menu planning

Okay, this is a homemaking post much more than it is a church year post, but after yesterday's liturgy-heaviness, I feel like the back half of my mind is too busy meditating on death and redemption to write much about it. (Everytime I see our priest mark my babies' foreheads with crosses and intone "from dust you came, and to dust you shall return", I get a sucker-punched feeling that just doesn't go away too quickly.)

On the other hand, I just planned my menus for the next few weeks, and that, being coporeal and all, is easier to write about.

Menu planning is absolutely one of my favorite homemaking tasks. I love, love, love to cook - especially new recipes - and I love, love, love knowing exactly what I'm going to cook. (Have I mentioned that I'm a firstborn who hates surprises? No? Well, I am.) Menu planning and cooking are huge creative outlets for me.

I like balancing vegetarian meals with meals with meat. I like finding dishes that are healthy, cheap and yummy (this is just about as easy, btw, as finding clothes that are pretty, cheap, comfortable and can be thrown in the dryer). I shop every two weeks and so I enjoy the challenge of balancing the produce I buy so that the most perishable stuff will be used up first. I like taking my husband's inordinate love of cilantro and ginger into account when I pick my recipes. (He, in turn, indulges me in my inordinate love of reading the completed menu aloud to him.)


Okay, I know I said this was more about homemaking than it was about the church year, but I can't help but notice that menu planning is a tool, and like most tools, it can be used not only for the job it's meant to do (i.e., getting food on the table every night), but it can be used to love people. It'd be fun if I were doing this as a professional chef, and I'm sure there are ways you could do that job with great love (I just don't know how, not having been one), but there's a special sort of joy in doing this for my family. Joy in seeing them well-fed, happy around the supper table, full of energy from what they ate. My common prayer when I pray for our food is: "Thank you, Lord, for this food. May we use the energy we get from it to glorify You." Meals are just such a time of rejoicing and thanksgiving and fellowship. Your body and heart are fed at the same time. No wonder the commonest of all Christian institutions is a meal.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica