May 7, 2009

Menu Planning Tip: Check the Weather

I've been planning weekly menus for a couple of months now. I used to do it years ago, and started again recently when Marc and I decided that I should cook more so we could stop spending so much on take out.

I've gotten better about planning my menus around what I already have and what needs to be used up, and yesterday I figured something out that I'm going to put into practice this coming week:

I'm going to check the 7-day weather forecast when planning my menu.

Why is this important? Well, my car thermometer read 99 degrees yesterday. And I'd planned on making pizza for dinner, which of course meant turning on the oven.

I made the pizzas anyway, and they were delicious. But I realized that I can possibly avoid this problem in the future by checking the weather forecast.

Of course, pretty soon, every day the temperature will hit 100+ degrees and I'm planning to keep my oven use down to once a week when we get into summer. But until that happens, I'm checking the weather forecast before I plan my menu!

Previously: Menu Planning: Getting Started

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I live in Australia for a time as a kid and in the summer it was unbearable heat. The nights were hot, but not as bad, so my mother used the time bak feature on the oven and would set it to cook dinner at around 3 a.m. Then she woke up in the morning to cooked food and no oven use!

Clean ClutterFree Simple said...

That's a great idea. We like to grill on nice days, and I always feel silly when I've planned a meal that requires the oven on a day we could have grilled.

Camille said...

:-) I made my menu last Friday and THEN checked the weather and realized it would be in the upper 90s all week. That's not hot enough yet here for me not to use the oven (it has to be around 105), but it reminded me that it is time to switch to stove top, Crock Pot and toaster oven cooking. I have an entire section of my recipe/menu binder for the hot weather.