Menu Planning 101

Grocery shopping becomes more efficient, faster, and cheaper when you plan your week's meals in advance. Your family's health gets a boost, too, if you include a focus on nutrition as you plan. The problem: it's hard to do, and it takes time. The good news? Life can become more balanced, and simpler, once you conquer weekly menu plans.

Considerations include cost, time, your level of cooking expertise, and overlapping nutrition concerns with all of these as well as your family's taste preferences. Nutritional factors include things like the American Heart Association's daily requirements (6-11 servings of bread, pasta, and starchy vegetables) or the American Diabetes Association's Pyramid - which is slightly different than the Department of Agriculture's new MyPyramid. There are others: South Beach, etc.

Once you have your nutritional parameters determined, you're ready to plan. For one week, you will need 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, 7 dinners. 21 meals.

They don't all have to be that different. Plan a basic smoothie recipe, and then have a variety of frozen fruit to use during the week for variety. Breakfast is done for most of the week. Salads for dinner: have several salad bags in the fridge, with a variety of "inserts" -- chicken, nuts, egg, cheese, mandarin oranges, cranberries, carrots, tomatoes, avocado, etc. Ditto for pasta. On Sunday afternoon, cook a casserole or two and many of your week's meals are ready for you: leftovers are great comfort food. Remember gooey sandwiches are great: improvise. Meatloaf for dinner is a meatloaf sandwich lunch. Grilled chicken breasts for dinner can be a great honey-mustard chicken sandwich the next day. Get a slow cooker and you've got several meals at the ready.

Don't make menu planning harder than it is ... strive for excellence, not perfection.

For serious planning, Meals.com is a free site dedicated solely to meal planning. Susan Nicholson offers weekly plans, for free, with recipes and grocery lists, at uexpress.com. So does LightandTasty.com. ArcaMax delivers 7-day menu plans to your email inbox each week, but no grocery list. Pinespring offers a nice option: you input a food item, and it returns with various recipes to make with the item.

Finally, there's the paperwork. OrganizedHome offers a great selection of free downloads: from "freezer inventory" to "shopping list" to weekly and monthly planner sheets.

Stress 101

Stress, left unmanaged, can result in many things: fatigue, headaches, irritability, changes in appetite, memory loss, low self-esteem, withdrawal, cold hands, high blood pressure, shallow breathing, nervous twitches, reduced sex drive, insomnia, other changes in sleep patterns, gastrointestinal disorders, as well as detrimentally impacting the body's immune response, thereby contributing to cardiovascular disease, cancer, endocrine and metabolic disease, and skin disorders. Many psychiatrists report that most back problems are caused by stress.

What happens? Inside your body, stress immediately results in an increase in adrenaline; eleveated blood pressure and a rising heart rate; muscle tension; a shutting down of the GI tract/digestion as the body prepares to fight or flee; rising cholesterol as fats and sugars are released; thickening of the blood, with a tendency to clot.

What to do?
1. Exercise. This is the fastest, immediate stress reducer. Walking is fine.
2. Consider your ways. Make changes to lessen the sources of stress.
3. Consider your diet. Cut out sugar, pre-fab food, caffeine, drink more water.
4. Ask for help. No man is an island.
5. Confess your sins. Take responsibility for your life. Manage yourself.
6. Pray. Whenever you catch yourself worrying, turn it into a prayer.
7. Sleep. Take a nap, make sure you get 8 hours during the night.
8. Stop and take several long, deep, full-lung breaths during the day.
9. Make a gratitude list. Stress distorts perspective; look around and recognize the good things that exist in your life - including the basics: you can see, walk, etc.
10. Take time-outs during the day. Every hour, get up, get out, stretch for a few minutes. Move.
11. Take supplements, including: B-Complex, to help your nervous system; Vitamin C, for adrenal function; Liquid Minerals, because these are depleted within one hour of the stressful situation. The University of Maryland Medical Center recommends: American, Asian, and Russian Ginseng, Brewer's Yeast, German and Roman Chamomile, Kava Kava, Lemon Balm, Skullcap, Tyrosine, and Valerian. MSM is also recommended by various health care providers to fight the effects of stress upon the body.


Sources: biotech.com, valerie saxion, mercola.com, University of Maryland.

Office Stuff - Cheap and Free

For great buys on business cards, notecards, stationery, etc., check out VistaPrint. The free business cards are nice, the only catch is a small ad ["from VistaPrint"] printed on the back.... They have a sale going on now, for various items -- and if you order, you'll get regular notices of other bargains and sales.

For free paper, take your old inkjet ink cartridges to Office Depot. Turn one in, and get a ream of paper. Free. There is a similar offer at Office Max, but only for certain ink suppliers. Office Depot doesn't care, they'll exchange no matter the source/manufacturer. The catch: only one ream per day.

For ink jet and laser printers alike, for both ink and specialty papers, try InkSell.com. If you live in San Antonio, you can visit one of their stores. Really great prices, and lots of kudos, quality awards, etc. - see the site for details.

Check out GotVMail for virtual office needs, great buy at $10/month. Lots of positive feedback for them, here.