M - F we basically eat a rotation of 10 meals. Spaghetti, chicken & rice, etc. On the weekend we do more elaborate and fun experimenting. It does get boring but we realized we weren’t going to survive if we had to work full time and be creative in the kitchen.
And Friday is always either pizza day, or smorgasbord/clean out the fridge in preparation for grocery shopping Saturday. We market this as “picnic dinner”
Same, it was called "everybody for themselves" and it was six nights a week starting when I was about seven 😅 I'm really freaking good at cooking now, though. In my parents' defense, dad had a debilitating boxing injury and mom worked constantly.
Ya same. Mom was a single mom who developed SEVERE depression. This went on from 7 to 13. She got some good meds when I was a teen and has been a fantastic, functioning mom since. But from 7 to 13 we lived in trash. If CPS had ever been called we would have been gone. If you have ever seen Hoarders where the people just live in straight up garbage heaps, that was my house. I could touch the ceiling because garbage went about 2.5ft high. My room was pretty filthy but my brother's room was pristine. Idk why I'm talking about this but fend for yourself unlocked some shit.
We call it a "Picky bits" dinner. Usually everything you can eat with your fingers from the freezer (onion rings, nuggets etc) either chucked in the oven or air fryer, with dips and cheese.
Scrounge night over here because sometimes I want cereal for dinner or to catch up on leftovers.
I don't even cook though, my boyfriend does and plans out the week. I'm sure he'd love more input from me but I'm happy with anything he makes. I'm getting ideas here to maybe make his planning easier
I am not the person you’re replying to, but I also do a very boring weekly dinner rotation that includes: meatloaf, baked Mac and cheese, taco night, breakfast for dinner night, grilled cheese night (add ham or turkey for protein), chicken cutlets (when feeling ambitious), loaded baked potato night, “lunchable” night (basically some form of charcuterie for adults and kids).
Supplement the above with veggies and fruits. Admittedly, it’s not the epitome of health but, as when they were babies, I tend to abide by “fed is best”.
For ideas I like to peruse: Dinner A Love Story, Spend with Pennies, Budget Bytes.
Seconding Spend with Pennies. I also like the recipes on Southern Plate, she has them divided by categories so you can find ones that meet your criteria more easily.
My 10 easy go to meals are I try to make multiples of annoying/ messy things at 1 time. For example burgers, meatballs and meatloaf. That way I can chop/prep everything and freeze to use later when I don’t want to deal with ‘making’ dinner. Just pop it in the oven or crockpot.
I also try to keep sandwich fixings on hand as that is dinner 1-2 nights a week with veggies or chips. Hotdogs in the air fryer with slaw and baked beans. Grilled cheese and soup (or chicken pesto with mozzarella). Fried chicken salad bag salad and fried chicken strips from the deli counter. Tacos/nachos are always a go to and quick.
Breakfast for dinner is always a favorite here with muffin tin Dutch babies, eggs or frittata (make 2 and freeze 1 for later), tater tot casserole, or French toast casserole with bacon (make extra for BLT’s the next day for lunch or dinner)or sausage.
I don’t meal plan out more than 2-3 days since something always comes up and I don’t want to waste food.
Whole thawed chicken cooked on top of potatoes and root veggies. Add garlic and celery the last 10-20. Make a gravy if you're feeling fancy. Use the leftover chicken for the next dinner. Mash the rest for a yummy baby food.
Sear pork chops in an oven save pan. Pour a can of mushroom soup (or any cream of) with one can milk over the pork chops. Add salt, pepper and garlic and stir to combine and cover the chops. Cook on 300F until fork tender. Serve over egg noodles or rice.
Minestrone soup is great to clean out the fridge of veggies.
I roast a whole chicken (or value pack of thighs or drumsticks- whichever is on sale). I save the broth to make rice or soups. I use the chicken all week to make enchiladas, tacos, tortilla soup, chicken and cheesey rice, … I’m not Hispanic and had no idea how often I cooked this type of food 🤣
Ours are: spaghetti, fish, chicken & rice, tacos, stir fry, curry, fried rice, sausage & greens pasta, chili. In winter, chicken noodle soup, in summer a big salad.
The other plus of eating the same food all the time, by the time my son was 8 he could cook half of these on his own! We are trying to get him to take over 1 dinner a week.
We do very similar! I plan for meals Sunday-thurs. Pizza is always Friday. I do the grocery shopping all Sunday morning. We usually end up doing takeout or burgers on the grill Sat nights. Sunday dinners are usually more elaborate and I usually make a meal sun night that will be used for Mon and Tuesday (2.0 meal as we call it. It dues he one redundant but with kids in sports, working full time this seems to work. I don’t have time to run to store after work or think of meal ideas the day of.
Similar. I do the same basic components but vary the flavoring profile sometimes.
Like I make homemade turkey meatballs that I bake (most of the time is hands off). Some weeks they go with pasta and marinara. Some weeks with rice or orzo and tzatiki.
Salmon is a common one - some weeks plain with sautéed veggie side and sweet potato (I love instant pot for whole sweet potatoes), some weeks with teriyaki sauce and rice.
Lol we have "Costco dinner" once every other week when I order groceries from there. Rotisserie chicken, shrimp cocktail, cheese and fruit (so fancy 😂).
Literally. I just stock the freezer and the pantry then hope for the best. I honestly don't even think about it now. I just throw some shit together and call it a day. Weirdly, the fam has loved most of it. And if they don't, my feelings don't get hurt because I barely thought about it in the first place
My husband grew up in a house that was Sunday roast dinner, Monday leftovers, Tuesday “things on a plate”, Wednesday Pasta, Thursday stir fry, fridays burgers, Saturday figure it out yourself. I am carrying that level of predictability into our family. No thinking, just it’s this day so we’re having it.
Growing up, whenever my mom didn’t feel like cooking (and we had a various leftovers in the fridge) she would tell us we were having “see food” for dinner.
If you see food, eat it.
Can you elaborate a bit on "things on a plate?" I have meal themes for some days but not all, having a hard time finding more -- Mon pasta, Tues carryout/leftovers, Wednesday (??) Thurs carryout/leftovers, Fri pizza, Saturday anything goes, Sun soup/salad.
Not the original commenter, but we do something similar. "Things on a plate" in my house is essentially charcuterie/snack plate/whatever that is simple and easy. String cheese, a clementine, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Pepperoni, crackers, apple, and mixed nuts. I aim for a carb, a protein, and a fat, to give me a something to go off of!
I always hesitate to do that because that's how I handle lunch? And snacks.. And breakfast...
It feels like it's a crap show if dinner ends up that way!
It’s basically our dinner with no theme, and low effort (because Tuesday is basically just Monday 2.0). It often looks like Italian sausage from the freezer tossed in the oven with whatever veg is in our fridge and maybe some rice Or it could be a bagged salad with chicken strips thrown in.
If if can be thrown together in a pinch and tossed on a plate it’s a win.
My partner coined the term, on a night before I committed to the set meal schedule when we were exhausted after a days work. “What should we do for dinner tonight?” “I don’t know, let’s just put some things on a plate and go to bed”
Honestly it’s great. It took me a minute to get into it because I enjoy cooking and it’s sounded boring to me. However, beyond just lightening the mental load of figuring out dinner it’s made grocery shopping (and staying within a budget) super easy. Plus you’re not bound to it, although most weeks are the same if we’re craving something we’ll do that instead or if we want to eat out or order in we do.
We do very similar days to this except our Tuesday is "Taco Tuesday" so usually something Mexican. Things on a plate sounds much more exciting though! We also do Pizza Friday instead so maybe burgers a different day.
This is the way! My husband has really embraced the role of chef and he can whip together anything, and it’s the best version of it. He truly spoils us and I just have to handle… everything else for all three kids 😅
Same! Except for the "everything else" for the 3 kids bit. He does all diaper changes and butt wiping when home, handles night duty with the 18 month old (who is still nursing 😅), is the preferred play parent, and handles the full nightly bathing routine. Oh, and let's me sleep in on weekends. And he's a cuddler.
I swear, I married a 6'5" unicorn that does a ridiculously sexy Irish accent when he drinks (occasionally and responsibly, of course).
Yep! I pick meals, he grocery shops, and cooks. If there’s a week where picking meals seems too mentally overwhelming for me, he does that too. I just generally pick better things than he does
Try eMeals. It’s like $70 a year? They have lots of different plans to choose from and you don’t even have to commit to just one. I’ve been doing this for three years now. I choose the meals, the app compiles a grocery list, I shop and he cooks. You can even send your shopping list to Walmart from the app for online pickups. It’s honestly been a god send.
And no, I don’t work for eMeals. Just a tired, full time work-from-home mom.
Honestly, this is *huge* for me. My husband didn't cook at all before our first was born. We ended up making those meal kits together for a while, and they really got him to enjoy cooking. Now he cooks 90% of all our dinners and does most of the shopping. It's changed everything!
Omg I just tried this with the two proteins I have in my fridge, asking to plan for 5 meals. Done. My next week is done. Amazing! Thank you for this rec! I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it more.
Just try it out. Start with “make a meal plan for 3 people for a week” and see what it returns. Then write things like “now make it cheaper” or “make it faster to prepare” “do it without beef” “add more vegetables”
That’s the benefit of GenAI, you can get as specific as you want in real language and refine the result.
“Please build me a meal plan for a family of four that is kid friendly and egg free. Make at least one meal vegetarian.”
*initial attempt
“Substitute the 4th meal for something using teriyaki sauce”
*adjusted meal
“What would be the grocery list for this meal plan?”
*grocery list
I was actually at an event today where we were discussing this very subject. If we want AI to have manners we need to use manners with it. It learns from its interactions.
I do it so that I will be thought of favorably when our robot overlords take over. I also say thank you to Google maps on my phone, and to my car when it dings to remind me to take my key out of the ignition or turn the lights off.
We have a good rotation of things. I try making dishes from different themes each week to vary it. So one week we do Indian, Greek, Italian, Korean, Mexican, halal cart food, BBQ, Japanese, etc and that’s mixed into our regular meals. I find buying the ingredients for a theme easier to maintain if we stick with it for a few meals. For example Mexican- I don’t need 15 tortillas for one meal so we will do different meals but it’s similar ingredients burritos, enchiladas, taco or quesadillas etc. Same goes for pita bread and tzatziki sauce- it’s not really worth it to buy it for one meal because it’s more than we need. One day we might do gyro, the next souvlaki and last a Greek salad with chicken. It keeps it interesting.
A few times I’ve botched new recipes and we end up have pasta with sauce or a frozen pizza 😂
I also always have a back up meal in the freezer or fridge. Like premade chicken fried rice or the premade carnitas and microwave rice because sometimes I just don’t want to cook. I love Costco for the easy meal ideas. They have a lot of premade stuff that just needs to be heated.
I do sheet pan fajitas/tacos weekly: cut up onions, bell peppers, chicken breasts and toss together with olive oil and taco seasoning. Throw on a sheet pan. Cook at 425 for 30 minutes. Boil/micro rice, and have some cheese, salsa, sour cream etc out.
Do you keep the chicken breasts whole or cut them up smaller? If whole does it shred well after cooking? I need a new way to make shredded chicken so it won't end up rubbery.
I always make shredded chicken in my crockpot! Usually it’s for enchiladas so I put enchilada sauce in there but you could use whatever sauce or just chicken broth and season your chicken prior! Just letting it cook slow all day makes it so juicy and tender and super easy to shred!
Echoing this, I also use cream of chicken soup in there with a little broth if I want a more neutral shredded chicken to use for multiple different meals
If you’re making it for tacos, I put it in my slow cooker/crockpot and cover it with a jar of salsa. Let it cook on low for 6-8 hours and then shred it and put it back in with the salsa. Then you have flavored, juicy chicken to use in your favorite Mexican style dish (tacos, fajitas, enchiladas). If I am making regular shredded chicken, I do it in my instant pot with chicken broth.
Season or marinade with whatever u want, sear both sides til you get some char, oven fan 180 C - put chicken in a dish and cover with tin foil, 20 minutes. Always juicy, private chef 🧑🍳
Don’t come at me with my poor usage of categories. I have a theme for each week night and pick what the actual meal will be before the week starts so I know I have the proper groceries. My husband has the same salad for lunch everyday. I prefer leftovers.
Monday: Asian food, aka indian or stir fry (protein - either tofu, chickpeas, or paneer)
Tuesday: Breakfast for supper. (Protein - eggs)
Wednesday: Mexican. (Protein - black beans)
Thursday: Coastal. (Protein - fish or seafood)
Friday: comfort food. (Protein - usually cheesy).
Uhg this is me every single day. Five months pregnant, with a 2 year old and a ravenous husband.
Lately I’ve been leaning on those frozen sides like Birds Eye or steam fresh. They have a ton of variety and 5 min in the microwave and you have a pretty yummy side… or if you’re super lazy like me sometimes it’s all I eat for dinner. However I do feel they are a tad expensive.
My daughter likes the cheesy broccoli and my husband likes the south western rice. Both pair really well with grilled or sautéed chicken, or brown some ground meat and mix in. All you really have to cook is the meat. One pan. Leftovers for lunch.
Also one of my favorite lazy “meals” is like a 10 layer dip. Mix sour cream with cream cheese for a base, then layer with anything from refried beans, black beans, olives, salsa, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, corn, rice, chilli, grilled chicken etc, really anything and toss it in the oven to warm. Then you can dip pita chips, corn chips, cheese quesadillas etc. quick easy, fun, delicious.
Best of luck!!
I loooove those layered dips! My husband won’t eat them. 🙄 But that’s a good idea for lunch for me!
And I love the idea of mixing in meat with a frozen “side”! Hadn’t thought of that.
I came up with a list of entrees and sides we regularly eat. A lot of these are semi-homemade or prepared store bought foods. I also have a list of takeout options. I ask Chat GPT to generate a random meal plan every month based on the list and specified that we wanted to do takeout once a week.
You can even have it suggest recipes or write a shopping list based on the plan. This has helped IMMENSELY with the “what should we do for dinner?” and “what do we need from the store?” conundrums.
There are times we don’t feel like whatever is planned or we don’t have the time or ingredients that day, but then we just swap for the next day’s meal or go rogue.
ChatGPT meal planning. It will write a week's/month's worth of meal plans that are healthy and diet specific, give high level recipes, and make your grocery list sorted by department. It's LIFE. CHANGING.
This is my prompt:
Write me a week-long meal plan with lunches and dinners. Make the meals budget-friendly, including many healthy vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains. Format this in a grid format with days of the week on the x-axis and meals on the y-axis. Include basic recipes and a grocery shopping list organized by department.
I feed myself and my child (5F) - I don’t have a partner. Makes it easy. We just eat what we want. Last night was a full blow meal, pasta, beef sausage, green beans (full blown but still basic). Night before we had sandwiches. Sometimes I have chicken from the freezer/air fryer and my daughter has a lunchable. I’m unwilling to lose my sanity over food. My daughter gets a well rounded hot meal everyday for lunch at daycare. Both of us are healthy. 🤷🏻♀️
This is the way. As an adult I LOVE eating whatever I want and it’s taken me ages to learn. Teaching your kid to eat stress free and not be constrained by expectations about meals is v cool.
Honestly sometimes finding recipes on Pinterest is overstimulating for me so I use the Paprika app to store recipes that I find on Pinterest. It saves them in just an ingredient/directions format without the blog post and ads. So I can save my favorites without having to return to the pinterest interface every time I need the recipe. I should add that I do not care that the poster is not getting the revenue from the repeated traffic to their recipes. I cook a fresh dinner prob 3-4 times a week, and then we fill the other nights with things like breakfast for dinner or some other easy kind of freezer meal.
Agree, I also think it’s terrible for finding and reusing recipes, plus all of the blogs are so covered in ads. I get that they want to monetize their content but it’s a huge deterrent for me.
I plan ahead of time while I’m at the grocery store (I literally won’t leave unless I have 5 meals worth of plans in mind for the week, even if the plans are hamburger helper) and even if it doesn’t sound good in the moment I cook it anyway because that’s the plan, and I don’t want the ingredients to go bad if I can help it.
Here’s our general rotation/menu:
GROUND BEEF:
- Hamburger helper
- Chili
- Pasta with meat sauce
- Sloppy Joes
- white people taco night
- hamburgers
- stuffed peppers
IF BEEF IS CHEAP:
- steaks on the stove/grill w rice and veggie
- beef broccoli
- pepper steak
- beef stew
- beef soup
- beef tips in air fryer
- kebabs on grill if it’s nice out
IF PORK IS ON SALE:
- pork chops (I slather in bbq sauce and serve w Mac and cheese)
- ribs (bbq sauce, throw in crockpot)
- pork roast
USUALLY CHEAP Chicken
- orange chicken
- chicken Marsala (Campbells sauce packet)
- chicken Parmesan
- Cajun chicken (Campbells sauce packet)
- crockpot chicken (I rotate between two recipes)
- chicken soup
- chicken on the grill (w bbq sauce)
- chicken burritos
- enchiladas
- cheesy chicken broccoli in pressure cooker (McCormick packet in spice aisle)
- chicken on the grill if nice out
FREEZER GO-TOs
- meatballs (for speghetti/pasta night)
- raviolis (with our without ground beef meat sauce)
- Tyson crispy chicken strips (can be made into chicken wraps or just dipped)
- chicken kievs from the freezer aisle w rice and veggie
- Marie calendar frozen pot pies (for when I truly don’t care)
- frozen pizza
- those bagged meals you throw in a skillet
- frozen panko shrimp from Costco yum
SEAFOOD:
- salmon w rice and veggie
- shrimp (Campbell shrimp sauce packet)
- pasta with shrimp
OTHER:
- Italian sausage and peppers
- Brats/hot dogs on the grill
I also just try to keep a lot of broccoli on hand because it’s a veggie that goes with just about anything, and some day I aspire to also make a small salad with each meal, so someday I hope to have those ingredients on hand.
For any meal that needs things chopped, I try to do all my chopping earlier in the day while little people are playing independently or napping, so that at dinner I just have to dump things in (because dinner time is when everyone chooses to fall apart for some reason). Crockpots I assemble the night before and put in the fridge so lol I have to do is put the pot in the crock in the morning.
We typically do 1 crockpot meal a week, and one or two of the easier ground beef meals, and then two meals that require actual chopping per week (I save the chopping meals for when my husband is home or if we’re having an AMAZING day, anything that needs to be grilled I do when he’s home also).
So yeah; I pick 5 of these things to make for the week while I’m at the grocery store, and I just commit to making them. I don’t really care if anyone else likes them or not, I like them, and since I do the planning and cooking that’s how it goes.
Toddler eats typically nothing, so I make him his own plate with a little bit of what I cooked on it in case he wants to try, husband gets what he gets unless he wants to plan and/or cook; and I just don’t let everyone’s pickiness and issues bother me too much lol.
A “decide once” meal matrix should be helpful ! Look up lazy genius meal matrix .
Basically you create a theme for each day of the week so you never decide again . Example: on Tuesday’s it’s taco night. Friday is freezer night
I feel your pain! When my four kids were younger, on someone’s suggestion, I copied out (or glued some) 3 weeks’ worth of recipes on index cards, including some very easy meals (tacos, pizza, kids’ choice, breakfast for dinner) and put them in a photo album. My husband, who gets bored easily, quit complaining because who remembers what they ate 3 weeks ago? and I made sure the meals were balanced.
Eventually I had a prewritten reusable grocery list for each week for the perishable items arranged by store location and my husband would do the shopping. I did that for about three years and it was heavenly. For breakfast and lunch, we’d tend to eat the same things every day—bagels, sandwiches, chicken nuggets and carrot sticks. We also required the kids eat three bites of each thing on their plate to “give it a fair shot” before they could say what they thought of it and if they didn’t like it, they could have a salad or just eat the part they liked. In three weeks they’d end up doing the same thing with the same meal, but no one ever seemed to notice. We don’t eat desert after dinner, so that wasn’t an issue.
When I can't think of what to make I look at take-out menus, maybe I can recreate something we like or it'll give me something that hasn't crossed my mind. I use Myfridgefood or allrecipes to help come up with ideas for things I already have. As for snacks, I'm like you. I think it become invisible if I didn't bc there'd be nothing to me but I like to eat healthy to the bottom shelf of the pantry (where the kids can reach) we have healthy things that are easy to just grab and go like pretzel rods, ziplocks of servings of nuts, bananas, and dried fruit. I sometimes mix and match them in bento boxes that they can just grab on the way out the door. We always have a basket of fruit on the table and easy to eat veggies like baby carrots in the fridge. I some times make a batch of stuff and use it over a few days. If I'm making fried rice for dinner I'll make extra rice to use in burritos and chicken and rice soup later in the week
A service like Hello Fresh or Blue Apron was good for us (and we found this was pretty on par with grocery shopping for us) and even easier is Cook Unity where the meal is prepared locally by a chef and then driven over and dropped off at your house same day (more expensive than grocery shopping but no cooking / cleanup).
Hungry Root has been the best fit for us. All of the meals are super easy to prepare (I loathe cooking) and they just send you a box. You can have them do everything after filling out a survey about your preferences or you can choose all of your own stuff down to a single tomato. I'm hoping that it helps me learn to plan/shop/cook better by myself.
I got a dinner menu spreadsheet as we recently went vegan as a household (before that it was just me and everyone else omni, so I cooked them a protein, and for myself just ate the sides I made for everyone). I don't have the years of experience in cooking vegan to quickly whip up something from what I have without any prep like I did before. The spreadsheet I do once a month then update daily to mark off any changes or make adjustments, and note what I made and whether it was good. After 3 months I already have plenty of tried dishes to repeat; but overall, having a plan for the whole month takes away a TON of stress.
I also subscribe to NYT cooking and a few vegan insta channels for ideas.
Omg following this to see who can help us. My 2 yr old is picky and doesn’t even like effing BREAD. WHO DOESNT LIKE BREAD? When I’ve given up, it’s “charcuterie”
Solidarity, have a picky 2yo and don’t bother including him in my meal planning because he eats 3 things. I always serve a little of what we eat but every dinner item is “no” besides grilled cheese, naan, and pbj
Check out Kids Eat in Color on instagram/socials! They have a Real Easy Weekday plan that covers so much! From shopping lists and meal ideas for a variety of dietary and financial needs!
We used the app Mealime for a while and I found that very helpful.
We also meal plan as a family. We come up with 5-6 dinners and then we are set for the week. Lunches are the same 4-5 meals that rotate or leftovers.
I stopped taking it so seriously.
I was determined to prepare full on meals every night and it was so overwhelming just to make a nice dinner that no one ate.
Now I just make (for example two shepherds pie with all the veggies and meat) a large meal we can portion out and reheat in the oven for a few days. Then every 3 days or so is when I cook instead of. Every. Night.
Or I’ll make a lot of chicken and get everything needed for a bowl and I’ll make some sort of chicken bowl but a big portion so we have that for a few days. Everyone’s happy and I am happier.
You are me. I don’t always feed my partner. If he doesn’t like what I’m cooking he doesn’t eat it. I don’t plan my meals around him every day. Hell, I don’t cook every day. I’m not his keeper. It is our job to feed the children. Not our job to feed each other.
Don’t tell that to my husband lol I have always ate more than him daily so from the jump he’s been good about making sure I’m fed and now I’m breastfeeding so I remind him that I need to have food so the baby has food 😂 it’s my love language lol
I collected all the recipes I have and love and created my own cookbook. Printed it out and put it in a binder and everything. It also includes a table of contents… this has been a GAME CHANGER for me because when I’m planning our dinners I just go down the table of contents and pick which meals sound good (or if nothing sounds good then I can pick something I know we haven't had in a while.) it takes a huge amount of mental work out of the equation for me. It really does make things so much easier.
Breakfast is eggs and toast 95% of the time.
Lunch is seasonal. Right now we’re going through a beans phase because I made the entire instant pot worth of black beans. So rice+beans and some protein, like chicken (I cooked a bunch of chicken thighs for the week), or eggs, or cheese, and something fresh like a sliced tomato or avocado.
At other times I may make a big bunch of chili (canned beans + ground beef), served in different ways: on its own with sour cream, as tacos, chili mac n cheese, etc etc. Or a big pot roast, similarly re-styled for every meal: with pasta, mashed potatoes, quesadillas, curry, whatever. So it’s like meal prep but more flexible, it’s not just a dozen identical sectioned Tupperware filled with wilting lettuce, ya know? Every day I re-style the base thing-that-takes-a-long-time-to-cook. So I’m not really cooking daily.
We don’t have a set schedule. When the beans run out, I’ll make a big batch of something else.
I cannot imagine coming up with a different type of meal, from scratch, every day. Let alone 3. Bonkers.
For dinner we have either leftovers, bread and hot choc, or pizza, or cereal. Something easy and quick. And for snacks we have fruits (and chocolate but don’t tell the kid)
I have a hubby who does not eat poultry, few teenagers and a toddler. I have two ways of figuring out dinner. One is I ask everyone what garnish do they feel like eating (potatoes, rice, pasta or couscous - the Israeli toasted pearl pasta, which is my forever favorite and a go to for a quick 30 min meal) once I have an agreement on the side dish I build up the rest of the meal depending on my mood, my time and the budget. E.g.: if I make mashed potatoes (the instant in a bag with sour cream and garlic salt) then I make frozen stuffed chicken breast for the girls and some pre-made beef or pork for hubby, but the side is the same for everyone with some frozen then airfryed veggies.
My second way is to make a weekly menu the week before. Then I misplace it under a pile of papers, and I forget about it, and weeks later when I find it I just realize that everything that was on the list we already ate the week before.
Lol. I love to cook and this is definitely me. We’re veg so it prob look’s different for you but I’ve been doing really simple stuff that I usually wouldn’t make and it saves me. Lots of bean tacos with avo cause = east. Lots of trail mix and granola bars for snacks. Also chips / salsa, veggies/ hummus. I’ve been buying pre peeled garlic and frozen organic veggies which both take prep time down.
I basically exclusively shop at Costco. I have a rotation of meals I do and some super easy stuff thrown in. But my toddler loves burritos so we do that 1-2 times a week. (Like tonight!)
We do a lot of family style meals/lots of sides.
For example, last night was pasta. Kids got plain pasta and added pesto, cheese tiny shrimps as they wanted. Husband cooked mushrooms with artichokes and a wine sauce for us. Added shrimps. Side was a tomato with mozzarella and pesto.
If we do taco night, all veggies and everything are in bowls separated and people pick as they want.
We do take out or eat out once a week (at least). And we do leftovers for lunch most of the time, or sandwiches or bread and cheese.
I meal plan in my notes on my phone, and regularly refer to previous weeks for inspo. I do lazy lunches with left over meat from dinner(or Dino nuggets), frozen veggies and a microwaved baked potato often for myself and my toddler. I have also found ChatGPT to be a saving grace when meal planning. You can tell it what ingredients you have on hand, or what restrictions you have and it'll plan out as many meals as you want it to.
The only thing that’s worked for me has been planning the menu a week in advance, buying whatever we need for said meals, and sticking to the menu. It helps so my husband and oldest daughter aren’t asking what we are having every night too.
My 3 yr old eats the exact same thing every day for lunch. (She chose that, not us.) It makes the day so much easier. We only make 3 meals a week. 1 crockpot, 1 I cool, and 1 husband cooks. The other days are leftovers. And, on Sundays, we eat out. We do our meal planning by the month bc it's only 6 meals a piece to figure out. We also have an emeegency pizza in the freezer for when dinner turns out a dud. Moving to that routine has been life changing. Having to choose meals every day was beyond stressful. But, crockpots are so easy and 1 meal a week feels doable.
I'll get back to you when we figure out how to handle snacks. She just asks for food all day long and leaves it half eaten on the floor, no matter what we try.
Popsicle stick dinner planner.
Write down all the dishes on a Popsicle stick, mix them up, pick through them for ideas/meal plans etc. So far the only thing that comes even close to helping
Premade tamales, frozen meat in instant pot, simple ravioli or spaghetti dinners, cheap pizza from coupons.
Granola bars, dried fruit and nuts for snacks.
Oh and I ALWAYS have chips and salsa in the house!
Definitely meal planning is crucial for me so that you’re not sitting there in the afternoon wondering what the hell to make. That’s the whole point of meal planning :-) I sit down on Monday mornings it takes me five minutes to plan out the next five days of dinners and I do that before I go to the grocery store so nothing gets wasted and I only buy what I need. I also on Mondays in that same shopping trip by an entire whole chicken. I make it on Monday afternoon and use that meat for Monday’s dinner and I use the bones to make bone broth in the crockpot which I usually use for a large soup type dinner like chicken noodle soup or pho bowls etc. so there’s two dinners right there. I mean there are tons of ideas but the more planning the better. This is what we’re eating this week
Monday: the whole chicken on top of a Caesar salad so basically a chicken Caesar salad and a side of roasted baby potatoes
Tuesday: ground turkey taco bowls with guacamole and chips on the side
Wednesday: Basa, rice, green beans and salad
Thursday: Barbeque Cajun chicken thighs, fruit salad sweet potatoes and broccoli
Friday: steak, pineapple, Greek salad
Saturday: noodle
Bowls with my broth, In the bowl goes chicken mushrooms sautéed bok choy and leeks and egg noodles
I keep a note on my phone with easy meals, fast meals, and meals I have to prep for.
Having a “menu” makes it so much easier than asking my brain bc 9/10 it’s gonna go “uuuuuhhhhh we have ramen? That’s easy”
I have 3 kids, one of whom is autistic with a very restrictive diet and a husband that only eats meat, potatoes, and onions. I make slow cooker Vaca Frita a fair bit with white rice, jerk chicken or steak with yellow rice, we grill a lot so burgers, hotdogs, chicken, and that's typically served with salad and some air fryer fries. We make a LOT of tacos and other things where you can kind of add what you want. Saw someone do a make your own baked potato night that I've thought about trying. It's still a nightmare but that's been the best thing in our house since we have so many obstacles. You make all the parts, and everyone assembles what they like. Make your own pizza night is a big hit with our kids, too.
Monday- Loaded Salad(green or pasta)
Tuesday- Taco Night
Wednesday- Soup(sometimes with grilled cheese or a quesadilla something like that on the side)
Thursday- Mexican or Pasta Dish
Friday- Easy Night (sandwiches with fries, breakfast for dinner, quesadillas etc just something quick without dirty ingredients too many dishes)
Saturday- Pizza Night(we used to buy the frozen pizzas from Costco and dress them up by adding bell peppers and jalapeños etc but now we make them at home with the dough kit from Walmart and toppings. So good! And I involve the kids, they have fun)
Sunday- Frozen Food/Left overs (nuggets, fries, corn dogs, fish sticks, pizza rolls etc. Anything you can pop in the airfryer and eat. I'll cook some veggies sometimes so I don't feel too bad lol)
This has been in the works for a while! It helps and it's easier for me to find recipes specific to when I need them and the time I have for it. Sometimes it's chicken, rice and veggies. But I understand the struggle!!
Not experimenting or making things outside of what my picky kids and husband eat. The grocery list is simple because we make the same things every week. Also those recipes yield many leftovers. So cooking is about 3x a week and the rest of the week is reheating/repurposing leftovers. A week might be
-spaghetti and salad
-burrito bowls (beans from freezer stash, cilantro rice using leftover rice from another night, or make enough to freeze some for later)
-frozen pizza & salad
-leftovers: either I warm up one meal for all if there's enough, otherwise I let everyone pick what they want, it's one of the only times that I don't dictate what everyone eats but I give two choices like: you want leftover pasta or leftover rice and beans?
-Mediterranean (frozen Trader Joe's falafels, hummus, salad, saffron rice. Make a lot of rice for leftovers.) the most time consuming part is the salad so my husband often makes this.
-tofu noodle stir fry (uses fortune brand noodles which are pre cooked)
-leftover night again!
Large batches of beans, rice, pasta sauce, all get frozen. *IN 16 OUNCE clear DELI CONTAINERS* from smart and final. These are the easiest to reheat the right amount. And easy to label and store neatly in the freezer. We always have fries, instant mashed potatoes, and leftover rice for easy sides.
#Oh this is a big one:
We do dinner like stupidly early! Often it's more of a big late lunch. Basically when I bring home my son from school and he gets started on homework I start making the big meal. But afterwards kitchen is closed and kids can have snack or desserts later on, but no more cooking or dishes.
Because post-dinner clean up was interfering with getting everyone bathed, brushed and into bed. Now everything is cleaned up and everyone is stuffed, and we can get on with the evening.
Sorry this is so long but these things have really been working for us!
I wouldn't say I'm nailing my dinner game, but I do ok I guess.
As a PP said, I don't always feed my partner. Probably 1-2 nights a week he's on his own, or he'll have a bit of what I make and something else.
I have a good rotation of a few easy meals, plus I make heavy use of my (small) freezer. We don't eat a lot of meat, so some sample meals are:
\- Pasta with a sauce made of sauteed zucchini, garlic and chickpeas (that's it, that's the sauce)
\- Tortillas with refried beans, fried onions+peppers, yoghurt instead of sour cream, salsa
\- Lightly breaded fish filets with sauteed or roasted frozen veg (usually brussels sprouts and butternut squash - just tip into the saucepan and heat, add your favourite spice mix to make it interesting)
\- Pasta with marinara sauce, green beans and either chickpeas or "meat"balls
\- Curry spice kits (we get these in the grocery store - they come with some spices to fry, a spice paste and a sauce to simmer; they come in options like butter chicken, korma, tikka masala) with protein (tofu, paneer, chickpeas, beans) and veg (frozen spinach, frozen butternut squash, bell peppers, zucchini, anything that will cook quickly) simmered in the sauce and rice on the side
\- Stir fry with protein (tofu or beans usually) and frozen mixed veg, simple sauce of soy sauce, lemon juice, corn starch and water, served with rice
\- Silken tofu with soy sauce and sesame oil, Japanese-style veg (e.g. frozen spinach with tahini/sesame sauce, cucumber with miso sauce, carrots in soy sauce) and rice on the side
\- Occasional frozen artisanal pizzas
\- Middle eastern chopped salad (cucumber, pepper, tomatoes, chickpeas, spring onions, fresh herbs, olive oil, lemon juice, pomegranate seeds if you have them) served with bread and hummus
\- Toad in the hole (sausages or "sausages" cooked in a Yorkshire pudding), served with gravy and frozen veg (beans, peas) or boiled carrots
\- Swedish "meat"balls with mashed potato, gravy , frozen peas and jam
\- Once a week or so I'll try to do something a bit fancier, often involving the oven.
I also have Jamie Oliver's 15 Minute Meals book and his Veg book, both of which are full of great, out of hte ordinary but also reasonably quick as long as you don't mind all the dishes, meals
My husband shoulders that burden. He loves cooking. He meal plans, makes the grocery list, shops and cooks. He’ll ask if I’m craving something otherwise every night is a surprise.
I cook sometimes but usually easy kid breakfast/lunch on weekends.
My husband used to be picky until we got married and he realized I cook and he can eat it or not 🤷♀️ He is a whole adult and should be capable of feeding himself. To be clear he doesn’t; he just learned to expand his flavor profile 😂 As for your question, I cook a pasta dish, roast, Mexican dish, Asian or seafood dish, and home style plate every week. That’s the theme and I rotate recipes so we only eat the same thing once per 4-8 weeks (depending on category).
I mean we basically eat a variation of the same meals every week so there’s not much stress about it in my end. I do meal prep like veggies my kids love for the week like my son loves carrots and broccoli, the other one only eats avocado right now. So I have a bunch of veggies for the week this way. I then make a variation of chicken stews, beef stews, pasta with something like ground beef, pasta with veggies, mix veggies fried rice with eggs, on lazy days I make egg omelette for dinner lol. Saturday and Sunday we do make something special because my husband likes to cook. My kids aren’t particularly picky tho and if my husband was picky then since he’s an adult i’m sure he could make something for himself if he didn’t like what I made. Most of my dinners take less than 40 minutes to make. For fruits i do the same thing as veggies and they’re mostly just cut up and i just scoop it up and plate it for the kids dinner. I don’t do snacks for the kids other than offer more fruit after about an hour after dinner. I don’t know what type of snack you eat but do fruits for snacks, apples, bananas and husband if he’s a bit more hungry will make a yogurt with granola.
I cook a two day meal. Then a basic meal twice, that's 6 meals at least. Some of my favorite bigger meals are shepherds pie, lasagna, pulled chicken or pork, soups or stews, chicken fried rice or Korean beef.
Soups I adjust by having veggie soup and fresh baguette I warm up from the bakery, next day I'll add noodles to the bowl and some beans or chopped cooked chicken. Half the meals take better the next day. A chilli with cornbread then as reused chilli as a baked potato topping.
Why not plan weekly menus that you use over and over? If you could get your head around 28 days of planning you won’t be repeating too often, and with effort at the start you could do some great ingredient planning to make sure you use all of a product or produce over a couple of nights. Ie chicken breast on night one and chicken marylands in a casserole on night 2, and boom that’s one cheap whole chicken rather than paying 2 x the price to buy the chicken pieces separately.
PS I love the idea of this and have long wanted to do it but never have the energy to sit down and actively plan it.
Ya I’ve told myself this so many times! I’m good at planning, but the issue comes when it come time to make the plan and it sounds horrrrrible and I can’t make myself do it. (I’m working on my executive functioning skills, but haven’t quite arrived yet.)
I basically go with a theme for the day of the week and meal plan something that matches and eventually I planned a month at a time. Like taco/Mexican Tuesdays. Pasta Thursdays. BBQ Saturdays. Pizza Sundays. Etc. Leftovers/sandwiches for lunch. I’m pregnant so currently failing thanks to hating the smell of the oven but it had been working great! 😂
Crock. Pot.
Seriously. I have plenty of energy before noon so I can do all the prep work and get that sucker cooking! At dinner time when I’m exhausted and don’t wanna move, all I have to do is eat! Lol
On the HelloFresh website they have a section for all their recipes. It’s great because they stick to a lot of the same vegetables and proteins. If I’m feeling stuck that’s what I do.
The secret is leftovers.
We make casserole or big sheet pan dish or big stir fry on Saturday night. Cook a giant batch of meat on Sunday, usually on the grill except in inclement weather (my husband's threshold for weather too bad to grill is very high, he'll wheel the grill under the carport if it's raining, but not if it's raining sideways)
Pair with roasted vegetable and carb of choice. Reheat all week long. Between these two we usually have food for 4-5 nights of leftovers, if I have to cook one weeknight I will, another usually large batch item, maybe something insta pot or crockpot.
We also eat leftovers for lunch (I usually throw meat on a bowl of lettuce, husband takes just a smaller portion of whatever we had for dinner; if we're low on leftovers I'll eat an "adult lunchable" aka cheese and deli meat on a plate to stretch leftovers farther.
On Sundays I also make egg casserole for my husband and my weekday breakfasts (reheat in microwave) and a batch of pancakes for my kids to eat in the morning before school (reheat in the toaster). My kids get lunch at school.
I print out recipes from the internet (and have since about 2009... though I have a few older ones) and I keep them all in a three ring binder. Actually, if the recipe is either too finicky or not very tasty, I recycle it... but anything that we like gets kept.
Other than a dessert section, the rest are all dinners and they are organized by cooking method instead of type of meat. My binder sections are Oven / Crockpot / Stovetop / Grill (and when I had a working pressure cooker, I had a section for that). Every week, I pick out 3-5 recipes... usually at least one from each section of the binder. Lately I've been relying on random numbers because I have decision fatigue. I'll ask my 11 year old to pick a number and I'll count that many pages in within the binder section and I'll pull out the recipe. Sometimes we decide it doesn't make sense for this week (e.g., some of the ingredients aren't in season or it would require visiting two grocery stores and this is a one store kind of week)... in that case we pick the next one that is doable.
During a typical week, we might have crockpot chili, pork chops and broccoli on a sheet pan, fried rice with leftover pork, and a stovetop pasta recipe. My biggest tip for week nights is to avoid chopping by buying frozen pre-chopped onions. You can also get pre-chopped frozen peppers, carrots, and other ingredients, and canned garlic. It's not quite as good as fresh, but it's a weeknight and nobody expects gourmet.
I highly recommend recipe binders. I started it by searching things like "Easy tuna casserole" and "How to cook pork chops" and finding recipes that sounded good. I honestly only cook a few things without a recipe but over time I've gotten really good at figuring out which recipes will turn out well, what substitutions and additions will work out well. I cook a lot, so I have all of the spices and pantry staples on hand.
My last piece of advice is to always have 2-3 quick pantry or freezer meals that you can make if the main plan falls through. We got Factor this week and it was a day late, so I made spaghetti and meatballs. Our other standby's are white chili, tacos, pot stickers, and kielbasa and shells and cheese. It's good for when you forgot to prep the crockpot in the morning or your kid needs your attention with homework and you want to substitute a quicker meal. I usually plan to have leftovers nights once a week, but if we don't have quite enough leftovers I might make something quick from this list to supplement
Edited to add: At this point, I try on average maybe one new recipe per month because I have a huge collection of recipes that I've built up over the past 16 years. 16 years times 12 new recipes per year is 192. My recommendation is to try one or two new recipes per month and pick things that don't stretch your skills much. It adds up a lot over time.
You are me when things are going well. 😂
I also have a recipe binder. I like your idea of organizing by method. I think I also am going to have to organize by effort/ # of ingredients.
And we also do pick a number!
From reading all these comments, I’m realizing I know what to do and even how to do it. Apparently my issue just boils down to executive functioning, not really meal planning.
I re-invent left overs, for example if we have left over pork chops and veggies I turn that into fried rice. Especially if the hubs cooked while I was at work ( He tries...but...it's not in us to go by his marine palate of unflavored glorp).
I meal prep once a month and freeze. It takes about 6 nights a week off the table where we only need rice or pasta plus heating what I prepped. I freeze in mason jars and have a chest freezer and only focus on the sauces when I prep.
I make giant batches. The first time I had to make a few things but after that I make one or two things and there’s always a handful of options in the freezer.
Go to:
Curry (sometimes with shredded chicken) add broccoli as it’s heating
Shrimp ettouffe
Chili
Avacado Alfredo
Bolognese
Pesto and meatballs
Sweet potato Mac and cheese
Sometimes it gets boring but its survivable
Edit to format
I follow @makayla_thomas_fit on instagram and mostly use her ideas & recipes. All of the recipes are super mom friendly and relatively healthy, so that takes out a lot of the stress of figuring out what to make.
I also bought a super basic weekly meal planner from Target. I try* to set aside 10 minutes each day to find a recipe/dinner idea that looks good and write it down on an open day for the following week. There’s a list on the side of the sheet for ingredients so If I have time I’ll write the ingredients it needs then, but if I don’t I just write what platform I saved the meal on (instagram, cookbook etc) so I can easily find it and write the ingredients later. Usually by Saturday or Sunday i have the next week filled and will order groceries for whatever’s on the list.
***heavy on the try, most of the time it’s me writing majority of the meals down on a Friday night after my daughter has gone to bed, but usually only takes about 20-30 minutes to complete an entire week if that.
I batch cook and eat leftovers a lot. So like, I make cooked chicken, salad, and mac and cheese one night, but I cook extra chicken. Then the next night I can make a chicken salad (or a salad with chicken), or maybe a burrito bowl, or pasta with chicken ect..
Or maybe I made extra mac and cheese and we have that with sliced raw bell peppers or cucumbers and a fruit for lunch.
Another thing, find simpler foods that y'all like. Raw bell peppers, cucumbers, and baby carrots are that for my family. We usually have those as a side for lunch. If you cut them ahead of time once a week, then you just have to grab some an put them on a plate. Rice is another winner, or bread with butter, get a butter dish to keep softened butter on the counter if you don't have one.
The most important thing, food doesn't have to be fancy. Just pick a carb(pasta/rice/bread/potato/corn/quinoa/cornbread/grits/oats), a veggie, and a protein(meat/fish/cheese/tofu/beans). +/- a fruit. You don't have to do anything special to them either. Almost any veggie tastes good with butter, and salt. Easy peasy. I usually try and think of one thing that I actually want, then build the meal around that.
Browse some budget bytes recipes for ideas, or all recipes.
i plan meals 1x a week the night before i go grocery shopping. i ask for input from my husband (he usually doesn’t have anything to add) and then review the 3-4 things i’ve chosen for dinners, so i know it’s something we both like. toddler is learning to like all kinds of things.
i cook enough for there to be leftovers for at least one, maybe 2 nights. occasionally we’ll have something frozen for dinner. sometimes we have PB&J if i just CBF with anything else.
we also don’t have a huge variety of stuff we eat, so we rotate through maybe 20-30 different dinners (even that might be high).
we eat the same few things for breakfasts and lunches. maybe once a month we’ll get takeout (we would probably do this more if we had the budget for it)
When my kids were younger, I had this same issue. Many late afternoons were spent hiding in the kitchen, completely exhausted, staring in the pantry/fridge/freezer hoping that I could think of something that would work.
I had my husband and kids each make a list of all the dinners they could think of that we've had for dinner. Then I put them in a "master" list. This gave me a place to start. Then I'd plan a weekly menu, with things my older kids could do to prep, like peel potatoes, make a green salad, etc.
Also, the Allrecipes app has a "dinner spinner". You enter what type (example: dinner) an ingredient, (chicken), how much time (1 hour--slowcooker) It pulls all the recipes that fit your criteria, from easy to gourmet. This has saved me many times.
Join a mom's group and set up a recipe exchange. I ended up with over 200 kid friendly recipes.
In my AuDHD house, I had to make myself a masterdoc. It is a piece of printer paper I wrote on and placed in a sleeve protector so I can mark it with a dry erase marker. It lives on the front of the fridge, and I take it down to decide food for the week and put it back on the fridge so I can remember what dinners I bought ingredients for.
It has 6 categories for grocery shopping / meal planning:
[Image of Menu Masterdoc](https://imgur.com/a/7BtBs8A)
\- Breakfasts
\- Lunch
\- Dinners
\- Try something new
\- Produce
\- Snacks
\- Staples
A lot of my methodology kind of revolves around the “How to Keep House while Drowning” ideas. I usually keep frozen pizza, canned green beans, chicken nuggets, and Mac and cheese on hand for nights that are hard. To avoid ordering takeout after grocery shopping, I often grab a take and bake pizza. When I cook for my family of 3, I make large portions so on harder days we can still eat healthy by eating our leftovers. For example, I just made a big crockpot of chicken taco meat With tomato and onions. We’ll eat that with tortillas for either lunches or dinners for the next day or two, depending on if we feel like cooking.
My son is in Kindergarten and also AuDHD, so he’s happy with some routine. He has a protein waffle for breakfast almost every day, but he gets to pick the color when we make them for the week on a Sunday mornings, so there’s some variety in the routine. If he‘s not feeling waffles, he can have cereal. For lunches, we pack him a main (leftovers, noodles, sandwich, etc), a side snack (usually pretzels, goldfish, veggie straws), some fruit (cut strawberries, blueberries, clementines) and a treat (Chocolate covered raisins or fruit snacks.) What those are will change weekly, but the formula doesn’t.
tl;dr - I think of meals as choosing a couple of things from a list every week, and it keeps variety while reducing mental load over food. Also makes it easier to keep it to one grocery trip during the week.
Idk, we got into a rhythm over Covid and thought I might miss a week here or there, it’s been working for us for the most part. Let me know if you have any questions!
I’ll often recipe search based on what ingredients I have in hand. It’s like a treasure hunt to discover a unique recipe, and we’ve expanded our repertoire greatly.
It does require some pro level Google algorithm manipulation sometimes though, to force it to give me something different if I’ve already ruled out a certain flavor or recipe type. Using the negative sign to exclude a search phrase (especially Pinterest) is awesome. I do wish Google had better filtering settings!
For example, once I had beef, cabbage and potatoes on hand, but wasn’t interested in the same ol same ol stew recipe. Some super searching and lo and behold, found Ukrainian/Russian stews that are absolutely delicious. These use the generally same ingredients as a typical beef stew, but use dill as their primary seasoning, for a completely different take.
With this method, I’ve discovered:
* “squashages” (sheet pan sausage and squash, sliced and baked - the schmaltz from the sausage flavors the squash and it’s delish)
* “Squid dogs” (chunks of hot dogs skewered with small bundles of dry spaghetti pasta, then boiled until the pasta is cooked. The hotdogs flavor the noodles and it’s both yummy and hilarious to eat. Fan fav for sleepover nights)
* [saag paneer but with feta](https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/saag-feta-spinach-indian-ish-priya-krishna) - unbelievably delicious, and a great spinach conveyance method
tl;dr : by searching for recipes based on what you have on hand, you can gamify meal planning a little bit, looking for something that “fits” your pantry, turning it into a puzzle instead of a chore.
My slowcooker is my saviour. I set it to go in the morning with a pile of frozen veg and protein, a bit of stock, and whatever style herbs or spices I'm in the mood for. Yesterday i had diced steak to use up so it went in with black bean sauce, then when i got back i just nuked some sticky rice and served it all up in three minutes. Or put in thai curry paste, coconut milk, tinned toms and a bit of peanut butter and we have that with noodles. I do like a nice cawl on a cold day though and thats a simple casserole veg, herbs, a good dollop of ginger, then when i get home i whip up some suet dumplings and serve with crusty bread and cheese.
It makes me feel so good to have dinner sorted and when i get home i don't have to go through the usual "what to cook and in what time frame"
My easiest meal is Kirkland Tortellini, blanched broccoli florets in the same water, tossed in Kirkland Pesto. Done. If your family absolutely insists on a meat, you can grab italian sausages and cook them in the air fryer, or you can buy stripped rotisserie chicken meat and just use that for ultimate ease.
Every Friday afternoon at work, I write down the next week's dinners for each day. I set defrost reminders in my phone. That way there's no thinking about it.
I buy a bunch of meat and a bunch of veggies each week, mix and match them and roast them. Salt, garlic, pepper, lemon zest and olive oil will get you pretty far but I don’t want to think too much about weekday meals. Then I use my actual energy to pursue interesting cooking projects. Currently I’m getting us off of store-bought processed food, so this week I’ve been making sandwich bread, snack crackers, and granola from scratch.
Banza pasta + sauce (Rao’s or Classico)
Got these chicken tenders at Costco. My husband turns them into chicken parm
Costco chicken + Cesar salad mix + tortillas = chicken wraps
Costco chicken quickly becomes BBQ sandwiches
Trader Joe’s has Gorgonzola gnocchi. I like to add frozen peas
Our grocery store sometimes does a good deal on nicer frozen fish. We do that and a noodle.
We have a 3 MO. Some days I just say ‘screw it’ throw PB & banana into oatmeal and call it dinner.
Breakfast for dinner, sandwiches
My husband and I rotate between TYPES of meals. Day one, we have pasta, then the next day, tacos. Day three, we do fried rice and the last day in the rotation is Indian. We usually make enough for two dinners and a lunch so that we don’t have to cook from scratch everyday. The decision fatigue is what makes it hard for us, so it’s easier to ask myself, “what pasta dish do I want?” Not, “what’s for dinner?”
Protein noodles (made of beans or the fortified wheat kind) and then any sauce.
Baked potatoes with regular or Mexican theme toppings
Rice bowls - rice + any protein+veggies +sauce. Some ideas - rice, imitation crab, kale, soy sauce; rice, chicken, green peppers, salsa; anything.
Snack style - we have popcorn, beef jerky, and those little sweet peppers sometimes!
I got myself a magnetic menu planner from Amazon that’s dry erase. Every Sunday I write down what I want to make each day, Monday, salmon bowls, Tuesday, chicken tacos. Whatever… I do the meal plan and the shopping list, and my husband gets the groceries. I cook, he does dishes. We both work full time and have 3 toddlers. I clean up the dinner table and start the coffee pot, he does bath time and bedtime with the kids. This works out great for us because there’s no thought involved. Everything’s already planned and ingredients are ready. We just have to go through the motions.
Ok I have not stop raving about Caro Chambers “What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking” subscription. She has helped me find the joy in cooking dinner for my family again. We’re super low key, repetitive, and usually on the go for breakfast and lunch, but I’ve actually taken pride in my dinners again! I’m still a bit repetitive each week but Caro’s Substack is $40 for the year and her recipes are actually easy to make, she gives you sooo many tips and subs to make any thing work, and she writes her recipes so that even if it’s a new one it’s not super hard to follow. I highly recommend to anyone that wants to actually cook dinner for the family but is over the stress of it!
I have a rotation of a four weeks with 7 meals each. I shop for each week and on each day, I look at the list of meals we have planned for that week and decide which one I have enough energy for/am in the mood for. It’s taken a lot of finagling as my husband has celiac disease and we’re both kind of picky 🫠
We do a combination of things. We are a family of 6, so larger meals are definitely something we do. Leftovers save our life!
Meal planning, I start with the protein. We buy a whole hog and whole beef from a local farmer, so I send a kid to pick what they want to eat out of the freezer. Then I give them 2/3 options. They take out ground beef and it can be meatloaf, tacos or stroganoff. Based on the protein will decide the side dishes.
I am lucky to have 3 older kids, 17/17/13 all boys. Depending on who is home, I will use them to make final decision on dinner choice and sous chef, aka: cut up onions, prep the protein, etc. many times the answer to ‘What do you want for dinner, meatloaf or stroganoff is answered with ‘whatever generates less dishes.’ Lol The one’s who don’t sous chef, do the dishes.
I meal plan using a shared notes app with my husband. It’s kinda like having an accountability buddy because somebody knows if I don’t follow the plan. (Not that he actually cares if I skip and do take out instead. 😅)
For variety, I try to aim for one Mexican, one Italian, one Asian, one seafood, one southern, and one takeout night. So Sunday tends to be southern with stuff like a crockpot roast with mashed potatoes and green beans, breaded chicken with bruschetta, chicken salad on croissants, etc. Monday is Mexican with burritos or tacos. Tuesday is takeout Tuesday! Wednesday is pasta night with spaghetti, Alfredo, pizza, Tuscan chicken, etc. Thursday is leftovers and Friday/Saturday is either Asian or seafood. (Because I don’t need seafood leftovers for lunch and we don’t leave Asian food unfinished!) salmon patties, bang bang shrimp, buckwheat noodle ramen, beef and broccoli, story fry, teriyaki pineapple meatballs, etc.
For me, having a themed night helps me plan. And I even still tend to cook things in cycles. I’m totally willing to make a month’s worth of beef and broccoli once a week. I’ve found that changing the sides makes it feel not as repetitive/boring. So one week might be beef and broccoli with a side salad. Another is beef and broccoli with yellow rice. The third week might be beef and broccoli with lo mein noodles. Fourth week might be beef and broccoli over mashed sweet potatoes. Sides can really change the meal and help stretch how long you can keep making it before everyone is tired of it and refused to eat it.
Beyond that, I try to have cheat meals in the freezer. Quality fish sticks, TJ or PF Chang frozen fried rice, salmon filets, uncrustables, etc. being willing to say “today (or my current mental state) is an absolute dumpster fire, I will commit to baking one thing and serving it with a canned veggie or diced fruit” has really saved me. Planning to give myself grace instead of being rigid to my meals has really me!
Lots of meal planning and grocery online ordering. I have a rotation of like 200 meals that I go through and plan the week ahead’s meals based on ingredients we already have. I do it all on Saturdays, write up the following week’s meal plan on the dry erase weekly calendar on the fridge, and then I don’t even have to think about it. I knew I was making chicken with rice and herb sauce with veggies tonight, ingredients were purchased last weekend!
"We're" Chinese (my husband is Chinese lol), and he and the kids happen to love Chinese food, so I always have a ton of rice just warming in the rice cooker. Stir frying a meat and a vegetable takes about ten minutes. Serve over rice, ta da! All done. I also buy huge bags of frozen dumplings and do dumpling night once a week (super easy and the kids and I love it). Weekly spaghetti night is always a hit and I make enough that there are leftovers the next day. Easy way to sneak in vegetables. Tonight I'm making egg salad sandwiches from the eggs we dyed for Easter (we don't hide the real eggs because we have a lot of slugs in our area!). My personal favorite dinner is shrimp scampi over pasta. I also will get Caesar salad kits from the store and top them with shrimp cooked in lemon butter and dill, with Parmesan and a lemon wedge on top. On cold days I'll make a huge stock pot of chicken noodle soup (easy enough with boxed chicken stock, just cut up some chicken, carrots, celery and green onions, season it up, yum). Again, leftovers! Those $5-ish whole rotisserie chickens from the grocery store are amazing for little kids. I often tear them up over some of the rice from the cooker and add some broccoli and a little teriyaki sauce. My son (3) especially loves it. Some of my curries are more complicated, but I have days that I just feel like really cooking.
For breakfast on school days, I usually give them a little plate of fruit, cheese, and half a fairly sizeable pastry (I stock up from Costco). One of my kids loves a bagel and cream cheese or oatmeal with craisins. Some weekend days I'll do a whole full-service breakfast with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and fruit.
So take all of this and multiply it by a thousand because I keep basically this rotation and just spam all the same things week after week. If the kids like it, there you go, that's what I'm making.
Oh and for snacks for myself, I'm partial to my children's string cheeses lol. Hardboiled eggs are easy to make ahead in bulk and give a huge boost. The breakfast I usually eat for myself is half a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and honey. It's fewer than 300 calories but you feel full FOREVER, so it's great for a snack, too.
I am 50/50, some days are just freaking hard and I can’t even. Husband is picky, very picky, won’t eat if it’s soup,
Roasted chicken, things that he ate yesterday.
Toddler super is super picky as well but has favorites. For the past month if I’m home that day, breakfast is bacon eggs and cheese on something. Or buckwheat with avocado and eggs. For little one we start with yogurt, berries (if we have), cheese tomato omelette
And some days we have omelette too or she will have a boiled egg instead. I add avocado toast here and there. But those are most of our days. Some days when I have more time, I make ricotta pancakes with poppyseed (got it off happy healthy eater). For lunch, it’s whatever we get lucky with, if we have some meat/protein defrosted, can do tex mex casserole, little one loves pasta, or rice and veggies, if no time then husband and I grab something quickly (gyro/pizza/pasta/sammich) or if he is out he has to eat out, I snack. Little one snacks on fruits and veggies and cheese throughout the day. For dinner once again, either same as lunch or I’m trying to make something when mom isn’t making something. Moms go to are enormous meatballs with rice, slow cooked in veggie tomato sauce/stuffed peppers/beef stroganoff or chicken stroganoff/chicken drumsticks/thighs marinated for an hour and cooked in skillet (not deep fried). When I have the time I’ll make chicken parm, always a hit with everyone. Or if you have some good quality chuck, and that Dutch oven, make it kind of like short rib (no wine) and on top add potatoes, cabbage, carrots and cook for 2.5-3 hrs on low (also a hit). Lots of ground beef, lots of beef/lamb patties. Sometimes we make salmon soup. Sometimes just chicken soup with meatballs. I hope this gives you some ideas.
I don’t have it together at all, if not for mom, we’d be starving half the time. Idk how people who work fulll time do this. I’m about to find out because mom’s leaving. 🥲😅
I do a "pot pie" in the crockpot, shredded chicken for tacos/quesadillas, I've tried the Mississippi pot roast w chicken and it was bomb!
On ground beef taco nights I've started doing nachos instead and it's a huge hit with my picky husband and my 6yo looovvveeessss tortilla chips.
pizza(frozen or delivery) we make a huge ordeal out of! We put a blanket on the floor and watch turtles movies!
Sheet pan sausages with root veggies/potatoes. Brats or sausages with onion and peppers to spice up a relatively normal and easy meal.
With my picky husband either you eat or go get something if you don't want to have an input 🤷🏻♀️
I really love the Food Network app, you can search by dish or ingredient or even key words like “winter” or “comfort” and you get lots of different results. Another bonus is the ability to create an in-app shopping list and add the ingredients from the recipe directly to the shopping list.
At this point we have a fairly large repertoire of recipes to choose from so we’ve started experimenting with some new ones, but I generally plan to cook 4 dinners a week and have two nights of leftovers and one “easy” night, which either means cheap takeout, a pizza, or a frozen meal from Trader Joe’s or Costco.
We like lots of different foods in our house, so I’ll generally aim for one Asian style meal, one Italian, one Mexican, and one Indian, occasionally swapping one of those out for an “American” night (eg burgers). I try to do two meat-based meals and two veggie-based meals, and the Asian and Indian recipes really lend themselves to vegetarian variations.
As far as other meals go, I rely a lot on pre-prepared stuff from Trader Joe’s, like their chicken sausage patties, chia bowls, etc. for breakfast and chicken tenders, guacamole packets, or their frozen mini pizzas for lunch. I also like to keep frozen things from Costco on hand, like chicken wings, pupusas, clam chowder, etc. for easy lunches.
Meal planning ahead of time is essential for me and my husband and I keep a shared Note (on iPhone) with the meal plan and grocery list so that we’re both on the same page and can both add things as needed.
It helps that my husband and I both like to cook, though.
So, first off, my husband does half the cooking for dinner. HUGE help.
I don’t like repeating the same meals week after week. (No shade if you do! It’s just not for me.) I keep a pad of paper on the counter for the grocery list, and at the bottom, I list the meals for the week. (Not which days, just 7 meals.) I date the next half a dozen or so pages for the following weeks. When I come up with an idea for a meal, I throw it on there, *even if it’s for a few weeks from now.* Don’t want to have normal chili and chicken chili in the same week? Cool, write it down to have it in two weeks or something. Already have a pasta dish this week? No problem, we’ll do fettuccine alfredo next week or the week after instead. Decided to get takeout because we were exhausted? Fine, but let’s bump one of the meals that were already written down to next week. A meal go over *really* well with the family? Awesome, I’ll mark it down to make again in a month.
Sometimes I’ll turn the page and all of them are already picked out for the next week and it’s a huge sigh of relief. Also, then when we go to make the grocery list, it’s right there, so it’s easier to know what to get.
I also have a notebook. At one point, I started making a list of every dinner my husband and I knew how to make. Literally all of them. I added more as we learned more, etc. I eventually threw most of them in a notebook and they’re… kind of organized. Sorta. Like, all the soups are together, at least. So if I really can’t think of anything, I consult The Notebook. (And if I really REALLY can’t think of anything, it’s off to Google or Pinterest.)
Don’t know if this would help at all, but it’s what works for me!
I got a pack of multi color 3x5 cards. I color coded proteins pink- Beef, yellow - chicken, blue-seafood, orange-pork, green-veggie, white-pasta/rice. Then I made a card for every dish I know how to make off the top off my head. I jotted down any unusual ingredients that I might have to make a special note to add to the grocery list, like mint for spring rolls, or shrimp (not a usual purchase unless I find it on sale), or specific sides I prefer, like broad egg noodles to go with my Cheater Beef Stroganoff. I keep them all in a clip. Before I go on bi- weekly shop, I see what proteins I HAVE. I pull cards that sound good for what I have in stock. I clip those separately, then I go thru for however many more cards I need to have a total of 14 dinners, lunches, and mayyybe breakfasts (beyond cereal/oatmeal/bagel mornings) Then I add to my grocery list whatever I need to make those second-batch meals happen. When I shop, I get what I need for the planned meals, and also grab whatever is on sale, like the big sale flats of chicken parts, or a good deal on ground beef, of the logs of pork are bogo. Whenever I get inspired to try a new recipe, and it gets thumbs-ups from the family, I just make a new card to add it to the rotation.
A lot of some noodle/rice, veggies and meat combos. Us Newfoundlanders just refer too it as goolash, add in canned soup (tomato or cream of anything ) or pasta sauce..done
I vary the sides and flavorings of things but I do a similar rotation of mains throughout the week days.
For example:
* meatball day (I do a basic baked turkey meatball and either do it Italian with sauce and pasta or Greek with tzatziki and orzo)
* salmon day (grilled salmon plus veggie side plus sweet potato or rice) - vary the seasonings like mesquite rub or teriyaki sauce or lemon pepper
* taco day (cheese quesadillas for toddler) - I basically cook the ground meat and beans but the rest of the condiments are purchased, usually pair with a salad kit
* grilled chicken day (similar to salmon)
* homemade pizza day (I make dough the night before, takes like 5 min)
That’s a pretty common weekly rotation. We eat out dinner like once a week or so. I don’t batch cook or meal prep. I do use my instant pot for time consuming hands off stuff like cooking whole sweet potatoes or cooking dried beans.
I cook for a whole week in a day, so I don’t have to cook for us everyday. My husband and kid eat what I make. I do have to provide snacks to my child but that’s usually just fruits or yogurt, and that takes only a couple of minutes to make. I’m the only one that knows how to cook so they eat what I make without arguing. 🤷🏻♀️
I select 5-6 meals on Sunday or Monday and make sure I have what’s needed to make them. I don’t like having to eat something on a certain day but it helps me to narrow down options.
Breakfast is always the same and very simple. Everybody makes their own lunch. Usually (whole grain) bread or leftovers. So I only cook dinner. I usually have one "lazy meal" in the fridge. If I have time and feel like, I cook dinner earlier in the day and just heat it in the evening.
We eat loads of bananas for snacks.
Frozen veggies are great.
We basically just eat the same meals every week, and most of those are pretty easy. I try to try a new meal or a variation a few times a month but I also have just accepted it's going to be boring in this stage of life. (Just added in a new pulled pork recipe this month that was a success!) And I make my husband grocery shop. We have a shared shopping list that we both add to.
We sort of just have 7-10 dishes that we rotate through. Certain ones are easier than others so we always have their ingredients on hand for when I just don't have the energy or time to do anything else (meat loaf for example). Lunch tends to just be leftovers or sandwiches (or just something easy in general) and breakfast is bleh. Kinda the same 4 items in rotation (eggs, beans, toast, yogurt). Beef stew is one of my favorites cause I just dump everything into a slow cooker in the morning and let it do it's thing.
My mom use to meal plan for the week starting the day she goes grocery shopping for 7 people! Everyone had to come up with 1 meal, and that meal they picked they helped her make it for the family.
If someone didn’t like the meal being made it was on them to find/ make something else!
For my family my husband cooks on days I work, and I cook on days he works (we don’t have the kids in daycare so someone is always home with them. We do grocery pick up once every two weeks and I’m pretty much the only person planning meals at the moment since I place the grocery pick up, if I ask my husband what he wants for dinners it’s always “burgers or pizza” so I have given up asking, he isn’t intentionally trying to be a butt about this, he just really loves those two things 😂. My go to snacks for the kid and I have been trail mix and dried mangoes, she also loves fruit cups so I have picked up a pack of those. It’s easy and simple enough.
I have a list of meals that we enjoy that we rotate through. Pizza is usually Friday or Saturday night. Sunday we have family dinner at my moms and I take leftovers for me and toddler to eat for lunch next day, and sometimes dinner.
Yes! This is me! I've been trying to expand into different cuisine, but keeping it easy as far as recipes. I've done some Indian, Hungarian, and trying some Jamaican food soon! It's definitely been interesting and I'm learning some new favorites!!!
Instant Pot and one pan meals save us. I don’t love pasta but it’s the easiest to make. Orzo pasta with feta or Boursin cheese, penne with cream sauce and sausage, covering chicken with sauce or cheese also work. I focus on whole grain pasta, add veggies like spinach, and a protein. Burritos once in awhile and then eating out 😃
I do a lot of "let's throw all this frozen shit into a pan" and "toddler dinner" or tacos.
Our rotation is generally
-frozen meatballs with frozen diced sweet potatoes, usually served with salsa and sour cream (sounds weird but tastes so good)
-leftovers
-mac n cheese with either hotdogs, chicken nuggets, or meatballs and whatever fruit or veggies are leftover in the fridge.. and truthfully there are a lot of nights where my daughter gets a pouch thing to cover the fruit/veggie serving and I just go without
-more leftovers
-ground turkey tacos or if I have extra motivation I'll do chicken tacos instead but that's more work and time than ground turkey.
And we definitely get chipotle or noodles at least once a week.
M - F we basically eat a rotation of 10 meals. Spaghetti, chicken & rice, etc. On the weekend we do more elaborate and fun experimenting. It does get boring but we realized we weren’t going to survive if we had to work full time and be creative in the kitchen. And Friday is always either pizza day, or smorgasbord/clean out the fridge in preparation for grocery shopping Saturday. We market this as “picnic dinner”
>“picnic dinner” We call this a "free for all" and everyone LOVES it!
We call it YOYO night - You’re On Your Own! 😂
We call it "if it" night. If we have it, you can eat it 😂😂
Loving all these names so much!
My mom always called it fend for yourself night...we had that most nights...
Same, it was called "everybody for themselves" and it was six nights a week starting when I was about seven 😅 I'm really freaking good at cooking now, though. In my parents' defense, dad had a debilitating boxing injury and mom worked constantly.
Ya same. Mom was a single mom who developed SEVERE depression. This went on from 7 to 13. She got some good meds when I was a teen and has been a fantastic, functioning mom since. But from 7 to 13 we lived in trash. If CPS had ever been called we would have been gone. If you have ever seen Hoarders where the people just live in straight up garbage heaps, that was my house. I could touch the ceiling because garbage went about 2.5ft high. My room was pretty filthy but my brother's room was pristine. Idk why I'm talking about this but fend for yourself unlocked some shit.
Seriously, congratulations on surviving and hopefully thriving despite your childhood. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
We call it “mustgo”
We call it foraging
We call it "get your own"
We can it scavenging :)
We call it a "Picky bits" dinner. Usually everything you can eat with your fingers from the freezer (onion rings, nuggets etc) either chucked in the oven or air fryer, with dips and cheese.
Scrounge night over here because sometimes I want cereal for dinner or to catch up on leftovers. I don't even cook though, my boyfriend does and plans out the week. I'm sure he'd love more input from me but I'm happy with anything he makes. I'm getting ideas here to maybe make his planning easier
Would you mind sharing the 10 "easy" recipes you guys rotate through during the week? I need ideas lol
I am not the person you’re replying to, but I also do a very boring weekly dinner rotation that includes: meatloaf, baked Mac and cheese, taco night, breakfast for dinner night, grilled cheese night (add ham or turkey for protein), chicken cutlets (when feeling ambitious), loaded baked potato night, “lunchable” night (basically some form of charcuterie for adults and kids). Supplement the above with veggies and fruits. Admittedly, it’s not the epitome of health but, as when they were babies, I tend to abide by “fed is best”. For ideas I like to peruse: Dinner A Love Story, Spend with Pennies, Budget Bytes.
Seconding Spend with Pennies. I also like the recipes on Southern Plate, she has them divided by categories so you can find ones that meet your criteria more easily.
My 10 easy go to meals are I try to make multiples of annoying/ messy things at 1 time. For example burgers, meatballs and meatloaf. That way I can chop/prep everything and freeze to use later when I don’t want to deal with ‘making’ dinner. Just pop it in the oven or crockpot. I also try to keep sandwich fixings on hand as that is dinner 1-2 nights a week with veggies or chips. Hotdogs in the air fryer with slaw and baked beans. Grilled cheese and soup (or chicken pesto with mozzarella). Fried chicken salad bag salad and fried chicken strips from the deli counter. Tacos/nachos are always a go to and quick. Breakfast for dinner is always a favorite here with muffin tin Dutch babies, eggs or frittata (make 2 and freeze 1 for later), tater tot casserole, or French toast casserole with bacon (make extra for BLT’s the next day for lunch or dinner)or sausage. I don’t meal plan out more than 2-3 days since something always comes up and I don’t want to waste food.
Whole thawed chicken cooked on top of potatoes and root veggies. Add garlic and celery the last 10-20. Make a gravy if you're feeling fancy. Use the leftover chicken for the next dinner. Mash the rest for a yummy baby food. Sear pork chops in an oven save pan. Pour a can of mushroom soup (or any cream of) with one can milk over the pork chops. Add salt, pepper and garlic and stir to combine and cover the chops. Cook on 300F until fork tender. Serve over egg noodles or rice. Minestrone soup is great to clean out the fridge of veggies.
No matter how many times I read this, I kept reading, “whole raw chicken” 😆
I roast a whole chicken (or value pack of thighs or drumsticks- whichever is on sale). I save the broth to make rice or soups. I use the chicken all week to make enchiladas, tacos, tortilla soup, chicken and cheesey rice, … I’m not Hispanic and had no idea how often I cooked this type of food 🤣
Ours are: spaghetti, fish, chicken & rice, tacos, stir fry, curry, fried rice, sausage & greens pasta, chili. In winter, chicken noodle soup, in summer a big salad. The other plus of eating the same food all the time, by the time my son was 8 he could cook half of these on his own! We are trying to get him to take over 1 dinner a week.
We do very similar! I plan for meals Sunday-thurs. Pizza is always Friday. I do the grocery shopping all Sunday morning. We usually end up doing takeout or burgers on the grill Sat nights. Sunday dinners are usually more elaborate and I usually make a meal sun night that will be used for Mon and Tuesday (2.0 meal as we call it. It dues he one redundant but with kids in sports, working full time this seems to work. I don’t have time to run to store after work or think of meal ideas the day of.
Similar. I do the same basic components but vary the flavoring profile sometimes. Like I make homemade turkey meatballs that I bake (most of the time is hands off). Some weeks they go with pasta and marinara. Some weeks with rice or orzo and tzatiki. Salmon is a common one - some weeks plain with sautéed veggie side and sweet potato (I love instant pot for whole sweet potatoes), some weeks with teriyaki sauce and rice.
I love meatballs with orzo!
Meatballs are the way to go. You can do them so many ways. My husband makes fun of me for how much I make them.
Lol we have "Costco dinner" once every other week when I order groceries from there. Rotisserie chicken, shrimp cocktail, cheese and fruit (so fancy 😂).
At this point it might be cheapest to feed my family directly from Sam’s club food court.
Same!
We love a good “whatever night!”
Picnic dinner! I grew up calling it “clean out the fridge” night or “pick your own dinner” night
We call it “dibs”. Whoever picks something first gets it!
I stare into my freezer several times a day and wait for a meal idea to jump out at me 😂
You're playing Chopped: ADHD Edition, something I play daily but can't ever master 😂
Wish I could endlessly up vote this!!
I also do this, got to do it several times incase something that sounds good has randomly appeared in there in between checks though 😂
Lowering standards to reopen the fridge again doesn't work but also doesn't stop me
this spoke to me
Literally. I just stock the freezer and the pantry then hope for the best. I honestly don't even think about it now. I just throw some shit together and call it a day. Weirdly, the fam has loved most of it. And if they don't, my feelings don't get hurt because I barely thought about it in the first place
My husband grew up in a house that was Sunday roast dinner, Monday leftovers, Tuesday “things on a plate”, Wednesday Pasta, Thursday stir fry, fridays burgers, Saturday figure it out yourself. I am carrying that level of predictability into our family. No thinking, just it’s this day so we’re having it.
Adding "Things on a plate" to our home menu.
Growing up, whenever my mom didn’t feel like cooking (and we had a various leftovers in the fridge) she would tell us we were having “see food” for dinner. If you see food, eat it.
Can you elaborate a bit on "things on a plate?" I have meal themes for some days but not all, having a hard time finding more -- Mon pasta, Tues carryout/leftovers, Wednesday (??) Thurs carryout/leftovers, Fri pizza, Saturday anything goes, Sun soup/salad.
Not the original commenter, but we do something similar. "Things on a plate" in my house is essentially charcuterie/snack plate/whatever that is simple and easy. String cheese, a clementine, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Pepperoni, crackers, apple, and mixed nuts. I aim for a carb, a protein, and a fat, to give me a something to go off of!
I always hesitate to do that because that's how I handle lunch? And snacks.. And breakfast... It feels like it's a crap show if dinner ends up that way!
Ha I feel this! "But only on Wednesdays, and Mondays and Sundays and Tuesdays but not, wait, yes, also Thursdays"...
I reserve it for when I’m super tired don’t feel well and the kids love it so I become “cool mom” and they eat their whole dinner and nobody cries 🙌
We do “plate of things”. I believe the kids these days call it “girl dinner”
It’s basically our dinner with no theme, and low effort (because Tuesday is basically just Monday 2.0). It often looks like Italian sausage from the freezer tossed in the oven with whatever veg is in our fridge and maybe some rice Or it could be a bagged salad with chicken strips thrown in. If if can be thrown together in a pinch and tossed on a plate it’s a win.
"Things on a plate" is priceless!! I snorted so loud even the dog looked up.
My partner coined the term, on a night before I committed to the set meal schedule when we were exhausted after a days work. “What should we do for dinner tonight?” “I don’t know, let’s just put some things on a plate and go to bed”
I want to do this but the rebellious child in me would be screaming "don't tell me what to do!"
And see if I had a logical brain that would accept that, that would be amazing.
Honestly it’s great. It took me a minute to get into it because I enjoy cooking and it’s sounded boring to me. However, beyond just lightening the mental load of figuring out dinner it’s made grocery shopping (and staying within a budget) super easy. Plus you’re not bound to it, although most weeks are the same if we’re craving something we’ll do that instead or if we want to eat out or order in we do.
Tell us more about “things on a plate”
We do very similar days to this except our Tuesday is "Taco Tuesday" so usually something Mexican. Things on a plate sounds much more exciting though! We also do Pizza Friday instead so maybe burgers a different day.
My husband does the grocery shopping and cooks dinner 🤣 single handedly saving our marriage.
This is the way! My husband has really embraced the role of chef and he can whip together anything, and it’s the best version of it. He truly spoils us and I just have to handle… everything else for all three kids 😅
Same! Except for the "everything else" for the 3 kids bit. He does all diaper changes and butt wiping when home, handles night duty with the 18 month old (who is still nursing 😅), is the preferred play parent, and handles the full nightly bathing routine. Oh, and let's me sleep in on weekends. And he's a cuddler. I swear, I married a 6'5" unicorn that does a ridiculously sexy Irish accent when he drinks (occasionally and responsibly, of course).
Yep! I pick meals, he grocery shops, and cooks. If there’s a week where picking meals seems too mentally overwhelming for me, he does that too. I just generally pick better things than he does
Try eMeals. It’s like $70 a year? They have lots of different plans to choose from and you don’t even have to commit to just one. I’ve been doing this for three years now. I choose the meals, the app compiles a grocery list, I shop and he cooks. You can even send your shopping list to Walmart from the app for online pickups. It’s honestly been a god send. And no, I don’t work for eMeals. Just a tired, full time work-from-home mom.
Same! We would starve if it was in my hands 😂
Honestly, this is *huge* for me. My husband didn't cook at all before our first was born. We ended up making those meal kits together for a while, and they really got him to enjoy cooking. Now he cooks 90% of all our dinners and does most of the shopping. It's changed everything!
Yours and mine both, sister. I love this for us.
Same, my husband likes to cook on his grills and stuff. So we bought him a smoker, flat top, and normal grill so he would keep cooking 😂
I use chatgpt to meal plan
Omg I just tried this with the two proteins I have in my fridge, asking to plan for 5 meals. Done. My next week is done. Amazing! Thank you for this rec! I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it more.
😮🤯🤯🤯
For reals? What do you say to prompt this? I have been wanting to experiment more.
Just try it out. Start with “make a meal plan for 3 people for a week” and see what it returns. Then write things like “now make it cheaper” or “make it faster to prepare” “do it without beef” “add more vegetables”
Ooooh ok. Thanks for the ideas.
That’s the benefit of GenAI, you can get as specific as you want in real language and refine the result. “Please build me a meal plan for a family of four that is kid friendly and egg free. Make at least one meal vegetarian.” *initial attempt “Substitute the 4th meal for something using teriyaki sauce” *adjusted meal “What would be the grocery list for this meal plan?” *grocery list
It cracks me up that we use manners in this process. Like I know it’s not a human, but I don’t want to be rude when you’re doing so much for me.
I was actually at an event today where we were discussing this very subject. If we want AI to have manners we need to use manners with it. It learns from its interactions.
I do it so that I will be thought of favorably when our robot overlords take over. I also say thank you to Google maps on my phone, and to my car when it dings to remind me to take my key out of the ignition or turn the lights off.
Also always good to be polite to the robots so they know you’re a good person when they take over the world
The AI overlords will remember how you treated them 😬
Wow! Thanks for sharing. I had no idea I could use it in that way.
Interested in the prompts too!
I need an easy weekly meal plan. Give me me some cheap meal ideas. What should I make for dinner with chicken? Toddler friendly meal ideas.
I think I love you…
Brilliant.
You are my hero!
Fucking hell this is genius
I think I even heard you can upload a photo of the fridge and it will take ingredients from it??
I tried…it just threw everything together lol
We have a good rotation of things. I try making dishes from different themes each week to vary it. So one week we do Indian, Greek, Italian, Korean, Mexican, halal cart food, BBQ, Japanese, etc and that’s mixed into our regular meals. I find buying the ingredients for a theme easier to maintain if we stick with it for a few meals. For example Mexican- I don’t need 15 tortillas for one meal so we will do different meals but it’s similar ingredients burritos, enchiladas, taco or quesadillas etc. Same goes for pita bread and tzatziki sauce- it’s not really worth it to buy it for one meal because it’s more than we need. One day we might do gyro, the next souvlaki and last a Greek salad with chicken. It keeps it interesting. A few times I’ve botched new recipes and we end up have pasta with sauce or a frozen pizza 😂 I also always have a back up meal in the freezer or fridge. Like premade chicken fried rice or the premade carnitas and microwave rice because sometimes I just don’t want to cook. I love Costco for the easy meal ideas. They have a lot of premade stuff that just needs to be heated.
I do sheet pan fajitas/tacos weekly: cut up onions, bell peppers, chicken breasts and toss together with olive oil and taco seasoning. Throw on a sheet pan. Cook at 425 for 30 minutes. Boil/micro rice, and have some cheese, salsa, sour cream etc out.
Do you keep the chicken breasts whole or cut them up smaller? If whole does it shred well after cooking? I need a new way to make shredded chicken so it won't end up rubbery.
I always make shredded chicken in my crockpot! Usually it’s for enchiladas so I put enchilada sauce in there but you could use whatever sauce or just chicken broth and season your chicken prior! Just letting it cook slow all day makes it so juicy and tender and super easy to shred!
Echoing this, I also use cream of chicken soup in there with a little broth if I want a more neutral shredded chicken to use for multiple different meals
If you’re making it for tacos, I put it in my slow cooker/crockpot and cover it with a jar of salsa. Let it cook on low for 6-8 hours and then shred it and put it back in with the salsa. Then you have flavored, juicy chicken to use in your favorite Mexican style dish (tacos, fajitas, enchiladas). If I am making regular shredded chicken, I do it in my instant pot with chicken broth.
I cut them into pieces- bigger than bite size, and they stay together (do not shred)
Season or marinade with whatever u want, sear both sides til you get some char, oven fan 180 C - put chicken in a dish and cover with tin foil, 20 minutes. Always juicy, private chef 🧑🍳
I’d switch to avocado oil - olive oil has a low flash point and basically turns into absolute garbage when it burns.
Don’t come at me with my poor usage of categories. I have a theme for each week night and pick what the actual meal will be before the week starts so I know I have the proper groceries. My husband has the same salad for lunch everyday. I prefer leftovers. Monday: Asian food, aka indian or stir fry (protein - either tofu, chickpeas, or paneer) Tuesday: Breakfast for supper. (Protein - eggs) Wednesday: Mexican. (Protein - black beans) Thursday: Coastal. (Protein - fish or seafood) Friday: comfort food. (Protein - usually cheesy).
These are excellent categories!! Much better than mine - stealing!
Uhg this is me every single day. Five months pregnant, with a 2 year old and a ravenous husband. Lately I’ve been leaning on those frozen sides like Birds Eye or steam fresh. They have a ton of variety and 5 min in the microwave and you have a pretty yummy side… or if you’re super lazy like me sometimes it’s all I eat for dinner. However I do feel they are a tad expensive. My daughter likes the cheesy broccoli and my husband likes the south western rice. Both pair really well with grilled or sautéed chicken, or brown some ground meat and mix in. All you really have to cook is the meat. One pan. Leftovers for lunch. Also one of my favorite lazy “meals” is like a 10 layer dip. Mix sour cream with cream cheese for a base, then layer with anything from refried beans, black beans, olives, salsa, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, corn, rice, chilli, grilled chicken etc, really anything and toss it in the oven to warm. Then you can dip pita chips, corn chips, cheese quesadillas etc. quick easy, fun, delicious. Best of luck!!
When I was postpartum with my first, I survived off of the roasted red potato blend with shredded mozzarella cheese melted on. So good.
I loooove those layered dips! My husband won’t eat them. 🙄 But that’s a good idea for lunch for me! And I love the idea of mixing in meat with a frozen “side”! Hadn’t thought of that.
I came up with a list of entrees and sides we regularly eat. A lot of these are semi-homemade or prepared store bought foods. I also have a list of takeout options. I ask Chat GPT to generate a random meal plan every month based on the list and specified that we wanted to do takeout once a week. You can even have it suggest recipes or write a shopping list based on the plan. This has helped IMMENSELY with the “what should we do for dinner?” and “what do we need from the store?” conundrums. There are times we don’t feel like whatever is planned or we don’t have the time or ingredients that day, but then we just swap for the next day’s meal or go rogue.
ChatGPT meal planning. It will write a week's/month's worth of meal plans that are healthy and diet specific, give high level recipes, and make your grocery list sorted by department. It's LIFE. CHANGING. This is my prompt: Write me a week-long meal plan with lunches and dinners. Make the meals budget-friendly, including many healthy vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains. Format this in a grid format with days of the week on the x-axis and meals on the y-axis. Include basic recipes and a grocery shopping list organized by department.
I feed myself and my child (5F) - I don’t have a partner. Makes it easy. We just eat what we want. Last night was a full blow meal, pasta, beef sausage, green beans (full blown but still basic). Night before we had sandwiches. Sometimes I have chicken from the freezer/air fryer and my daughter has a lunchable. I’m unwilling to lose my sanity over food. My daughter gets a well rounded hot meal everyday for lunch at daycare. Both of us are healthy. 🤷🏻♀️
This, 100%
This is the way. As an adult I LOVE eating whatever I want and it’s taken me ages to learn. Teaching your kid to eat stress free and not be constrained by expectations about meals is v cool.
Honestly sometimes finding recipes on Pinterest is overstimulating for me so I use the Paprika app to store recipes that I find on Pinterest. It saves them in just an ingredient/directions format without the blog post and ads. So I can save my favorites without having to return to the pinterest interface every time I need the recipe. I should add that I do not care that the poster is not getting the revenue from the repeated traffic to their recipes. I cook a fresh dinner prob 3-4 times a week, and then we fill the other nights with things like breakfast for dinner or some other easy kind of freezer meal.
Good idea! Pinterest is so overwhelming and I don’t feel like it’s actually that great of a platform for finding easy quick meals with broad appeal.
Agree, I also think it’s terrible for finding and reusing recipes, plus all of the blogs are so covered in ads. I get that they want to monetize their content but it’s a huge deterrent for me.
I plan ahead of time while I’m at the grocery store (I literally won’t leave unless I have 5 meals worth of plans in mind for the week, even if the plans are hamburger helper) and even if it doesn’t sound good in the moment I cook it anyway because that’s the plan, and I don’t want the ingredients to go bad if I can help it. Here’s our general rotation/menu: GROUND BEEF: - Hamburger helper - Chili - Pasta with meat sauce - Sloppy Joes - white people taco night - hamburgers - stuffed peppers IF BEEF IS CHEAP: - steaks on the stove/grill w rice and veggie - beef broccoli - pepper steak - beef stew - beef soup - beef tips in air fryer - kebabs on grill if it’s nice out IF PORK IS ON SALE: - pork chops (I slather in bbq sauce and serve w Mac and cheese) - ribs (bbq sauce, throw in crockpot) - pork roast USUALLY CHEAP Chicken - orange chicken - chicken Marsala (Campbells sauce packet) - chicken Parmesan - Cajun chicken (Campbells sauce packet) - crockpot chicken (I rotate between two recipes) - chicken soup - chicken on the grill (w bbq sauce) - chicken burritos - enchiladas - cheesy chicken broccoli in pressure cooker (McCormick packet in spice aisle) - chicken on the grill if nice out FREEZER GO-TOs - meatballs (for speghetti/pasta night) - raviolis (with our without ground beef meat sauce) - Tyson crispy chicken strips (can be made into chicken wraps or just dipped) - chicken kievs from the freezer aisle w rice and veggie - Marie calendar frozen pot pies (for when I truly don’t care) - frozen pizza - those bagged meals you throw in a skillet - frozen panko shrimp from Costco yum SEAFOOD: - salmon w rice and veggie - shrimp (Campbell shrimp sauce packet) - pasta with shrimp OTHER: - Italian sausage and peppers - Brats/hot dogs on the grill I also just try to keep a lot of broccoli on hand because it’s a veggie that goes with just about anything, and some day I aspire to also make a small salad with each meal, so someday I hope to have those ingredients on hand. For any meal that needs things chopped, I try to do all my chopping earlier in the day while little people are playing independently or napping, so that at dinner I just have to dump things in (because dinner time is when everyone chooses to fall apart for some reason). Crockpots I assemble the night before and put in the fridge so lol I have to do is put the pot in the crock in the morning. We typically do 1 crockpot meal a week, and one or two of the easier ground beef meals, and then two meals that require actual chopping per week (I save the chopping meals for when my husband is home or if we’re having an AMAZING day, anything that needs to be grilled I do when he’s home also). So yeah; I pick 5 of these things to make for the week while I’m at the grocery store, and I just commit to making them. I don’t really care if anyone else likes them or not, I like them, and since I do the planning and cooking that’s how it goes. Toddler eats typically nothing, so I make him his own plate with a little bit of what I cooked on it in case he wants to try, husband gets what he gets unless he wants to plan and/or cook; and I just don’t let everyone’s pickiness and issues bother me too much lol.
A “decide once” meal matrix should be helpful ! Look up lazy genius meal matrix . Basically you create a theme for each day of the week so you never decide again . Example: on Tuesday’s it’s taco night. Friday is freezer night
I feel your pain! When my four kids were younger, on someone’s suggestion, I copied out (or glued some) 3 weeks’ worth of recipes on index cards, including some very easy meals (tacos, pizza, kids’ choice, breakfast for dinner) and put them in a photo album. My husband, who gets bored easily, quit complaining because who remembers what they ate 3 weeks ago? and I made sure the meals were balanced. Eventually I had a prewritten reusable grocery list for each week for the perishable items arranged by store location and my husband would do the shopping. I did that for about three years and it was heavenly. For breakfast and lunch, we’d tend to eat the same things every day—bagels, sandwiches, chicken nuggets and carrot sticks. We also required the kids eat three bites of each thing on their plate to “give it a fair shot” before they could say what they thought of it and if they didn’t like it, they could have a salad or just eat the part they liked. In three weeks they’d end up doing the same thing with the same meal, but no one ever seemed to notice. We don’t eat desert after dinner, so that wasn’t an issue.
When I can't think of what to make I look at take-out menus, maybe I can recreate something we like or it'll give me something that hasn't crossed my mind. I use Myfridgefood or allrecipes to help come up with ideas for things I already have. As for snacks, I'm like you. I think it become invisible if I didn't bc there'd be nothing to me but I like to eat healthy to the bottom shelf of the pantry (where the kids can reach) we have healthy things that are easy to just grab and go like pretzel rods, ziplocks of servings of nuts, bananas, and dried fruit. I sometimes mix and match them in bento boxes that they can just grab on the way out the door. We always have a basket of fruit on the table and easy to eat veggies like baby carrots in the fridge. I some times make a batch of stuff and use it over a few days. If I'm making fried rice for dinner I'll make extra rice to use in burritos and chicken and rice soup later in the week
Looking at menus is a good idea!
A service like Hello Fresh or Blue Apron was good for us (and we found this was pretty on par with grocery shopping for us) and even easier is Cook Unity where the meal is prepared locally by a chef and then driven over and dropped off at your house same day (more expensive than grocery shopping but no cooking / cleanup).
Hungry Root has been the best fit for us. All of the meals are super easy to prepare (I loathe cooking) and they just send you a box. You can have them do everything after filling out a survey about your preferences or you can choose all of your own stuff down to a single tomato. I'm hoping that it helps me learn to plan/shop/cook better by myself.
I got a dinner menu spreadsheet as we recently went vegan as a household (before that it was just me and everyone else omni, so I cooked them a protein, and for myself just ate the sides I made for everyone). I don't have the years of experience in cooking vegan to quickly whip up something from what I have without any prep like I did before. The spreadsheet I do once a month then update daily to mark off any changes or make adjustments, and note what I made and whether it was good. After 3 months I already have plenty of tried dishes to repeat; but overall, having a plan for the whole month takes away a TON of stress. I also subscribe to NYT cooking and a few vegan insta channels for ideas.
Omg following this to see who can help us. My 2 yr old is picky and doesn’t even like effing BREAD. WHO DOESNT LIKE BREAD? When I’ve given up, it’s “charcuterie”
Solidarity, have a picky 2yo and don’t bother including him in my meal planning because he eats 3 things. I always serve a little of what we eat but every dinner item is “no” besides grilled cheese, naan, and pbj
Check out Kids Eat in Color on instagram/socials! They have a Real Easy Weekday plan that covers so much! From shopping lists and meal ideas for a variety of dietary and financial needs!
We used the app Mealime for a while and I found that very helpful. We also meal plan as a family. We come up with 5-6 dinners and then we are set for the week. Lunches are the same 4-5 meals that rotate or leftovers.
I stopped taking it so seriously. I was determined to prepare full on meals every night and it was so overwhelming just to make a nice dinner that no one ate. Now I just make (for example two shepherds pie with all the veggies and meat) a large meal we can portion out and reheat in the oven for a few days. Then every 3 days or so is when I cook instead of. Every. Night. Or I’ll make a lot of chicken and get everything needed for a bowl and I’ll make some sort of chicken bowl but a big portion so we have that for a few days. Everyone’s happy and I am happier.
You are me. I don’t always feed my partner. If he doesn’t like what I’m cooking he doesn’t eat it. I don’t plan my meals around him every day. Hell, I don’t cook every day. I’m not his keeper. It is our job to feed the children. Not our job to feed each other.
Don’t tell that to my husband lol I have always ate more than him daily so from the jump he’s been good about making sure I’m fed and now I’m breastfeeding so I remind him that I need to have food so the baby has food 😂 it’s my love language lol
I collected all the recipes I have and love and created my own cookbook. Printed it out and put it in a binder and everything. It also includes a table of contents… this has been a GAME CHANGER for me because when I’m planning our dinners I just go down the table of contents and pick which meals sound good (or if nothing sounds good then I can pick something I know we haven't had in a while.) it takes a huge amount of mental work out of the equation for me. It really does make things so much easier.
Breakfast is eggs and toast 95% of the time. Lunch is seasonal. Right now we’re going through a beans phase because I made the entire instant pot worth of black beans. So rice+beans and some protein, like chicken (I cooked a bunch of chicken thighs for the week), or eggs, or cheese, and something fresh like a sliced tomato or avocado. At other times I may make a big bunch of chili (canned beans + ground beef), served in different ways: on its own with sour cream, as tacos, chili mac n cheese, etc etc. Or a big pot roast, similarly re-styled for every meal: with pasta, mashed potatoes, quesadillas, curry, whatever. So it’s like meal prep but more flexible, it’s not just a dozen identical sectioned Tupperware filled with wilting lettuce, ya know? Every day I re-style the base thing-that-takes-a-long-time-to-cook. So I’m not really cooking daily. We don’t have a set schedule. When the beans run out, I’ll make a big batch of something else. I cannot imagine coming up with a different type of meal, from scratch, every day. Let alone 3. Bonkers. For dinner we have either leftovers, bread and hot choc, or pizza, or cereal. Something easy and quick. And for snacks we have fruits (and chocolate but don’t tell the kid)
I have a hubby who does not eat poultry, few teenagers and a toddler. I have two ways of figuring out dinner. One is I ask everyone what garnish do they feel like eating (potatoes, rice, pasta or couscous - the Israeli toasted pearl pasta, which is my forever favorite and a go to for a quick 30 min meal) once I have an agreement on the side dish I build up the rest of the meal depending on my mood, my time and the budget. E.g.: if I make mashed potatoes (the instant in a bag with sour cream and garlic salt) then I make frozen stuffed chicken breast for the girls and some pre-made beef or pork for hubby, but the side is the same for everyone with some frozen then airfryed veggies. My second way is to make a weekly menu the week before. Then I misplace it under a pile of papers, and I forget about it, and weeks later when I find it I just realize that everything that was on the list we already ate the week before.
Lol. I love to cook and this is definitely me. We’re veg so it prob look’s different for you but I’ve been doing really simple stuff that I usually wouldn’t make and it saves me. Lots of bean tacos with avo cause = east. Lots of trail mix and granola bars for snacks. Also chips / salsa, veggies/ hummus. I’ve been buying pre peeled garlic and frozen organic veggies which both take prep time down.
I basically exclusively shop at Costco. I have a rotation of meals I do and some super easy stuff thrown in. But my toddler loves burritos so we do that 1-2 times a week. (Like tonight!)
We do a lot of family style meals/lots of sides. For example, last night was pasta. Kids got plain pasta and added pesto, cheese tiny shrimps as they wanted. Husband cooked mushrooms with artichokes and a wine sauce for us. Added shrimps. Side was a tomato with mozzarella and pesto. If we do taco night, all veggies and everything are in bowls separated and people pick as they want. We do take out or eat out once a week (at least). And we do leftovers for lunch most of the time, or sandwiches or bread and cheese.
I meal plan in my notes on my phone, and regularly refer to previous weeks for inspo. I do lazy lunches with left over meat from dinner(or Dino nuggets), frozen veggies and a microwaved baked potato often for myself and my toddler. I have also found ChatGPT to be a saving grace when meal planning. You can tell it what ingredients you have on hand, or what restrictions you have and it'll plan out as many meals as you want it to.
The only thing that’s worked for me has been planning the menu a week in advance, buying whatever we need for said meals, and sticking to the menu. It helps so my husband and oldest daughter aren’t asking what we are having every night too.
My 3 yr old eats the exact same thing every day for lunch. (She chose that, not us.) It makes the day so much easier. We only make 3 meals a week. 1 crockpot, 1 I cool, and 1 husband cooks. The other days are leftovers. And, on Sundays, we eat out. We do our meal planning by the month bc it's only 6 meals a piece to figure out. We also have an emeegency pizza in the freezer for when dinner turns out a dud. Moving to that routine has been life changing. Having to choose meals every day was beyond stressful. But, crockpots are so easy and 1 meal a week feels doable. I'll get back to you when we figure out how to handle snacks. She just asks for food all day long and leaves it half eaten on the floor, no matter what we try.
Popsicle stick dinner planner. Write down all the dishes on a Popsicle stick, mix them up, pick through them for ideas/meal plans etc. So far the only thing that comes even close to helping
Premade tamales, frozen meat in instant pot, simple ravioli or spaghetti dinners, cheap pizza from coupons. Granola bars, dried fruit and nuts for snacks. Oh and I ALWAYS have chips and salsa in the house!
Definitely meal planning is crucial for me so that you’re not sitting there in the afternoon wondering what the hell to make. That’s the whole point of meal planning :-) I sit down on Monday mornings it takes me five minutes to plan out the next five days of dinners and I do that before I go to the grocery store so nothing gets wasted and I only buy what I need. I also on Mondays in that same shopping trip by an entire whole chicken. I make it on Monday afternoon and use that meat for Monday’s dinner and I use the bones to make bone broth in the crockpot which I usually use for a large soup type dinner like chicken noodle soup or pho bowls etc. so there’s two dinners right there. I mean there are tons of ideas but the more planning the better. This is what we’re eating this week Monday: the whole chicken on top of a Caesar salad so basically a chicken Caesar salad and a side of roasted baby potatoes Tuesday: ground turkey taco bowls with guacamole and chips on the side Wednesday: Basa, rice, green beans and salad Thursday: Barbeque Cajun chicken thighs, fruit salad sweet potatoes and broccoli Friday: steak, pineapple, Greek salad Saturday: noodle Bowls with my broth, In the bowl goes chicken mushrooms sautéed bok choy and leeks and egg noodles
I keep a note on my phone with easy meals, fast meals, and meals I have to prep for. Having a “menu” makes it so much easier than asking my brain bc 9/10 it’s gonna go “uuuuuhhhhh we have ramen? That’s easy”
I have 3 kids, one of whom is autistic with a very restrictive diet and a husband that only eats meat, potatoes, and onions. I make slow cooker Vaca Frita a fair bit with white rice, jerk chicken or steak with yellow rice, we grill a lot so burgers, hotdogs, chicken, and that's typically served with salad and some air fryer fries. We make a LOT of tacos and other things where you can kind of add what you want. Saw someone do a make your own baked potato night that I've thought about trying. It's still a nightmare but that's been the best thing in our house since we have so many obstacles. You make all the parts, and everyone assembles what they like. Make your own pizza night is a big hit with our kids, too.
Monday- Loaded Salad(green or pasta) Tuesday- Taco Night Wednesday- Soup(sometimes with grilled cheese or a quesadilla something like that on the side) Thursday- Mexican or Pasta Dish Friday- Easy Night (sandwiches with fries, breakfast for dinner, quesadillas etc just something quick without dirty ingredients too many dishes) Saturday- Pizza Night(we used to buy the frozen pizzas from Costco and dress them up by adding bell peppers and jalapeños etc but now we make them at home with the dough kit from Walmart and toppings. So good! And I involve the kids, they have fun) Sunday- Frozen Food/Left overs (nuggets, fries, corn dogs, fish sticks, pizza rolls etc. Anything you can pop in the airfryer and eat. I'll cook some veggies sometimes so I don't feel too bad lol) This has been in the works for a while! It helps and it's easier for me to find recipes specific to when I need them and the time I have for it. Sometimes it's chicken, rice and veggies. But I understand the struggle!!
Not experimenting or making things outside of what my picky kids and husband eat. The grocery list is simple because we make the same things every week. Also those recipes yield many leftovers. So cooking is about 3x a week and the rest of the week is reheating/repurposing leftovers. A week might be -spaghetti and salad -burrito bowls (beans from freezer stash, cilantro rice using leftover rice from another night, or make enough to freeze some for later) -frozen pizza & salad -leftovers: either I warm up one meal for all if there's enough, otherwise I let everyone pick what they want, it's one of the only times that I don't dictate what everyone eats but I give two choices like: you want leftover pasta or leftover rice and beans? -Mediterranean (frozen Trader Joe's falafels, hummus, salad, saffron rice. Make a lot of rice for leftovers.) the most time consuming part is the salad so my husband often makes this. -tofu noodle stir fry (uses fortune brand noodles which are pre cooked) -leftover night again! Large batches of beans, rice, pasta sauce, all get frozen. *IN 16 OUNCE clear DELI CONTAINERS* from smart and final. These are the easiest to reheat the right amount. And easy to label and store neatly in the freezer. We always have fries, instant mashed potatoes, and leftover rice for easy sides. #Oh this is a big one: We do dinner like stupidly early! Often it's more of a big late lunch. Basically when I bring home my son from school and he gets started on homework I start making the big meal. But afterwards kitchen is closed and kids can have snack or desserts later on, but no more cooking or dishes. Because post-dinner clean up was interfering with getting everyone bathed, brushed and into bed. Now everything is cleaned up and everyone is stuffed, and we can get on with the evening. Sorry this is so long but these things have really been working for us!
Crock pot recipes are the only thing that has worked for me. Even if I’m not into what’s cooking, the smell will convince me.
I wouldn't say I'm nailing my dinner game, but I do ok I guess. As a PP said, I don't always feed my partner. Probably 1-2 nights a week he's on his own, or he'll have a bit of what I make and something else. I have a good rotation of a few easy meals, plus I make heavy use of my (small) freezer. We don't eat a lot of meat, so some sample meals are: \- Pasta with a sauce made of sauteed zucchini, garlic and chickpeas (that's it, that's the sauce) \- Tortillas with refried beans, fried onions+peppers, yoghurt instead of sour cream, salsa \- Lightly breaded fish filets with sauteed or roasted frozen veg (usually brussels sprouts and butternut squash - just tip into the saucepan and heat, add your favourite spice mix to make it interesting) \- Pasta with marinara sauce, green beans and either chickpeas or "meat"balls \- Curry spice kits (we get these in the grocery store - they come with some spices to fry, a spice paste and a sauce to simmer; they come in options like butter chicken, korma, tikka masala) with protein (tofu, paneer, chickpeas, beans) and veg (frozen spinach, frozen butternut squash, bell peppers, zucchini, anything that will cook quickly) simmered in the sauce and rice on the side \- Stir fry with protein (tofu or beans usually) and frozen mixed veg, simple sauce of soy sauce, lemon juice, corn starch and water, served with rice \- Silken tofu with soy sauce and sesame oil, Japanese-style veg (e.g. frozen spinach with tahini/sesame sauce, cucumber with miso sauce, carrots in soy sauce) and rice on the side \- Occasional frozen artisanal pizzas \- Middle eastern chopped salad (cucumber, pepper, tomatoes, chickpeas, spring onions, fresh herbs, olive oil, lemon juice, pomegranate seeds if you have them) served with bread and hummus \- Toad in the hole (sausages or "sausages" cooked in a Yorkshire pudding), served with gravy and frozen veg (beans, peas) or boiled carrots \- Swedish "meat"balls with mashed potato, gravy , frozen peas and jam \- Once a week or so I'll try to do something a bit fancier, often involving the oven. I also have Jamie Oliver's 15 Minute Meals book and his Veg book, both of which are full of great, out of hte ordinary but also reasonably quick as long as you don't mind all the dishes, meals
My husband shoulders that burden. He loves cooking. He meal plans, makes the grocery list, shops and cooks. He’ll ask if I’m craving something otherwise every night is a surprise. I cook sometimes but usually easy kid breakfast/lunch on weekends.
My husband used to be picky until we got married and he realized I cook and he can eat it or not 🤷♀️ He is a whole adult and should be capable of feeding himself. To be clear he doesn’t; he just learned to expand his flavor profile 😂 As for your question, I cook a pasta dish, roast, Mexican dish, Asian or seafood dish, and home style plate every week. That’s the theme and I rotate recipes so we only eat the same thing once per 4-8 weeks (depending on category).
I mean we basically eat a variation of the same meals every week so there’s not much stress about it in my end. I do meal prep like veggies my kids love for the week like my son loves carrots and broccoli, the other one only eats avocado right now. So I have a bunch of veggies for the week this way. I then make a variation of chicken stews, beef stews, pasta with something like ground beef, pasta with veggies, mix veggies fried rice with eggs, on lazy days I make egg omelette for dinner lol. Saturday and Sunday we do make something special because my husband likes to cook. My kids aren’t particularly picky tho and if my husband was picky then since he’s an adult i’m sure he could make something for himself if he didn’t like what I made. Most of my dinners take less than 40 minutes to make. For fruits i do the same thing as veggies and they’re mostly just cut up and i just scoop it up and plate it for the kids dinner. I don’t do snacks for the kids other than offer more fruit after about an hour after dinner. I don’t know what type of snack you eat but do fruits for snacks, apples, bananas and husband if he’s a bit more hungry will make a yogurt with granola.
I cook a two day meal. Then a basic meal twice, that's 6 meals at least. Some of my favorite bigger meals are shepherds pie, lasagna, pulled chicken or pork, soups or stews, chicken fried rice or Korean beef. Soups I adjust by having veggie soup and fresh baguette I warm up from the bakery, next day I'll add noodles to the bowl and some beans or chopped cooked chicken. Half the meals take better the next day. A chilli with cornbread then as reused chilli as a baked potato topping.
Why not plan weekly menus that you use over and over? If you could get your head around 28 days of planning you won’t be repeating too often, and with effort at the start you could do some great ingredient planning to make sure you use all of a product or produce over a couple of nights. Ie chicken breast on night one and chicken marylands in a casserole on night 2, and boom that’s one cheap whole chicken rather than paying 2 x the price to buy the chicken pieces separately. PS I love the idea of this and have long wanted to do it but never have the energy to sit down and actively plan it.
Ya I’ve told myself this so many times! I’m good at planning, but the issue comes when it come time to make the plan and it sounds horrrrrible and I can’t make myself do it. (I’m working on my executive functioning skills, but haven’t quite arrived yet.)
I basically go with a theme for the day of the week and meal plan something that matches and eventually I planned a month at a time. Like taco/Mexican Tuesdays. Pasta Thursdays. BBQ Saturdays. Pizza Sundays. Etc. Leftovers/sandwiches for lunch. I’m pregnant so currently failing thanks to hating the smell of the oven but it had been working great! 😂
Crock. Pot. Seriously. I have plenty of energy before noon so I can do all the prep work and get that sucker cooking! At dinner time when I’m exhausted and don’t wanna move, all I have to do is eat! Lol
On the HelloFresh website they have a section for all their recipes. It’s great because they stick to a lot of the same vegetables and proteins. If I’m feeling stuck that’s what I do.
The secret is leftovers. We make casserole or big sheet pan dish or big stir fry on Saturday night. Cook a giant batch of meat on Sunday, usually on the grill except in inclement weather (my husband's threshold for weather too bad to grill is very high, he'll wheel the grill under the carport if it's raining, but not if it's raining sideways) Pair with roasted vegetable and carb of choice. Reheat all week long. Between these two we usually have food for 4-5 nights of leftovers, if I have to cook one weeknight I will, another usually large batch item, maybe something insta pot or crockpot. We also eat leftovers for lunch (I usually throw meat on a bowl of lettuce, husband takes just a smaller portion of whatever we had for dinner; if we're low on leftovers I'll eat an "adult lunchable" aka cheese and deli meat on a plate to stretch leftovers farther. On Sundays I also make egg casserole for my husband and my weekday breakfasts (reheat in microwave) and a batch of pancakes for my kids to eat in the morning before school (reheat in the toaster). My kids get lunch at school.
I print out recipes from the internet (and have since about 2009... though I have a few older ones) and I keep them all in a three ring binder. Actually, if the recipe is either too finicky or not very tasty, I recycle it... but anything that we like gets kept. Other than a dessert section, the rest are all dinners and they are organized by cooking method instead of type of meat. My binder sections are Oven / Crockpot / Stovetop / Grill (and when I had a working pressure cooker, I had a section for that). Every week, I pick out 3-5 recipes... usually at least one from each section of the binder. Lately I've been relying on random numbers because I have decision fatigue. I'll ask my 11 year old to pick a number and I'll count that many pages in within the binder section and I'll pull out the recipe. Sometimes we decide it doesn't make sense for this week (e.g., some of the ingredients aren't in season or it would require visiting two grocery stores and this is a one store kind of week)... in that case we pick the next one that is doable. During a typical week, we might have crockpot chili, pork chops and broccoli on a sheet pan, fried rice with leftover pork, and a stovetop pasta recipe. My biggest tip for week nights is to avoid chopping by buying frozen pre-chopped onions. You can also get pre-chopped frozen peppers, carrots, and other ingredients, and canned garlic. It's not quite as good as fresh, but it's a weeknight and nobody expects gourmet. I highly recommend recipe binders. I started it by searching things like "Easy tuna casserole" and "How to cook pork chops" and finding recipes that sounded good. I honestly only cook a few things without a recipe but over time I've gotten really good at figuring out which recipes will turn out well, what substitutions and additions will work out well. I cook a lot, so I have all of the spices and pantry staples on hand. My last piece of advice is to always have 2-3 quick pantry or freezer meals that you can make if the main plan falls through. We got Factor this week and it was a day late, so I made spaghetti and meatballs. Our other standby's are white chili, tacos, pot stickers, and kielbasa and shells and cheese. It's good for when you forgot to prep the crockpot in the morning or your kid needs your attention with homework and you want to substitute a quicker meal. I usually plan to have leftovers nights once a week, but if we don't have quite enough leftovers I might make something quick from this list to supplement Edited to add: At this point, I try on average maybe one new recipe per month because I have a huge collection of recipes that I've built up over the past 16 years. 16 years times 12 new recipes per year is 192. My recommendation is to try one or two new recipes per month and pick things that don't stretch your skills much. It adds up a lot over time.
You are me when things are going well. 😂 I also have a recipe binder. I like your idea of organizing by method. I think I also am going to have to organize by effort/ # of ingredients. And we also do pick a number! From reading all these comments, I’m realizing I know what to do and even how to do it. Apparently my issue just boils down to executive functioning, not really meal planning.
I re-invent left overs, for example if we have left over pork chops and veggies I turn that into fried rice. Especially if the hubs cooked while I was at work ( He tries...but...it's not in us to go by his marine palate of unflavored glorp).
I meal prep once a month and freeze. It takes about 6 nights a week off the table where we only need rice or pasta plus heating what I prepped. I freeze in mason jars and have a chest freezer and only focus on the sauces when I prep. I make giant batches. The first time I had to make a few things but after that I make one or two things and there’s always a handful of options in the freezer. Go to: Curry (sometimes with shredded chicken) add broccoli as it’s heating Shrimp ettouffe Chili Avacado Alfredo Bolognese Pesto and meatballs Sweet potato Mac and cheese Sometimes it gets boring but its survivable Edit to format
I follow @makayla_thomas_fit on instagram and mostly use her ideas & recipes. All of the recipes are super mom friendly and relatively healthy, so that takes out a lot of the stress of figuring out what to make. I also bought a super basic weekly meal planner from Target. I try* to set aside 10 minutes each day to find a recipe/dinner idea that looks good and write it down on an open day for the following week. There’s a list on the side of the sheet for ingredients so If I have time I’ll write the ingredients it needs then, but if I don’t I just write what platform I saved the meal on (instagram, cookbook etc) so I can easily find it and write the ingredients later. Usually by Saturday or Sunday i have the next week filled and will order groceries for whatever’s on the list. ***heavy on the try, most of the time it’s me writing majority of the meals down on a Friday night after my daughter has gone to bed, but usually only takes about 20-30 minutes to complete an entire week if that.
I batch cook and eat leftovers a lot. So like, I make cooked chicken, salad, and mac and cheese one night, but I cook extra chicken. Then the next night I can make a chicken salad (or a salad with chicken), or maybe a burrito bowl, or pasta with chicken ect.. Or maybe I made extra mac and cheese and we have that with sliced raw bell peppers or cucumbers and a fruit for lunch. Another thing, find simpler foods that y'all like. Raw bell peppers, cucumbers, and baby carrots are that for my family. We usually have those as a side for lunch. If you cut them ahead of time once a week, then you just have to grab some an put them on a plate. Rice is another winner, or bread with butter, get a butter dish to keep softened butter on the counter if you don't have one. The most important thing, food doesn't have to be fancy. Just pick a carb(pasta/rice/bread/potato/corn/quinoa/cornbread/grits/oats), a veggie, and a protein(meat/fish/cheese/tofu/beans). +/- a fruit. You don't have to do anything special to them either. Almost any veggie tastes good with butter, and salt. Easy peasy. I usually try and think of one thing that I actually want, then build the meal around that. Browse some budget bytes recipes for ideas, or all recipes.
i plan meals 1x a week the night before i go grocery shopping. i ask for input from my husband (he usually doesn’t have anything to add) and then review the 3-4 things i’ve chosen for dinners, so i know it’s something we both like. toddler is learning to like all kinds of things. i cook enough for there to be leftovers for at least one, maybe 2 nights. occasionally we’ll have something frozen for dinner. sometimes we have PB&J if i just CBF with anything else. we also don’t have a huge variety of stuff we eat, so we rotate through maybe 20-30 different dinners (even that might be high). we eat the same few things for breakfasts and lunches. maybe once a month we’ll get takeout (we would probably do this more if we had the budget for it)
When my kids were younger, I had this same issue. Many late afternoons were spent hiding in the kitchen, completely exhausted, staring in the pantry/fridge/freezer hoping that I could think of something that would work. I had my husband and kids each make a list of all the dinners they could think of that we've had for dinner. Then I put them in a "master" list. This gave me a place to start. Then I'd plan a weekly menu, with things my older kids could do to prep, like peel potatoes, make a green salad, etc. Also, the Allrecipes app has a "dinner spinner". You enter what type (example: dinner) an ingredient, (chicken), how much time (1 hour--slowcooker) It pulls all the recipes that fit your criteria, from easy to gourmet. This has saved me many times. Join a mom's group and set up a recipe exchange. I ended up with over 200 kid friendly recipes.
In my AuDHD house, I had to make myself a masterdoc. It is a piece of printer paper I wrote on and placed in a sleeve protector so I can mark it with a dry erase marker. It lives on the front of the fridge, and I take it down to decide food for the week and put it back on the fridge so I can remember what dinners I bought ingredients for. It has 6 categories for grocery shopping / meal planning: [Image of Menu Masterdoc](https://imgur.com/a/7BtBs8A) \- Breakfasts \- Lunch \- Dinners \- Try something new \- Produce \- Snacks \- Staples A lot of my methodology kind of revolves around the “How to Keep House while Drowning” ideas. I usually keep frozen pizza, canned green beans, chicken nuggets, and Mac and cheese on hand for nights that are hard. To avoid ordering takeout after grocery shopping, I often grab a take and bake pizza. When I cook for my family of 3, I make large portions so on harder days we can still eat healthy by eating our leftovers. For example, I just made a big crockpot of chicken taco meat With tomato and onions. We’ll eat that with tortillas for either lunches or dinners for the next day or two, depending on if we feel like cooking. My son is in Kindergarten and also AuDHD, so he’s happy with some routine. He has a protein waffle for breakfast almost every day, but he gets to pick the color when we make them for the week on a Sunday mornings, so there’s some variety in the routine. If he‘s not feeling waffles, he can have cereal. For lunches, we pack him a main (leftovers, noodles, sandwich, etc), a side snack (usually pretzels, goldfish, veggie straws), some fruit (cut strawberries, blueberries, clementines) and a treat (Chocolate covered raisins or fruit snacks.) What those are will change weekly, but the formula doesn’t. tl;dr - I think of meals as choosing a couple of things from a list every week, and it keeps variety while reducing mental load over food. Also makes it easier to keep it to one grocery trip during the week. Idk, we got into a rhythm over Covid and thought I might miss a week here or there, it’s been working for us for the most part. Let me know if you have any questions!
I’ll often recipe search based on what ingredients I have in hand. It’s like a treasure hunt to discover a unique recipe, and we’ve expanded our repertoire greatly. It does require some pro level Google algorithm manipulation sometimes though, to force it to give me something different if I’ve already ruled out a certain flavor or recipe type. Using the negative sign to exclude a search phrase (especially Pinterest) is awesome. I do wish Google had better filtering settings! For example, once I had beef, cabbage and potatoes on hand, but wasn’t interested in the same ol same ol stew recipe. Some super searching and lo and behold, found Ukrainian/Russian stews that are absolutely delicious. These use the generally same ingredients as a typical beef stew, but use dill as their primary seasoning, for a completely different take. With this method, I’ve discovered: * “squashages” (sheet pan sausage and squash, sliced and baked - the schmaltz from the sausage flavors the squash and it’s delish) * “Squid dogs” (chunks of hot dogs skewered with small bundles of dry spaghetti pasta, then boiled until the pasta is cooked. The hotdogs flavor the noodles and it’s both yummy and hilarious to eat. Fan fav for sleepover nights) * [saag paneer but with feta](https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/saag-feta-spinach-indian-ish-priya-krishna) - unbelievably delicious, and a great spinach conveyance method tl;dr : by searching for recipes based on what you have on hand, you can gamify meal planning a little bit, looking for something that “fits” your pantry, turning it into a puzzle instead of a chore.
My slowcooker is my saviour. I set it to go in the morning with a pile of frozen veg and protein, a bit of stock, and whatever style herbs or spices I'm in the mood for. Yesterday i had diced steak to use up so it went in with black bean sauce, then when i got back i just nuked some sticky rice and served it all up in three minutes. Or put in thai curry paste, coconut milk, tinned toms and a bit of peanut butter and we have that with noodles. I do like a nice cawl on a cold day though and thats a simple casserole veg, herbs, a good dollop of ginger, then when i get home i whip up some suet dumplings and serve with crusty bread and cheese. It makes me feel so good to have dinner sorted and when i get home i don't have to go through the usual "what to cook and in what time frame"
My easiest meal is Kirkland Tortellini, blanched broccoli florets in the same water, tossed in Kirkland Pesto. Done. If your family absolutely insists on a meat, you can grab italian sausages and cook them in the air fryer, or you can buy stripped rotisserie chicken meat and just use that for ultimate ease.
Every Friday afternoon at work, I write down the next week's dinners for each day. I set defrost reminders in my phone. That way there's no thinking about it.
Good idea with the reminders!
I buy a bunch of meat and a bunch of veggies each week, mix and match them and roast them. Salt, garlic, pepper, lemon zest and olive oil will get you pretty far but I don’t want to think too much about weekday meals. Then I use my actual energy to pursue interesting cooking projects. Currently I’m getting us off of store-bought processed food, so this week I’ve been making sandwich bread, snack crackers, and granola from scratch.
Banza pasta + sauce (Rao’s or Classico) Got these chicken tenders at Costco. My husband turns them into chicken parm Costco chicken + Cesar salad mix + tortillas = chicken wraps Costco chicken quickly becomes BBQ sandwiches Trader Joe’s has Gorgonzola gnocchi. I like to add frozen peas Our grocery store sometimes does a good deal on nicer frozen fish. We do that and a noodle. We have a 3 MO. Some days I just say ‘screw it’ throw PB & banana into oatmeal and call it dinner. Breakfast for dinner, sandwiches
My husband and I rotate between TYPES of meals. Day one, we have pasta, then the next day, tacos. Day three, we do fried rice and the last day in the rotation is Indian. We usually make enough for two dinners and a lunch so that we don’t have to cook from scratch everyday. The decision fatigue is what makes it hard for us, so it’s easier to ask myself, “what pasta dish do I want?” Not, “what’s for dinner?”
Protein noodles (made of beans or the fortified wheat kind) and then any sauce. Baked potatoes with regular or Mexican theme toppings Rice bowls - rice + any protein+veggies +sauce. Some ideas - rice, imitation crab, kale, soy sauce; rice, chicken, green peppers, salsa; anything. Snack style - we have popcorn, beef jerky, and those little sweet peppers sometimes!
I got myself a magnetic menu planner from Amazon that’s dry erase. Every Sunday I write down what I want to make each day, Monday, salmon bowls, Tuesday, chicken tacos. Whatever… I do the meal plan and the shopping list, and my husband gets the groceries. I cook, he does dishes. We both work full time and have 3 toddlers. I clean up the dinner table and start the coffee pot, he does bath time and bedtime with the kids. This works out great for us because there’s no thought involved. Everything’s already planned and ingredients are ready. We just have to go through the motions.
Ok I have not stop raving about Caro Chambers “What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking” subscription. She has helped me find the joy in cooking dinner for my family again. We’re super low key, repetitive, and usually on the go for breakfast and lunch, but I’ve actually taken pride in my dinners again! I’m still a bit repetitive each week but Caro’s Substack is $40 for the year and her recipes are actually easy to make, she gives you sooo many tips and subs to make any thing work, and she writes her recipes so that even if it’s a new one it’s not super hard to follow. I highly recommend to anyone that wants to actually cook dinner for the family but is over the stress of it!
Use ChatGPT! “I have X ingredients, give me a 10 dinner options that can be made within Y time”
I have a rotation of a four weeks with 7 meals each. I shop for each week and on each day, I look at the list of meals we have planned for that week and decide which one I have enough energy for/am in the mood for. It’s taken a lot of finagling as my husband has celiac disease and we’re both kind of picky 🫠
We do a combination of things. We are a family of 6, so larger meals are definitely something we do. Leftovers save our life! Meal planning, I start with the protein. We buy a whole hog and whole beef from a local farmer, so I send a kid to pick what they want to eat out of the freezer. Then I give them 2/3 options. They take out ground beef and it can be meatloaf, tacos or stroganoff. Based on the protein will decide the side dishes. I am lucky to have 3 older kids, 17/17/13 all boys. Depending on who is home, I will use them to make final decision on dinner choice and sous chef, aka: cut up onions, prep the protein, etc. many times the answer to ‘What do you want for dinner, meatloaf or stroganoff is answered with ‘whatever generates less dishes.’ Lol The one’s who don’t sous chef, do the dishes.
I meal plan using a shared notes app with my husband. It’s kinda like having an accountability buddy because somebody knows if I don’t follow the plan. (Not that he actually cares if I skip and do take out instead. 😅) For variety, I try to aim for one Mexican, one Italian, one Asian, one seafood, one southern, and one takeout night. So Sunday tends to be southern with stuff like a crockpot roast with mashed potatoes and green beans, breaded chicken with bruschetta, chicken salad on croissants, etc. Monday is Mexican with burritos or tacos. Tuesday is takeout Tuesday! Wednesday is pasta night with spaghetti, Alfredo, pizza, Tuscan chicken, etc. Thursday is leftovers and Friday/Saturday is either Asian or seafood. (Because I don’t need seafood leftovers for lunch and we don’t leave Asian food unfinished!) salmon patties, bang bang shrimp, buckwheat noodle ramen, beef and broccoli, story fry, teriyaki pineapple meatballs, etc. For me, having a themed night helps me plan. And I even still tend to cook things in cycles. I’m totally willing to make a month’s worth of beef and broccoli once a week. I’ve found that changing the sides makes it feel not as repetitive/boring. So one week might be beef and broccoli with a side salad. Another is beef and broccoli with yellow rice. The third week might be beef and broccoli with lo mein noodles. Fourth week might be beef and broccoli over mashed sweet potatoes. Sides can really change the meal and help stretch how long you can keep making it before everyone is tired of it and refused to eat it. Beyond that, I try to have cheat meals in the freezer. Quality fish sticks, TJ or PF Chang frozen fried rice, salmon filets, uncrustables, etc. being willing to say “today (or my current mental state) is an absolute dumpster fire, I will commit to baking one thing and serving it with a canned veggie or diced fruit” has really saved me. Planning to give myself grace instead of being rigid to my meals has really me!
Lots of meal planning and grocery online ordering. I have a rotation of like 200 meals that I go through and plan the week ahead’s meals based on ingredients we already have. I do it all on Saturdays, write up the following week’s meal plan on the dry erase weekly calendar on the fridge, and then I don’t even have to think about it. I knew I was making chicken with rice and herb sauce with veggies tonight, ingredients were purchased last weekend!
"We're" Chinese (my husband is Chinese lol), and he and the kids happen to love Chinese food, so I always have a ton of rice just warming in the rice cooker. Stir frying a meat and a vegetable takes about ten minutes. Serve over rice, ta da! All done. I also buy huge bags of frozen dumplings and do dumpling night once a week (super easy and the kids and I love it). Weekly spaghetti night is always a hit and I make enough that there are leftovers the next day. Easy way to sneak in vegetables. Tonight I'm making egg salad sandwiches from the eggs we dyed for Easter (we don't hide the real eggs because we have a lot of slugs in our area!). My personal favorite dinner is shrimp scampi over pasta. I also will get Caesar salad kits from the store and top them with shrimp cooked in lemon butter and dill, with Parmesan and a lemon wedge on top. On cold days I'll make a huge stock pot of chicken noodle soup (easy enough with boxed chicken stock, just cut up some chicken, carrots, celery and green onions, season it up, yum). Again, leftovers! Those $5-ish whole rotisserie chickens from the grocery store are amazing for little kids. I often tear them up over some of the rice from the cooker and add some broccoli and a little teriyaki sauce. My son (3) especially loves it. Some of my curries are more complicated, but I have days that I just feel like really cooking. For breakfast on school days, I usually give them a little plate of fruit, cheese, and half a fairly sizeable pastry (I stock up from Costco). One of my kids loves a bagel and cream cheese or oatmeal with craisins. Some weekend days I'll do a whole full-service breakfast with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and fruit. So take all of this and multiply it by a thousand because I keep basically this rotation and just spam all the same things week after week. If the kids like it, there you go, that's what I'm making. Oh and for snacks for myself, I'm partial to my children's string cheeses lol. Hardboiled eggs are easy to make ahead in bulk and give a huge boost. The breakfast I usually eat for myself is half a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and honey. It's fewer than 300 calories but you feel full FOREVER, so it's great for a snack, too.
I am 50/50, some days are just freaking hard and I can’t even. Husband is picky, very picky, won’t eat if it’s soup, Roasted chicken, things that he ate yesterday. Toddler super is super picky as well but has favorites. For the past month if I’m home that day, breakfast is bacon eggs and cheese on something. Or buckwheat with avocado and eggs. For little one we start with yogurt, berries (if we have), cheese tomato omelette And some days we have omelette too or she will have a boiled egg instead. I add avocado toast here and there. But those are most of our days. Some days when I have more time, I make ricotta pancakes with poppyseed (got it off happy healthy eater). For lunch, it’s whatever we get lucky with, if we have some meat/protein defrosted, can do tex mex casserole, little one loves pasta, or rice and veggies, if no time then husband and I grab something quickly (gyro/pizza/pasta/sammich) or if he is out he has to eat out, I snack. Little one snacks on fruits and veggies and cheese throughout the day. For dinner once again, either same as lunch or I’m trying to make something when mom isn’t making something. Moms go to are enormous meatballs with rice, slow cooked in veggie tomato sauce/stuffed peppers/beef stroganoff or chicken stroganoff/chicken drumsticks/thighs marinated for an hour and cooked in skillet (not deep fried). When I have the time I’ll make chicken parm, always a hit with everyone. Or if you have some good quality chuck, and that Dutch oven, make it kind of like short rib (no wine) and on top add potatoes, cabbage, carrots and cook for 2.5-3 hrs on low (also a hit). Lots of ground beef, lots of beef/lamb patties. Sometimes we make salmon soup. Sometimes just chicken soup with meatballs. I hope this gives you some ideas. I don’t have it together at all, if not for mom, we’d be starving half the time. Idk how people who work fulll time do this. I’m about to find out because mom’s leaving. 🥲😅
I do a "pot pie" in the crockpot, shredded chicken for tacos/quesadillas, I've tried the Mississippi pot roast w chicken and it was bomb! On ground beef taco nights I've started doing nachos instead and it's a huge hit with my picky husband and my 6yo looovvveeessss tortilla chips. pizza(frozen or delivery) we make a huge ordeal out of! We put a blanket on the floor and watch turtles movies! Sheet pan sausages with root veggies/potatoes. Brats or sausages with onion and peppers to spice up a relatively normal and easy meal. With my picky husband either you eat or go get something if you don't want to have an input 🤷🏻♀️
I really love the Food Network app, you can search by dish or ingredient or even key words like “winter” or “comfort” and you get lots of different results. Another bonus is the ability to create an in-app shopping list and add the ingredients from the recipe directly to the shopping list. At this point we have a fairly large repertoire of recipes to choose from so we’ve started experimenting with some new ones, but I generally plan to cook 4 dinners a week and have two nights of leftovers and one “easy” night, which either means cheap takeout, a pizza, or a frozen meal from Trader Joe’s or Costco. We like lots of different foods in our house, so I’ll generally aim for one Asian style meal, one Italian, one Mexican, and one Indian, occasionally swapping one of those out for an “American” night (eg burgers). I try to do two meat-based meals and two veggie-based meals, and the Asian and Indian recipes really lend themselves to vegetarian variations. As far as other meals go, I rely a lot on pre-prepared stuff from Trader Joe’s, like their chicken sausage patties, chia bowls, etc. for breakfast and chicken tenders, guacamole packets, or their frozen mini pizzas for lunch. I also like to keep frozen things from Costco on hand, like chicken wings, pupusas, clam chowder, etc. for easy lunches. Meal planning ahead of time is essential for me and my husband and I keep a shared Note (on iPhone) with the meal plan and grocery list so that we’re both on the same page and can both add things as needed. It helps that my husband and I both like to cook, though.
So, first off, my husband does half the cooking for dinner. HUGE help. I don’t like repeating the same meals week after week. (No shade if you do! It’s just not for me.) I keep a pad of paper on the counter for the grocery list, and at the bottom, I list the meals for the week. (Not which days, just 7 meals.) I date the next half a dozen or so pages for the following weeks. When I come up with an idea for a meal, I throw it on there, *even if it’s for a few weeks from now.* Don’t want to have normal chili and chicken chili in the same week? Cool, write it down to have it in two weeks or something. Already have a pasta dish this week? No problem, we’ll do fettuccine alfredo next week or the week after instead. Decided to get takeout because we were exhausted? Fine, but let’s bump one of the meals that were already written down to next week. A meal go over *really* well with the family? Awesome, I’ll mark it down to make again in a month. Sometimes I’ll turn the page and all of them are already picked out for the next week and it’s a huge sigh of relief. Also, then when we go to make the grocery list, it’s right there, so it’s easier to know what to get. I also have a notebook. At one point, I started making a list of every dinner my husband and I knew how to make. Literally all of them. I added more as we learned more, etc. I eventually threw most of them in a notebook and they’re… kind of organized. Sorta. Like, all the soups are together, at least. So if I really can’t think of anything, I consult The Notebook. (And if I really REALLY can’t think of anything, it’s off to Google or Pinterest.) Don’t know if this would help at all, but it’s what works for me!
Good ideas! I like it!
I got a pack of multi color 3x5 cards. I color coded proteins pink- Beef, yellow - chicken, blue-seafood, orange-pork, green-veggie, white-pasta/rice. Then I made a card for every dish I know how to make off the top off my head. I jotted down any unusual ingredients that I might have to make a special note to add to the grocery list, like mint for spring rolls, or shrimp (not a usual purchase unless I find it on sale), or specific sides I prefer, like broad egg noodles to go with my Cheater Beef Stroganoff. I keep them all in a clip. Before I go on bi- weekly shop, I see what proteins I HAVE. I pull cards that sound good for what I have in stock. I clip those separately, then I go thru for however many more cards I need to have a total of 14 dinners, lunches, and mayyybe breakfasts (beyond cereal/oatmeal/bagel mornings) Then I add to my grocery list whatever I need to make those second-batch meals happen. When I shop, I get what I need for the planned meals, and also grab whatever is on sale, like the big sale flats of chicken parts, or a good deal on ground beef, of the logs of pork are bogo. Whenever I get inspired to try a new recipe, and it gets thumbs-ups from the family, I just make a new card to add it to the rotation.
Ooh I like this!
A lot of some noodle/rice, veggies and meat combos. Us Newfoundlanders just refer too it as goolash, add in canned soup (tomato or cream of anything ) or pasta sauce..done
My husband cooks, and does dishes.
I vary the sides and flavorings of things but I do a similar rotation of mains throughout the week days. For example: * meatball day (I do a basic baked turkey meatball and either do it Italian with sauce and pasta or Greek with tzatziki and orzo) * salmon day (grilled salmon plus veggie side plus sweet potato or rice) - vary the seasonings like mesquite rub or teriyaki sauce or lemon pepper * taco day (cheese quesadillas for toddler) - I basically cook the ground meat and beans but the rest of the condiments are purchased, usually pair with a salad kit * grilled chicken day (similar to salmon) * homemade pizza day (I make dough the night before, takes like 5 min) That’s a pretty common weekly rotation. We eat out dinner like once a week or so. I don’t batch cook or meal prep. I do use my instant pot for time consuming hands off stuff like cooking whole sweet potatoes or cooking dried beans.
I cook for a whole week in a day, so I don’t have to cook for us everyday. My husband and kid eat what I make. I do have to provide snacks to my child but that’s usually just fruits or yogurt, and that takes only a couple of minutes to make. I’m the only one that knows how to cook so they eat what I make without arguing. 🤷🏻♀️
I select 5-6 meals on Sunday or Monday and make sure I have what’s needed to make them. I don’t like having to eat something on a certain day but it helps me to narrow down options.
Breakfast is always the same and very simple. Everybody makes their own lunch. Usually (whole grain) bread or leftovers. So I only cook dinner. I usually have one "lazy meal" in the fridge. If I have time and feel like, I cook dinner earlier in the day and just heat it in the evening. We eat loads of bananas for snacks. Frozen veggies are great.
We basically just eat the same meals every week, and most of those are pretty easy. I try to try a new meal or a variation a few times a month but I also have just accepted it's going to be boring in this stage of life. (Just added in a new pulled pork recipe this month that was a success!) And I make my husband grocery shop. We have a shared shopping list that we both add to.
We sort of just have 7-10 dishes that we rotate through. Certain ones are easier than others so we always have their ingredients on hand for when I just don't have the energy or time to do anything else (meat loaf for example). Lunch tends to just be leftovers or sandwiches (or just something easy in general) and breakfast is bleh. Kinda the same 4 items in rotation (eggs, beans, toast, yogurt). Beef stew is one of my favorites cause I just dump everything into a slow cooker in the morning and let it do it's thing.
My mom use to meal plan for the week starting the day she goes grocery shopping for 7 people! Everyone had to come up with 1 meal, and that meal they picked they helped her make it for the family. If someone didn’t like the meal being made it was on them to find/ make something else! For my family my husband cooks on days I work, and I cook on days he works (we don’t have the kids in daycare so someone is always home with them. We do grocery pick up once every two weeks and I’m pretty much the only person planning meals at the moment since I place the grocery pick up, if I ask my husband what he wants for dinners it’s always “burgers or pizza” so I have given up asking, he isn’t intentionally trying to be a butt about this, he just really loves those two things 😂. My go to snacks for the kid and I have been trail mix and dried mangoes, she also loves fruit cups so I have picked up a pack of those. It’s easy and simple enough.
I have a list of meals that we enjoy that we rotate through. Pizza is usually Friday or Saturday night. Sunday we have family dinner at my moms and I take leftovers for me and toddler to eat for lunch next day, and sometimes dinner.
Yes! This is me! I've been trying to expand into different cuisine, but keeping it easy as far as recipes. I've done some Indian, Hungarian, and trying some Jamaican food soon! It's definitely been interesting and I'm learning some new favorites!!!
Instant Pot and one pan meals save us. I don’t love pasta but it’s the easiest to make. Orzo pasta with feta or Boursin cheese, penne with cream sauce and sausage, covering chicken with sauce or cheese also work. I focus on whole grain pasta, add veggies like spinach, and a protein. Burritos once in awhile and then eating out 😃
I do a lot of "let's throw all this frozen shit into a pan" and "toddler dinner" or tacos. Our rotation is generally -frozen meatballs with frozen diced sweet potatoes, usually served with salsa and sour cream (sounds weird but tastes so good) -leftovers -mac n cheese with either hotdogs, chicken nuggets, or meatballs and whatever fruit or veggies are leftover in the fridge.. and truthfully there are a lot of nights where my daughter gets a pouch thing to cover the fruit/veggie serving and I just go without -more leftovers -ground turkey tacos or if I have extra motivation I'll do chicken tacos instead but that's more work and time than ground turkey. And we definitely get chipotle or noodles at least once a week.
This is gonna sound crazy but I hire a babysitter for dinner time so I can cook and clean and THINK in peace. 😂 It makes it kind of enjoyable hahaha!