What's For Dinner?
For nearly 2 years now I have been making out a weekly dinner menu every weekend for the next week. This is SO helpful to me! Honestly I don’t mind cooking, but I don’t like deciding what’s for dinner. So having "What’s for dinner?" planned out in advance (And posted on the fridge.) is a huge help to me! But after 2 years of doing this I started getting tired of trying to think up what we should eat for the week. So the family is now planning out the menu! What we do now is each week, each member of the family gets to chose one dinner meal. This gives us Mon – Friday scheduled out. (On the weekends we eat leftovers, eat out and/or my husband cooks.)
The family has been doing the menu now for a couple of months. One thing I noticed was that the kids kept picking the same meals over and over. So I sat down and made a list of all the things I could think of that I cook. I printed the list out and put it in a clear page protector on the side of the fridge. Now we can all review the list before we make our choice for the week.
Here is our list:
Dinner Ideas
Spaghetti
Porcupine Meatballs
Ravioli
Deli Style Sandwiches
Baked potatoes with broccoli and Cheese
Turkey Chili
Vegetarian Chili
Potato Soup
Kraft Mac Casserole with ham, peas and sour cream mushroom sauce
Chicken and Rice One Dish Bake (Campbell’s)
Asian Stir Fry
Fried Rice with Chicken and Peas
Tacos
Taco Salad
Black Beans and Rice
Grilled Chicken Shish-K-bobs
BLT’s
Waffles
Pancakes and Bacon
Breakfast Burritos
Bean Burritos
Chicken Enchiladas
Pizza
Chicken Fajitas
Bacon wrapped chicken with Alfredo sauce
Fettuccini Alfredo
Fettuccini Alfredo with ham and peas
Turkey Burgers
This has been a great help because we are not eating the same handful of things over and over. Like last night my youngest son picked Turkey Asian Lettuce Wraps and we hadn’t had them in over 2 years!
Organizing is a constant companion to homeschooling. The better the house runs the more time we have to have fun with our homeschooling!
Happy Homeschooling,
Jamin
Dana @ School For Us said,
February 9, 2010 at 7:32 am
What a great idea! Actually, lots of great ideas! 🙂 And, thanks for providing some links. I see some "new" recipes I think we'll have to try!
Dana, http://www.alexml.blogspot.com
amuller said,
February 9, 2010 at 9:09 am
Hey Jamin! I do something similar. My husband gets paid every 2 weeks, so I'd have to come up with 2 weeks of meals at a time. I call mine my Master Dinner List and put it in my household notebook so I can find it quickly. Since coupons and master store lists are in there too it makes it easy to plan, shop and shop for bargains! :o)
Anonymous said,
February 9, 2010 at 11:31 pm
This was a great post! I love to hear from other people who have tried recipes and put them on their family favorite list. You have inspired me to make our own Family Recipe List!