If I am being completely honest I have not been very good about making dinner for the last year or so. I have a million excuses--pregnancy, new baby, too tired, missing ingredients, the meat is frozen, no time, etc. and although my sub-par efforts have been full of good intentions, nothing lasts long and I make the same meals over and over again even though it seems like I can remember being able to make so much more than ravioli, tacos, and grilled cheese! I realized tonight that everything I made all of last week had a somewhat "Mexican" food theme about it and I wondered if my family noticed? I have tried the whole make a menu at the beginning of the week approach several times and it usually doesn't last longer than 2 or 3 weeks. This is probably also due to the fact that I make Andrew do most of the grocery shopping since he is already at Costco and drives past 2 WinCo stores on the way home from work. I had a light-bulb moment though tonight and so I thought I would share it here in case anyone else struggles with dinner ideas like I do. And if this is not new to anyone but me, then I guess I am revealing my ignorance!
I sat down tonight and made a list of all the things I could think of that I make for dinner, then I went through my recipes and found several more that I forgot that I like and used to make. Then I wrote all of those different dinners down on individual 3x5 cards and placed them in a stack. I then let Adrian and Andrew draw out 5 cards. (I usually only plan to make 5 dinners in a week because with leftovers and possible dinners with family that seems to be more than enough food for us.) At this point if I knew that I really lacked some of the ingredients or if there were some that fell in the same category (for instance tacos and taco salad) then I put it back in the stack and had them draw a different one. These 5 cards I put on the freezer door so I would see them in the morning and remember to thaw out whatever meat I may need. Once the dinners have been made and the week is over those cards go in their own stack so that I don't make that meal again until we have cycled through all of them. Hopefully this system works and gets me out of the rut I find myself in!
A note on implementing this system with food storage: I told my family that they get to rate dinner every night. The "5 Star" dinners are the ones that I will try to have our food storage based strongest on. I want to eventually get to the point where the ingredients for all of our dinners are readily available in our food storage (exception for fresh/refrigerated ingredients of course). If I run across any super popular dinners I may just share the recipes here...
4 comments:
I can/t believe I did not ever think of that! How fun and to get the family involved takes the "I don't like that" syndrome. I might have to do something similar around here and I think I will post the idea on the food storage blog. You are awesome - I am glad you are my daughter:)
That is genious! Thanks for sharing! Why is it that mexican is so easy? I always make mexican!
That's a great idea! I think I should do something like this myself. Thanks for sharing :)
That actually is a pretty good idea. Every Sunday I plan the meals for the week, but a lot of the time I am experimenting with recipes (which sometimes don't turn out very well), and sometimes Jeff isn't a fan of what's on the menu. But having him and Porter get involved sounds like an awesome idea. And my recipes are everywhere - I need to organize them, especially the favorites.
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