I too do some serious menu planning. Here's an example of approx one week plus of main meals. The major shopping run usually involves two stops: Berkeley bowl for fish and meat and vegetables and then a specialty shop for dry pasta, fresh mozz and other cheeses and deli meats. There are always changes and reversals. At least once or twice a week I try to make something that gives us leftovers. Typically we eat a long latish breakfast, rarely involving any cooking and then linner in the afternoon or early evening. Snacking occurs at odd hours; we don't plan a sit-down lunch. Sometimes we make a special run for seafood if we are in the mood. And when we are really low on supplies and I can't stand the idea of cooking we go for take out lox, bagels, etc and that's a meal, with sliced cucumber and radishes or whatever, to pretend we are having a vegetable. About half our meals are vegetarian or use a chicken or ham broth but no meat. No blackboard though that's very impressive! Just a miserable list of scribbles and cross-outs.
Day One: shopping day. Always seafood of some kind.
Shrimp wonton soup with home made broth and choi sum. No, I don't make my own skins, good ones are available.
2. Large caesar salad and sauteed corn with green chile. Probably some easy app or side.
3. Chicken stir fry with cabbage, choi sum, Chinese chives on rice. Extra rice made for next day.
4. Fried rice with a variety of veggies and a bit of smoky ham.
5. Pizza and a fennel salad. Three kind of pizza: radicchio and garlic, tomato, ham and pineapple, all with fresh mozz. Lots of slices left over.
6. Leftover pizza of course, and a very simple spinach gratin w/no cheese.
7. Dan Dan rice noodle soup with the rest of the choi sum.
8. Eggplant pasta casserole and a fennel salad. Frank Bruni's mother's recipe--really good--no meat and minimal cheese.
9. Leftover casserole and crudites; some scrounging.
10. Red beans and rice, using ham stock from the freezer. Leftover beans usually get frozen for some desperate evening.
Things I always have frozen: chicken breasts, marinara sauce and thick tomato sauce for pizza, , Italian sausage, two kinds of stock, roasted hot green chile, some kind of cooked beans, edamame and peas. The freezer is usually pretty crowded.
Oh, and about corned beef. My dad, due I assume to some secret past, loved using canned corned beef to make hash. I assumed that corned beef was exclusively a canned product or only something sliced in a deli. Corn a beef? Huh?
