Food Nanny Notebooks

A few months ago I introduced you all to my Aunt Liz and recommended her fabulous, downhome, country cookbook.

I’ve been cooking at least one meal a week from that cookbook ever since. It’s not exactly fat free food, but it is wonderful homey comfort food like some lucky people’s grandmas used to make.

As much as I love the recipes, what’s really been a lifesaver for me is the philosophy behind it. Liz is on a mission to get families back to the table together, and she created a method of making that job easier that is super common sense, like all the best ideas. Liz has theme nights she uses to narrow down her choices when she’s planning a menu. So instead of choosing from all the recipes ever created, she just picks one for “Mexican Night.”

I’ve totally adopted her theme night philosophy. Meal planning was always my least favorite chore because I’d spend hours sorting through a whole library of recipes. It just makes so much sense to create categories to choose from to make my life simpler.

Liz has theme nights that she recommends to get you started, but she also recommends customizing them to fit the needs of your family, so we do:

Monday: Comfort Food (because everybody hates Mondays and needs something to feel good about)
Tuesday: Ethnic Food (because we couldn’t pick just one or two favorite cuisines)
Wednesday: Fish and Meatless (Bear’s least favorite night of the week)
Thursday: WILD CARD! (For special family favorites or to try out new recipes)
Friday: Pizza Night (homemade of course)
Saturday: Grill Night (Here’s where living in San Diego comes in handy)
Sunday: Company Food (you know – the fancier, fussier meals)

To make my job even easier I got myself a bunch of notebooks (and of course they had to be color coded since I’m OCD like that) so that I could just flip to the one book I need to plan each nights meals.

Now that the notebooks are made, I have to get the recipes all in one place to put them inside. That’s a little daunting when you have a bookshelf full of cookbooks. But this is why it’s on my year long goal list. I figure that once I get a meal just the way we like it, if I spend a few minutes while feeding the baby or on the phone typing that recipe up, it won’t take terribly long before I’ll be all organized. AND, doing it that way will force me to actually decide if I like the recipe before just adding it to the collection. My first cookbook I compiled right after marriage…well, I don’t know if I’ve even tried half the things in there. And yet I’ve carted it around for ten years. It’s time to streamline.