Quartermaster Detail: Meal Fatigue

I’ve got the weekly supply-run down to a science. But meal planning has me whipped.

If anyone has any pain-free ways to plan the weekly menu, I’m all ears. I now understand those meal-in-a-box TV commercials where the family has a religious experience at the supper table and the mother is beatified.

Anyhow, here’s how I handle the shopping part:

  1. Make a list of meals for the week. This goes on the refrigerator.
  2. Using SplashShopper on my Palm-based Treo (you could use any Palm device, even a low-cost one), I list all the ingredients for any meal that we haven’t tried before. I save this as a “Quick List.”
  3. Still using SplashShopper, I select Quick Lists for the rest of the week’s meals. This creates a complete shopping list, organized by store, section and aisle.
  4. I compare the shopping list on my Treo to our pantry, cross off the items we don’t need.
  5. I grab three collapsible crates and stash them in my Jeep.
  6. At the store I follow the list, organized by aisle. It takes about 20 minutes to do the week’s shopping.
  7. At the check-out I ask the baggers to pack the crates instead of bagging the goods. No more “paper or plastic?” for me.
  8. I load the three crates into the back of the Jeep. When I get home I haul the three crates from the garage to the kitchen. No more multi-bag trips. It works like clockwork.

Now if I could just get that kind of simplicity going with the meal selection in the first place I’d be in supply-chain heaven. But it’s mentally painful to try and decide who is going to be happy with what, who will be home to prep the meals or to even eat them, yadda, yadda, yadda.

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