Today is St. Patrick's Day.  I am going to make Irish Beef and Guiness Stew as found on Catholic Cuisine along with Shamrock Pretels also found on CC.  I have been making menu plans for the past four weeks.  I plan two weeks at a time as I go grocery shopping every two weeks.  The actual planning takes a long time to do.  I am thinking about planning for just one week at a time as this may be less stressful or maybe I just need more practice. 

"Winging it" isn't really descriptive of the meal planning I had been doing before.  Although I hadn't  really written out an official menu for each week, I had certain groceries I got on a regular basis for the meals that I made at least once during the week making sure I made a list of the groceries I would need for a few new dishes for the week as well. 

It is nice knowing what I am going to fix for supper on any given day though I think I make more labor intensive dishes than I would if I had a looser plan.  This means that I have been expending more energy on cooking and perhaps have less time for other things like blogging or reading blogs.  This may be one reason why I haven't posted in a while.

Anyway, it is a work in progress.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!