It’s almost too good to be true. Part of my mind has still not accepted it and prob­ably won’t accept it until the delivery arrives. FreshDi­rect extended their delivery area to our neigh­bor­hood. I can now have quality gro­ceries deliv­ered again. Believe me, this is a big thing. The gro­cery stores around here are not very good. They carry no almost no seafood, almost no organic ingre­di­ents, and the pro­duce is both lim­ited and low quality. The only time we get good pro­duce around here is at the green market on the weekend (assuming we wake up early enough to beat the old Asian ladies to the spot).

I’m using this new and wel­come devel­op­ment as moti­va­tion for putting Monica and I back on a menu. I think of it as being on a budget, except in this case we plan what we’ll eat rather than what we’ll spend. Of course, this is just our din­ners and not every meal, but I still think this is a better way to live. I have two rea­sons sup­porting this posi­tion. First, it pro­vides an oppor­tu­nity for cre­ative thinking. Just like everyone else, I look too see what food items are on sale, avail­able, and in season. From there, I begin fig­uring out inter­esting ways to use those starting items. Some­times I rely on old favorites but I also try to include vari­a­tions or entirely new recipes. The second reason is health. Too often in the last few months, Monica and I have had this phone conversation:

“So, have you thought about dinner?”

“No, not really. Any ideas?”

“No. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

I’m sure we’re not the only couple that has this con­ver­sa­tion. For folks like us who believe in having our dinner together/as a family, this kind of inde­ci­sion can lead to expen­sive or less healthy eating options like dining out, fast food, or take-out food. For us, take-out usu­ally involves fried chicken from the local Chi­nese place. I don’t know how they do it, but their fried chicken is fantastic.

Plan­ning a weekly menu in advance allows us to ensure vari­a­tion and nutri­tional bal­ance. It also allows us to make our pur­chases when we have time to think about the type (organic?) or quality of ingre­di­ents we intend to use in our dishes. When you shop last minute, after work during a busy week, you are often at the mercy of what’s con­ve­nient. Plan­ning ahead can also make sure that any ingre­di­ents you pur­chase in large quan­tity (cilantro, anyone?) can be put to mul­tiple uses, making sure they are fully con­sumed before they rot in the fridge.

Of course, putting your­self on a menu takes some work and some ded­i­ca­tion. You don’t want to skip a planned meal when you’ve already pur­chased the ingre­di­ents. It can be tempting to do that on a really busy day when you just want to relax instead of cook. But for all the time we waste in our lives watching tele­vi­sion or surfing the internet, there’s no excuse not to have the time or energy to cook. As Ruhlman says, the food doesn’t have to be com­pli­cated, but it should be home made.

Plan­ning also takes some work. You need to think about what you are going to do. Surf Epicurious.com for recipes. Break out the cook­books or the latest issue of Saveur and try that new thing. And in our house­hold, it often means a trip to the Asian market to find that odd spice, strange veg­etable, or unique sauce that you cannot find any other place. But I have to admit that, in ret­ro­spect, the effort is almost always worth the result.