Thanks everyone! We've just returned from our Chinatown excursion. It was a long but fun day. We ate a lot of Chinese baked buns: cocktail buns, pineapple buns, BBQ pork buns, and hotdog buns! Little man and I joked about our fun buns lunch! LOL We went to the Chinese Cultural Center but things were not quite set up. Seemed like they were not going to be ready until this weekend. So we went to visit a few Chinese grocery stores. OMG, it was like a zoo everywhere. People were shopping like crazy. No surprise though, two more days of shopping before the big day. We bought a pack of Chinese New Year treat called Cows Ears, some deep fried cookies, for the occasion. But we were out for so long that we ended up eating the whole bag before making it home! LOL Image of Cows Ears: Then I bought these gorgeous Chinese kumquat (like mini oranges). They are small but sweet in a strange way. Hard to explain. I did save some for the Tray of Togetherness. Image of kumquats: We are going to the zoo all day tomorrow so I will make the shrimp dumplings tonight. Will start the chicken congee in the slow cooker before we leave tomorrow morning. By the time we get home we will just heat up the shrimp dumplings and eat them with the chicken congee. Should be another fun day for us. By the way, hubby and little man just ate two of the Lo Mai Gai and they LOVED it. So it's worth the time making them. :-) Al

I guess this one is right up my alley. I'm mom of 4 sons though only one is still on the "payroll" though he's now off at college. Anyway there were a lot of years cooking for 6 and 5 of them were VERY hungry! I still use a plan though it's much looser and of course easier! Living 10 miles from a store and having a crowd to feed, I found doing a weekly menu saved me from living at the grocery store! I have a day that I go to the store and that day, I'll take stock of any items from the week before that I didn't use or any meals from the previous week that I never got around to cooking. Then I sit down with one or two cookbooks and start in. I jot down about 4 breakfasts and a few lunches if I think that people will be around (summer etc) but don't put a huge amount of thought into these two. I can always whip up a good breakfast with whats on hand for the most part. With kids around, plan on some nutritious snacks. For dinner, I plan out however many meals we'll need for the week. I usually figure that I'll have one meal where we either do leftovers or I defrost something from the freezer. We also usually eat out about once a week. So that leaves me with selecting 5 true menus. I do it all from veggies, salads, starch, bread and main dish. Be sure to make a note of the page in the cookbook for any new recipes. Look at your calendar for the week and be sure you have enough no brainers for the busy days. Cook extra chicken/meat and use it for a second meal turned into sandwiches, soup, or a casserole. Shopping for a week is easy and feasible. Do your meals that require the freshest produce at the beginning of your week and save the meatless/soup/pizza/sandwich meals for later in the week. Precook or freeze any meats that you'll be having at the end of the seven days. I'd usually need to pick up more milk midweek as my guys guzzled more than a gallon a day. I keep the menu paper on my island, and I feel free to substitute and change the meal or parts of the meal as needed swapping days etc. Remember nothing is written in stone!!! I think part of your "negative" slant on the menu planning may be that you don't want to be pinned down. Roll with the flow, change meals around.... it's only a guideline not military orders that you must follow to a T!!! Grace

Giia everyone has made great suggestions re: chewing meat, nuts and seeds, dietary issues, fresh vs freezing. You will have varying factors to which you will have to adapt the meals. Also herbs and spices can be issue, either the elders can't tolerate them or their taste buds are such that they want more seasoning. You'll figure it out as you go. Amck, God bless you for helping your parents. Helping my elderly family was very rewarding and yes frazzling at times. (The whole "tour of duty" lasted a span of 15 years culminating with my Dad moving in with us for his last 7 years. Yup 22 years total. Oh and I worked full time. Whew!) My aunts and uncles either never married or did not have children and I'm an only child so I became the caregiver for 6 elderly folks all at the same time. They were all very appreciative which made it so much easier. The Drs. appt's, weekly medicine set up, cooking, interviewing and overseeing housekeepers made it hectic. Cooking for them was my favorite part but I gave up my whole day every Sunday to do it. The bonus was I didn't have to cook for my family all week since the meals were already made. My kids were little so we made a game out of it and they learned to cook. At the end of the day we would "visit" all the relatives while we delivered the meals. I wouldn't change a thing! I'm very fortunate that my in-laws were younger at the time and even now are spry at 80 and 83 and self sufficient. When the time comes, we'll do it again for them.

I follow weight watchers and I find that if I plan out our weekly menu it's easier, I eat healthier and it's much less expensive, though I will admit there were weeks (especially while house hunting) where everything got messed up. It's difficult to be dedicated to this, but when we don't (I mean, when I don't) plan we either eat out or eat pasta. I have a huge list of food blogs that I go to for ideas. We also eat very little meat during the week because we do not support factory farms and cannot really afford the meat otherwise. We have DH daughter on weekends, so we save the meat meals for then, otherwise it's just the 2 of us. I do the planning and buy the groceries, DH cooks, but I do get his OK on the chosen meals. So, here is what I do. Sometime during the weekend I check out what we have left that needs to be used up and write that down. Then I ask DSD and DH if they have any requests for the next weekend. Then I start searching/reading my food blogs and weight watchers cook books. I find recipes or whatever for dinners Sunday - Saturday night, and either more for lunches, or plan the dinners to be bigger to accommodate extra portions. Then I get "approval" from DH. I write up 2 lists (I like to write things down). 1 is each recipe's ingredients. The other is all the items we need from the store. This way if I get to the store and need to eliminate one of the recipes or make some other change, I can check all the recipes and see if that will cause changes anywhere else. We do the shopping Sunday. I try to plan for an easy meal for Sunday night cuz who wants to do all that work after shopping? Otherwise, each meal does not have a set day. It seems like a lot of work, but honestly, our grocery bill has dropped dramatically, and it's so much easier to come home and check the list for dinner then to come home tired at the end of the day to a bunch of random groceries and say "hm, what can we make out of this", which is when we end up eating out, not cost effective. Life does get in the way, he does get too tired to cook, but I do try to plan some simple meals for the worst days. Grilled veggie burgers is one of them. He wants to make up a spreadsheet of meals we've tried and rate them for easy picking when I don't have time to plan. This week is bad because my back is very injured and I've been in a lot of pain since Saturday. I don't think it even occurred to him to plan or go shopping :( But my appetite is pretty much gone, so we can have pasta all week if he wants LOL I'd like to eventually get to the once or twice a month cooking, but that's a very long term goal! I hope this ramble helped someone!!!