Problem: My family wants to eat. Rude, right?
I have learned a lot about myself during my time on earth…. My personal naptime is at 3 pm, I don’t grow much leg hair and I HAVE to pick out dinner before noon, or I might as well just hand my money over to the chinese takeout guy. Ok, maybe not — but it’s just REALLY HARD for me to pick it out later in the day. I must admit, I’m a morning person. I awake to the day FULL of energy and ready to take on whatever life throws at me, but come 2 or 3 pm….Zzzz….
Hence, I have come-up with a system for how to decide what’s for dinner:
First off, I pick out my menu plan every couple of weeks or so. You can see all my menu plans here. That’s just 7-10 dishes that we have the items for on hand. However, I just can’t assign dates at that point. I really like to assess how I’m feeling, what we have going on (which changes minute to minute), who we’re feedin and what we’ve eaten recently before picking out that day’s meal.
Then, I comb through the items in that menu plan. If the day is going to be crazy busy, I sometimes throw the menu plan aside (many of those dishes require more prep than my other “emergency” meals) and pick one of these:
1. Spaghetti
2. Tacos
3. Burritos
5. Baked Potato Bar
Those tend to be my stand-bys for particularly ugly nights. I try to only have ONE of those once a week. They probably aren’t the healthiest or most varied diet, but sometimes dinner is just sustinance.
Or, I pick something delicious off the menu plan. Here are 5 of my family’s favorite meals:
1. Lemon shrimp
2. Cincinatti chili
4. Chickpeas with Broccoli Rabbe
5. Parmesan Tilapia
Take some time to write down 10 of your family’s favorite meals. I find that if I serve a favorite every few days, my kids are more willing to try my new things (usually from my Pinterest boards) when I give them a go.
How do YOU decide what’s for dinner? I hope some of you use a dart board, I think THAT would be cool. 🙂
Lynness says
I did menu plans at one point, but found that most nights I changed it (just had beef the night before, no time, etc), so for about 3 years now, I have done a retrospective meal calendar: on a white board, I write what we had AFTER the fact. I also made a list of all the meals we usually eat, categorized by meat type (including meatless). So when it’s time to cook, I just look at what we’ve had recently (hmmm, tacos last night and fish the night before that- let’s do chicken tonight) and then look at the meal list under chicken. And I’m the opposite of you- I hardly ever know what dinner will be before it’s time to cook, but it helps tremendously that I always have cooked chicken, ground beef, and some sort of beans in the freezer from my bulk sale buys. I’ve never seen anyone else plan meals this way, but it totally works for me.
Hilary says
So, how do you get your meat thawed out in time? That’s a big part of the morning pick… and frankly, your way sounds really smart! 🙂
Lynness says
It’s already cooked, so I nuke it on defrost just enough so that it’s not a big frozen blog, but can be broken apart. Usually less than 5 min. If it’s something from uncooked, I usually use the boneless skinless individually quick-frozen chicken breasts from Costco. They thaw quickly. If I’m doing a roast, I will pull that down the night before, but that’s usually a Sunday dinner-type thing. I often buy meat that’s reduced because the sell-by date is the next day, so sometimes I’ll just buy something know I either need to cook it or freeze it and plan my meal around that.
Hilary says
Makes sense…. you are a smart lady. 😉
Havok says
Heck, I wish I had the *room* for a dart board!
Normally, I plan meals week to week, and I’ll ask the Mister what he wants each day, and half the time I end up deciding it all anyway. We normally eat the same things over and over, just in different order. We’ve tried doing the “pick dinner on that day” thing before, but it never worked out well – we had a kitchen full of food, but nothing sounded good. With choosing it ahead of time, there’s no worrying about if it sounds good or not – that’s what’s for dinner, and if you don’t like that, we don’t eat dinner that night, ha!
Hilary says
Yes, it does seem to end-up being the “maker’s” choice… and getting it on the table is often just good enough! 🙂