I've always hated being asked, "So, what's for dinner?" My response tends to be of the smart Alec variety, "Whatever you are making." Why is it that I have to come up with what is for dinner most nights? There is nothing in my resume or pedigree that makes me remarkably qualified to be the family chef. I do enjoy cooking, but not the stressed out desperate attempt to throw together a balanced meal at 6 pm that tends to be the norm in our house. To be fair, my husband can cook and enjoys cooking certain things, but meal planning is not his forte either. He will occasionally surprise me by making dinner, usually after a trip to our closest Wegmans. (It's 20 minutes away but worth the trip!)
My husband does most of our grocery shopping, and I've quelled my inner control freak. For the most part, anyway. I just make very specific lists, including brands. The quelled part is where I don't get mad or roll my eyes when he brings home the "wrong" item. I need to get over it and not let my perfectionism force me to do the grocery shopping.
Tangent over. Back to my point. Most days, it's like pulling teeth to find out what my husband wants for dinner. This made meal planning a challenge, until I realized that he really and truly does not care. As long as it is not too far outside the known universe of what he will eat, if I put it on the table, he will eat it. He just likes that there is food and it is cooked and on the table before 10 pm. (Yes, we have eaten dinner at 10 pm. Not recently, and not since we had a kid, but yes, we have.) I read it many places before finally accepting that it is true...meal planning is the only way to go. On my own, I stink at meal planning. We would eat the same three things ad infinitum. And I hated leftovers, which was a problem when we were eating the same thing over and over again. I was skeptical when I found the Six O'Clock Scramble, but I had to try something new. I discovered the Scramble right around the time that my daughter was really starting to eat big people food. That's what we call solid foods in our house. Anyway, around that time I realized that I needed to actually feed her well balanced and nutritious meals and that it would probably be easier to do so from day one rather than trying to fix a bad food situation down the road.
I love the Six O'Clock Scramble. It really is a great solution, giving you a set 5 day meal plan each week. I should point out, though, that this site requires a subscription after the free trial membership. The beauty of it is the flexibility it offers. So I can look at the offered menu for the week and switch out recipes based on what my family likes or doesn't like and/or what is in my pantry. Each recipe on the site has tags like make ahead, freezable, express, vegetarian, and too many others to list here. I like to mix up the meals I choose to include 1 or 2 that I can make ahead on Sunday and an express for whichever night of the week is going to be crazy. I also built up my recipe box and stored comments on each recipe that we've tried as to who liked what and what variations I made. Love it!! Having a recipe box of stored recipes that we like makes meal planning so much easier. I do wish that it had more crock pot recipes, because I love my crock pot and use it at least once a week. But I pick 3 or 4 meals from the Scramble and then fill in 1 or 2 additional from Stephanie O'Dea's Year of Slow Cooking blog. Voila. Meal planning done!
This post reminds me, I need to call my husband and have him throw our vegetarian enchiladas (made ahead!) into the oven so they are ready when my munchkin and I get home! Yum!
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