Day -49 and counting

Wow just 49 days until the beginning of the 2009 NaNoWriMo! Today my husband, daughter and I went grocery shopping and for the first time I used coupons. I saved eleven dollars! Ten percent of my total bill! Today I also wrote out my basic menu for November. No, I haven't written one out for October yet nor did I make one for September but I really like what I did to enable myself to do it. It's kind of hard to make a menu for an entire month at one sitting unless you've got a strategy. My strategy started with the fact that we eat basically three types of meat around here. chicken, beef and pork (others might eat fish instead of pork but the idea would still be the same). Then I considered the fact that we eat primarily three types of complex carbohydrates--potatoes, rice and pasta. I took the three different kinds of meats and matched them with the three different kinds of complex carbs, I had nine combinations. Next I thought of a meal that had chicken and rice, I wrote it down, I thought of one with chicken and pasta, I wrote it down. I continued down the list until I had at least one meal for each combination. I thought of some meals that don't fit into those catagories, I wrote them down too. For instance, pizza doesn't fit in those categories and neither really does ham and beans and corn bread, nor does chili. those are all meals we enjoy eating in November. By the time I finished adding up all the meals I could make, I came up with 40 different meals that our family would enjoy during the Autumn season and November only has 30 days! It wasn't hard to take that list and figure out 30 suppers for the 30 days of November. And now that I have the list of different meals, I'll be able to buy my groceries ahead and precook some of the components of the meals in October for November so that I won't have to take the time when I'm writing my novel to think about what I'm going to feed my family. I'm so proud of myself. I think I'll pat myself on the back.