Wouldn’t it be great to get home from work at night and have dinner already planned, prepared or even cooking? The every night question for so many is “What’s for Dinner?” but there is often no answer. Cooking dinner for your family becomes an unnecessary stress, especially when you are the only one planning, preparing and cooking the meal…everyday. It doesn’t have to be that way. Whether you work full-time or stay home and take of your family, dinner doesn’t have to be a hassle. With just a little bit of planning and preparation, you can answer the question “What’s for Dinner” without thought.
Create a Menu Planner
Creating a menu planner does not have to be difficult. It can be as simple as you want it to be; even writing on a sheet of scrap paper is fine, if that works for you. However, the best menu planner is one that you can reuse each week. Your menu planner should be easy to change according to your schedule. I suggest using a dry erase board or a chalkboard for those just getting started.
List Your Favorite Meals
There are a couple of ways to do this and here is where the family comes in to menu planning.
1. Make a list of your favorite foods upfront. Ask the family for their favorite food ideas or list them yourself if you know them all. Include new recipe ideas or suggestions from the family on this list.
2. Wing It. I’m not kidding. Go ahead and continue figuring it out every night. The only difference is, after you have cooked each night, you need to make a list of the foods you prepared. Do this for one month, adding each meal to the list. At the end of the month, you should have a list of (roughly) thirty dinners that you cooked and hopefully, your family loved.
Don’t Forget the Recipes
This is SUPER important! Most people start a menu plan by writing down a bunch of meal ideas, some they have never prepared, and they never include the recipes. Therefore, when it comes time to make the meal, they have no idea how to prepare the ingredients. You need to include the recipes for those meals you have never cooked.
Start Menu Planning
Now that you have a menu planner and suggestions on how to begin writing it, it is time to start menu planning. Go through your list of meal ideas and write them on a corresponding day of the week or month on your menu planner. Choose your meals based on your schedule. For example, you would not want to prepare Yankee Pot Roast on a night when you have a meeting at 5:00 pm. Frozen pizza or tacos might be a better choice for that day. Save the Yankee Pot Roast for a Saturday or Sunday.