Dinner can be a desperate time. If you work outside the home, it’s a rush to get everyone home and fed while you are cranky and tired … and so are they. If you are home with your children, then dinnertime is a time when the house is a mess and you’re trying to recover from the day. If you or your children have specific mealtime needs and wants, that makes mealtime even more difficult. Sometimes, the short-order mealtime cook feels ready to give up and order delivery, day after day.
We’ve been going through one of those periods recently. My daughter is getting a little pickier about what she eats, and I have specific dietary requirements too. I was getting a bit tired of the same old desperate dinnertime feeling, that feeling of “I don’t know what I am going to cook.” Over the past few years, I’ve developed great skills in cooking with what’s available, even if that is an odd pairing like peanut butter and broccoli. Steamed broccoli with Thai peanut sauce, anyone?
Lately, I’ve rediscovered the meal plan. I used to plan out meals a month in advance. We shopped in bulk for the month and then cooked from the pantry. We bought fresh fruits and vegetables every week, but that was about it.
I’ve decided that if my brain isn’t going to provide me with quick and easy answers about what to cook every night, it’s back to the meal plan for our family. How do we do this? We make a list of about twenty meals that everyone enjoys. I list the meals on a monthly menu and itemize the contents of these meals. That becomes our weekly grocery list. No fuss, no muss, no thought involved, and we always have the supplies for dinner.
Do you set out a weekly or monthly meal plan for your family?