Why Wait Until You Are Tired, Hungry, and Stressed to Decide What to Cook? Save Your Sanity and Meal Plan Now!

I don't know why, but deciding what to cook is like torture to me.  Seriously.  It's like trying to choose my own form of execution.  What will it be tonight?  Death by skillet or oven bake torture?  When dinner time rolls around, I just want food to magically appear in my mouth.  Is that too much to ask for?  This kind of emotional revulsion often leads to eating out.  It's a lot easier for me to choose a drive through than it is to choose a recipe.

On the other hand, if someone says to me, "I want tacos," I can easily whip up a taco dinner with little to no stress.  Somehow it's the choosing that's just too hard for me.  So if my kids could all agree on the same meal on any given night, I'd be set.  But they don't.  Ever!  Ask five kids what they want, and I typically get five different answers.  Or worse, no answers!

Me: What do you want for dinner?
Them: I don't care.
Me: How about spaghetti?
Them: No.
Me: How about chicken casserole?
Them: No.

This conversation could go on like this all night!  But I finally found a solution.  Meal planning.  I know you've heard of it before, and it's really really simple, but it changed my life.  Well, at least it changed my dinner time.

At the beginning of each month (or at least at the beginning of each week), I plan out the meals we are going to have for the next 30 days.  I usually ask the kids for ideas of what they'd like to eat, so everyone gets at least one of their favorite meals.  I try to make things balanced by listing roughly equal numbers of meals made from chicken, beef, pork, and fish or meatless meals.

Once I have a list of 20- 30 ideas, I look at my calendar and start plugging things in.  We are always super busy on Thursday nights, so I pick a meal that tastes good cold and is easy to eat on the go.  Sundays I might plan a bigger meal if I know we will have lots of time to prepare it and sit down and enjoy it.  I go through the calendar day by day and write in meals based on how busy we expect to be that day and based on what else we have eaten the few days before.

When I do my weekly grocery shopping, it's easy to see exactly what I need to buy, so I always have what I need on hand without last minute (expensive) trips to the grocery store.

Each morning I get up and write the days dinner on a chalkboard I have hanging in my kitchen.  This serves several purposes.  First, it reminds me what I'm cooking in case there is something that needs taken out of the freezer or prepared early.  Second, it stops the kids from asking a thousand times, "What's for dinner?"  And third, if the kids don't like it, I pretend like it's not my fault.  I just point to the chalk board and shrug as if the decision is beyond my control.


Marcia