Yes, You Have to Make Dinner Again

It’s tough thinking of dinner ideas every…single….night.  And it can be even tougher to get it on the table in a timely fashion.  Between working long hours, running to activities, homework, chores, and everything in between, I can understand how take out and fast food is an easy fix for the eternal dinner question “What are we having?”  

There is one thing that can make getting dinner on the table easier, faster, and even healthier.  Meal planning.  Yup, planning ahead.  My best advice is sitting down one day a week, for less than an hour and mapping out the following week. You could even map out two weeks, or a month!  Up to you.  

When you sit down, there are a few things you want to keep in mind when picking your meal ideas:

• The time you have to make the meal: if little Timmy has baseball practice on Thursday nights, and you have 15 minutes to get dinner on the table, it’s not the time to make a turkey. You need to make something quick, VERY quick! Something like pasta with some sauteed veggies and beans might be a better option than making a turkey!
• The ingredients: if your famous corn chowder calls for fresh corn right off the cob, it probably shouldn’t be on the dinner rotation for February.  
• The time of year: just like ingredients, you probably don’t want to be eating beef stew in July.  Maybe you do (and in that case, you do you) but some dishes are seasonal.
• Your schedule: Saturday night is Grammie’s 70th birthday, which means you don’t need to cook (scratch that night off the list).  Or maybe on Mondays Sally has dance class, and you can’t get dinner on the table AND take her to dance, so Monday is Pizza night!  No worries if you have a night a week that’s not a home cooked meal; it only becomes an issue when it’s multiple nights a week that you’re relying on fast food or take out.

Now that you have these things in mind, it’s time to spell out each dinner for the week.  That includes the ingredients you have in the house and what you need to pick up at the store.  Make sure you have every ingredient for all the dinners for the start of the week.  We like to meal plan on Sunday mornings, then grocery shop Sunday afternoons in my family.

Wait, I have to think of new recipes every week and cook every night?  Good grief no!  The first few times might take a little while, but after you do it for a few weeks, it’ll be a breeze.  Here are a couple options to make it go even quicker:

• Theme night:  Mondays are Mexican, Tuesdays are Italian, Wednesdays are Soup, Thursdays are Vegetarian…and so on.  Once you have a general idea of each night (and pick your favorite themes, there are tons out there) it becomes simple to pick an Italian meal vs trying to pick a recipe from all the possible dinner options out there.
• Batch cook:  Making chicken for Monday night’s dinner?  Can you cook extra and reuse it for Thursday in your chicken pot pie?  Grill a bunch of veggies for dinner on Tuesday and use the extra in your pasta dish on Thursday.  
• Leftovers: One of my favorites!  I’m a family of four.  But I can cook for a family of 8 and use the leftovers for lunches or dinner later in the week.  When I was growing up there would be an “eat the leftovers” night every so often when my mom saw them piling up.  We all had something different for dinner, but it was the leftovers we picked, so we all got our favorites and were full.  Win win.
• Repeat:  Find 20 or so favorite recipes you and your family enjoy and make a rotation.  A 3-4 week rotation (with a pizza night or leftover night built in) is perfect; no one gets bored eating the same foods, and you don’t have to think of new dinner ideas.  Literally repeat the same 7 meals you made 3 weeks ago.  Every so often you can throw in a new recipe, or maybe you make one new recipe a week to keep things interesting, but it makes the weekly meal planning simple, and the grocery shopping as well!

Planning ahead is the best way to make night time meals as easy a possible.  And to help you, download this free Menu Planner from Simple Start Nutrition.  Pro tip:  Put it inside an 8×10 frame (I got mine from the dollar store to match my kitchen decor) and you can write on the glass with a dry erase marker.  Then clean, and repeat the next week!  

Happy Dinner Planning!

This blog was written by Chris Henigan MS, RD, LDN, co-founder of Simple Start Nutrition.  For more blog posts and nutrition information follow @simplestartnutrition on Instagram and Facebook.  Also feel free to contact us, by visiting our website (simplestartnutrition.com) to schedule an appointment to discuss your nutrition related needs.  We’re here to help.