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I saw one of those memes going around Facebook, reading: “Who knew that the hardest part of being an adult is figuring out what to cook for dinner every single night for the rest of your life until you die.” This is so true! (Well, maybe a slight exaggeration, but let’s set that aside for a minute…) As I’ve mentioned before, my 8-year-old is finally getting out of his picky stage of eating (but “foods that look like vomit” are still out, including green bean casserole — fiiiine). I’m doing a new diet program and the leader had a brilliant plan for how to plan dinner every night and it’s totally simplified my dinner planning routine. So, with a big hat tip to Corinne at Phit n Phat, here it is:
Select a theme for dinner for every night.
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Super simple, right? After all, we’ve all heard of Meatless Mondays or Taco Tuesdays! And yet… somehow a) it never occurred to me to pick a theme for every single night, and b) it never occurred to me to make a list of every meal we like to eat and sort them into themes.
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This is where my super dorky side kicked in and I got an Excel sheet and started going through our favorite mealplanning app, the Griffin family cookbook I made a few years ago, and my personal Pinterest “to make” board. I wound up starting with a few major categories: Chicken! Fish! Beef! and as I started listing things I started thinking about how and why we like to eat things, and suspecting for me that having overlapping categories would be a-OK. We like to eat salads in summer, for example, so I started making a list of a bunch of salads. We like to eat soup in the winter.
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Sometimes we go through phases where we want to do low carb; if you do Whole 30 or Keto you could keep a list of those friendly meals. I keep saying we should have Sandwich Night sometimes. We’re trying to eat less meat this year in general. After a lot of review and brainstorming, I wound up with these main categories for our family:
Monday – Soup (in large part because we could use the weekend to do a lot of meal prep for different soups we were avoiding because they take more work)
Tuesday – Chicken/Turkey/Pork – again, a lot of our recipes are somewhat conducive to weekend meal prep
Wednesday – Seafood (in large part because we have a regular salmon dinner on Fridays with extended family members, so all of our other seafood dishes weren’t getting cooked because we’d say, “ack, we just had salmon” or “but salmon is tomorrow!”)
Thursday – Meatless
Friday – (regular salmon dinner)
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Saturday and Sunday needed a bit more thought — we used to go out frequently for one big midday meal, but neither of the kids are into restaurants right now, so we’ve fallen into the trap of ordering dinner a lot (and the kids get pizza almost every other Saturday when we go on date night).
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So I have a separate list of “Saturday” foods that are recipes we really, really like — but never make because they’re too involved for weeknight cooking. These aren’t necessarily fancy things (baked mac and cheese, for example) but it’s more prep work (or more calories) than I want to get into on a weeknight.
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Sundays I’ve left free in case we either have leftovers, want to order in or pick up food somewhere — but I do have a list of different meal prep things I can do on Sunday, such as roasting carrots or Brussels sprouts, making green bean casserole (that my eldest won’t eat), or things like that.
Just a few other random notes on this lovely dinner-planning system:
- things can go in multiple categories (so “lasagna” could be in the categories of Chicken/Turkey, Meatless, or Saturday depending on what we make it with — I have another category of “Beef” that just isn’t on the schedule now, but obviously it can go there too.)
- My brainstorming sessions led me to more categories than I have days in the week right now — I plan to switch them up as we get bored, seasons change, or ingredients need to change… (My categories are: Soup, Chicken/Turkey, Seafood, Meatless, Saturday, Beef, Salad, Pasta, Sandwich, Summer Foods, Low Carb, Freezer/Pantry.) Summer Foods includes no-cook things like “cocktail shrimp” and “cheese plate.”
- Fwiw I have between 15-26 dishes in most categories on the schedule; some of the “future” categories have as little as 5 or 6
- This is kind of “cheating at adulting” but — there are some prepared frozen meals that we buy frequently and enjoy, so those are included on the lists. Amy’s Tofu Lasagna — Amy’s Spinach Feta Wrap – Red’s burritos — I keep buying them, and then we forget about them. So I figure if I have them on the selection list, I keep them at the forefront of my mind.
- Regarding picky kids and dinner — they are still going to get pasta or French bread pizza some nights, but I like that they’re seeing the adults eat a larger variety of foods and getting small tastes of a wider variety of foods — and I (selfishly) I like that the focus is back on what my husband and I want to eat and less on “what’s easy to slap together for the kids.” (I should probably make another category for “kids meals” that I can select from a rotating thing on the nights where I know they won’t eat what my husband and I are eating.)
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Readers, do you find it difficult to plan dinner every night for you and your family? (Does anyone’s partner do it entirely, or have you outsourced it to a nanny or other caregiver?) Have you found a plan that’s working for you?
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Stock photo via Stencil.
Anonymous says
We plan meals every other weekend for 2 weeks at a time, which averages about 20 minutes. I’ve often thought that we should have some sort of system to make it go faster, but we don’t, partly because what we eat in summer (salads! fresh produce!) and what we eat in winter (soups, chili, casseroles) are pretty different. Friday night is usually pasta and we try to alternate meat vs vegetarian dishes, but that’s about it.
Our kids are only 3, so we don’t really factor them into meal planning yet. Most of what we eat they’ll eat, with the exception of some things like thin soups that are not worth the effort of trying to feed to a preschooler. If what’s planned for adult dinner can be made within 45 minutes of getting home, we all eat the same dinner together. Otherwise, kids get leftovers from the previous day or something easy (gnocchi, nuggets, meatballs, quesedillas, eggs, etc) and we cook while they’re eating and eat dinner ourselves after they go to bed.
Anonymous says
I’ll bite on this one! My family is hubby, four year old daughter, and me. I meal plan nearly every weekend, and while I don’t necessarily enjoy the act of it, I thoroughly enjoy having a plan and the groceries I need when mealtime comes around. The single best thing I’ve done is make a list of all the main dishes my family generally approves of. I have a few rules: (1) nearly every meal results in leftovers that can be eaten for dinner the next night and (2) I try to use various types of meat, or no meat, throughout the week. Nearly every meal we eat has this format: main + fresh fruit + veggie. There are variations…sometimes at least part of the fruit and veggie will be a smoothie. Sometimes there is an extra grain if the main is something that is only meat (like grilled steak or something). I also plan my husband’s and my lunches like a meal. I’ll make one or two things (usually one) that we both commit to eating for lunch at least three times during the week. I also use my crock pot as much as possible. So an example week might look like:
Sunday: chili + apple slices + salad
Monday: leftover chili + grapes + avocado (on hubby and my chili, on the side for kiddo)
Tuesday: chicken and noodles (crock pot) + grapes + broccoli
Wednesday: leftover chicken and noodles + pear slices + salad
Thursday: salmon (baked in the winter, grilled in the summer) + rice + apple slices + cherry tomatoes (maybe a different veggie for hubby and me)
Friday: salmon salad sandwiches + green smoothie + salad + cherry tomatoes for kiddo (there’s a lot of salad in our house…)
Saturday: out
Lunches: salad + chicken breast + crusty roll
I try really hard to cook mains that all three of us like (i.e. that kiddo will eat) and have a variety of different fruits and vegetables in the house. So if kiddo won’t eat the peas I made, then I’ll give her some carrots instead. I don’t mind subbing different fruits and vegetables for her if she’ll eat the main dish, but it drives me bonkers when she won’t eat the main dish. And sometimes we all eat different fruits or vegetables to use stuff up before it goes bad.
C says
You share my brain. When I cook, I double or triple the recipe so it provides two dinners, plus lunch for the kid and maybe for me.
My meal-planning game changer has been to create two recipe lists (with pinpoint to cookbook and page number)
1) mains that take half hour or less to prepare, and
2) mains that take more than half hour to prepare.
In each list, the recipes must be acceptable to most family members most of the time, and must be capable of being made by either house chef (me or by DH). As we are transitioning away from a meat-heavy diet, having a quick reference list is invaluable.
Before shopping, I consider our family’s after-work commitments, and then cross- reference cooking nights against the list. On leftovers night, the chef can substitute a different starch/grain or side vegetable. This week:
Sunday: chicken with dates and almonds (list 1), with rice and salad
Monday: leftovers with fresh pasta, broccoli
Tuesday: eggplant caponata (list 2) and box pasta
Wednesday: leftover eggplant with rice
Thursday: frozen salmon burgers (list 2), veg from the fridge and perogies
Friday: out
avocado says
I am our household’s menu planner, shopper, and cook. I loosely base my weekly menu planning on categories, but don’t assign categories to specific days of the week. I usually try to plan something like one Mexican-style meal, one Asian-style or Indian-style meal, one pasta dish, one homemade pizza, and one sandwich or burger. [I say “-style” because my “ethnic” cooking is not authentic.] Across those categories I aim for at least two vegetarian dinners, one fish, and no more than 2-3 poultry dinners. If my kid were less picky that would be more like 3-4 nights veggie, 1-2 nights seafood, and one night poultry. I also plan and prep all work and school lunches, prepping in one batch on Sundays and another batch midweek.
I do best planning only 5 dinners per week. We eat out once a week, and there’s always at least one night during the week when I just can’t deal with cooking and throw together something random or convince my husband to cook breakfast for dinner (his specialty). I find that planning every single meal feels too restrictive and leads to leftover ingredients. If I had more time and energy and could commit to shopping on a weeknight, I’d love to plan and shop for only half the week at a time.
ElisaR says
i’m intrigued about prepping the week’s lunches on sunday. lunch prep is the worst part of my day. can you provide some color on that?
avocado says
On Sunday afternoons before I cook dinner, I usually make lunch salads for my husband and me and some sort of reheatable dish such as lo mein or stuffed sweet potatoes for our picky child (there is a microwave in the school lunchroom), enough to get us through Tuesday or Wednesday. Each serving is packed in a Pyrex snapware container. Sometimes I make chili or soup instead of salads, or dinner is something like enchiladas or lasagna that produces leftovers. I repeat the process on Tuesday or Wednesday night to get us through the rest of the week. The salads can be pretty elaborate and usually involve homemade dressing, and Miss Picky nearly always gets a completely separate dish, so each prep takes an hour or so. It’s a lot of time in the kitchen, but it frees up my lunch hour.
I don’t portion out fruit and other sides into containers in advance because our fridge and pantry aren’t big enough to hold all those little containers. I spend about 15 minutes each weekday morning packing lunches, which includes portioning sides, washing and filling various water bottles, and mixing up the two different thermoses of cold brew I drink during the day.
The kid is old enough that she really ought to be making her own lunches, but this is not the hill I’m willing to die on. My packing her lunch ensures that she actually eats a decent quantity of healthy food, she regularly cooks dinner or bakes for the family, and there are plenty of other things we make her do for herself.
We also prep large batches of high-protein pancakes, Cookie & Kat “healthy muffins,” Superhero Muffins, and breakfast cookies to freeze for weekday breakfasts.
ElisaR says
thank you! gave me some good ideas.
Mrs. Jones says
I hate meal planning, cooking, and grocery shopping. I force myself to do the last two things but I can’t seem to do the first.
TheElms says
I’m impressed by all the people that have time to cook! We walk in the door at 7:10pm with our 8 month old, who immediately gets her dinner (pureed food / some small pieces of table food if we have something appropriate), then we play for about 20 minutes and then its bedtime for her at 8pm, which DH does. The person who isn’t feeding her is feeding the pets. I suppose I could start dinner at 8pm for us, but by then I’ve been out of the office for 90 minutes and generally need to start responding to email.Normally around 9pm I heat up Freshly or eat another delivery service meal that was delivered. Sometimes one of us eats with baby because baby eats better if someone is eating at the same time.
Blum says
10 mo old twins + biglaw job and you’ve described dinner in our household to a tee. Thank goodness for Freshly…. I’ve also embraced cereal or cheese/crackers for dinner in a way I haven’t since I was a freshman in college!
AwayEmily says
we are doing meal planning for the first time starting next week — I planned out rough schedules for the next two months. I’m a little hesitant to call it “meal planning” since my husband is out of town Tues – Thurs every week, so those nights are basically just kid food (that, let’s be honest, I also eat, because who doesn’t love fish sticks). I’m hesitant to share anything about my approach since I have no idea if it works yet but if it’s a rousing success I’ll report back in April!
AO says
I usually meal plan over the weekend. I either grocery shop on Sunday or place a FreshDirect order for arrival on Monday/ Tuesday. I did that before having a kid, as well, but things are definitely different now. I used to follow recipes and make dishes that were a bit more interesting/ involved. Now I’m often cooking very basic things without recipes and improvising somewhat to incorporate foods or cooking methods that I know our toddler will like.
I find one of the hardest things to be getting the balance right in terms of too much/ too little food, too much/ too little planning. On the weeks when I have meals for every single night, inevitably a work event will come up, or we’ll unexpectedly have a friend in town and go out. Then when I under-plan, and leave some wiggle room, we are left scrambling. We compost all our food scraps so I’m so aware these days of when we have waste–and my very hungry toddler makes me very aware of when my scrambling is slowing down his dinner! I’m trying to get better at using the freezer to help even things out, but it’s definitely not a perfect system.
Anonymous says
We use a lot of random leftovers for weekend lunches. Kiddo almost always gets mac and cheese for weekend lunches, while hubby and I cobble together various leftovers.
strollerstrike says
I have been meal planning for years. A few months ago I started keeping a running word document with the weekly meal plans for five weeknight dinners, grocery list for these dinners and recipes.
I am planning on updating the file every week, so hopefully by this time next year I can just start repeating the year over again.
I like how it will (hopefully) relects what we eat each season, i.e. we don’t eat soup in the summer.
Working mom, 3 teen says
I make 1 big meal on Sunday (big pot of pasta, soup, roast, etc) leftovers on Monday. Big meal on Tuesday, leftovers on Wednesday. Thursday: tacos/ Mexican. Friday & Saturday, I don’t pre-buy or plan until I know what everyone is doing. Basically I cook 3 dinners a week & it’s out to eat/ pizza/ raid the fridge/ all cook together weekends! Works really well for us and has cut down on food waste.
Yup says
It took me sixteen years of married life (where I take the lead on dinner) before I realized I could cook every other night rather than every night. We had always had leftovers for lunch. Now we have leftovers for dinner instead, and I suddenly have more time in my day! So happy! (We eat sandwiches or salads or soups for lunch now.)
Anonymous says
We do the same! Bags of Costco salad or lunch meat for lunches! I reclaimed a ton of evening time by cooking every other night! Better on our budget too.
Anon says
My kids are a little older (youngest is 8). Every Sunday night we get together and go over the upcoming week – who has soccer practice late on Tuesday, who is out for play practice on Wednesday, etc. Each family member is assigned a night of the week. They choose what dinner will be and either cook the meal themselves that night or help cook the meal. (They are also responsible for a scripture thought during dinner on their night). I write up the schedule and order groceries which will be delivered the following day. I like to cook so I’ll cook on weekends – usually some recipe I’ve been wanting to try but others aren’t as excited about (lately, ethnic vegetarian recipes and/or homemade bread). We have a section of the pantry and fridge for portable food (granola bars, cheese sticks, apple sauce packets, little cuties). Kiddos pull what they want for their own lunches. It’s not the best, but kids only seem to spend about 5 minutes eating lunch at school anyway and it’s not the hill I want to die on).
SC says
I used to do all the meal planning, and my favorite technique was to plan a month’s worth of meals at the same time, usually around a theme. The theme could change monthly, but it’s easier to pick several vegetarian meals, several Mexican meals, several sandwiches, etc. at the same time. Also, if you’re fine repeating a favorite meal every week or two, you can pick 2-3 recipes and plan 6 meals in about a minute. Of course, plans change, but it’s easier to shift a night around than to start from scratch. I always leave 2 spots open on meal planning–one for leftover night, and one for takeout, restaurant, spontaneous plans, etc.
DH does most of the cooking now and is not a fan of monthly meal plans. We typically meal plan together for the week sometime over the weekend. We also have a very stocked freezer, so we can always fall back on that.
For weekends, we have a scheduled lunch together on Fridays to talk about weekend plans and logistics, which usually involves some type of kitchen projects (making stock, baking bread, a fancy meal based off a sale, hosting people for dinner, taking something nice to someone’s house, etc.).
Sandra says
Last year we started transitioning to a whole foods plant based diet. Forks Over Knives has a great online meal planning service that does the planning, provides weekly grocery lists and really easy recipes. You can choose food sensitivities, number of servings, and which meals (breakfast, lunch/dinner or snacks/desserts) in your account preferences and the weekly menu is adapted. I’ve always found deciding what to make the most difficult part so this service has been fabulous. We do see some repeats but the variety has been great and overall nutrition levels better than when we meal plan on our own.
Sandra says
We have used the Forks Over Knives meal plan for two years and love it. We don’t follow it 100% but it is well organized and the variety is great. The shopping lists and meal prep sections are really helpful and they do a pretty good job of grouping meals so you often can use the main ingredients in multiple meals – much less food waste that way.
Anon says
We don’t, really. Kiddo is in prime toddler stage where any type of food that normal adult humans eat is roundly rejected (we continue to give her a sampling (seriously – 1 bite worth)) but it remains untouched and she subsists off of yogurt, apples, grapes, chicken nuggets, bread, hot dogs, mac & cheese and the occasional vegetable she (accidentally?) ingests when she forgets she doesn’t eat them (usually peas, carrots or corn).
I work super late, DH’s version of cooking is ordering takeout and we like to eat vastly different things (I’m the super picky one but he doesn’t, for example, eat soup or really salad as a main). So typically we eat out one night on the weekend, I cook up something that has leftovers as a big dinner on one night on the weekend (pulled pork, enchiladas with lots of veggies snuck in, lasagna, etc.), and then the rest of the week is a mix of leftovers from the weekend, frozen potstickers, kids dinner (i.e. mac & cheese or hot dogs for all), takeout, pizza or pasta. I try to put some type of seafood on the grocery list for a night I’m not home (DH likes it, I don’t) – this week he cooked up a salmon filet I picked up at Costco this weekend getting new eyeglasses. We typically do grocery delivery one weekend morning for the week (both DH and I edit the order as we go through the week). Tis a season.
Anonymous says
I subscribed to Cook Smarts, a meal-planning service, about 2 years ago or so. I don’t necessarily mind meal planning, and I like cooking and trying new recipes, but my husband does a lot of the weeknight cooking due to our work schedules. He’s great at following a specific recipe, but he needs that guidance. I like Cook Smarts because it’s 4 meals a week (obviously, can customize to include more or fewer), has pretty balanced meals with a lot of variety, and has weekend meal prep instructions. I sometimes miss getting my cookbooks out and picking out fun recipes to try, but honestly making shopping lists and weekend prep plans became draining.
Buddy Holly says
New to this thread, but the Lazy Genius just did a podcast episode on her winter dinner queue. The basic gist of it is:
(1) Name what matters to you. (Do you need quick/convenience meals? Are you trying to eat healthy? etc.). Keep that in mind as you plan.
(2) Put whatever # of meals into the queue. Make sure you have “brainless” options that are so easy you can make them quickly, without having to look at the recipe card, and are generally liked by everyone that will be eating. Your queue might be mostly brainless options if you are looking for quick/convenience. Fill in the rest of your queue with other options. Your queue can be short, like 10 meals for about a 2-week rotation, or longer, like 25 meals for a monthly rotation. You can choose to have themes (3 soup recipes, 2 instant pot recipes, etc.) It is all up to you. Just make sure it fits in with “what matters” for the season.
(3) Have staples on hand for your queue.
(4) Meal plan on a weekly or monthly basis so you know what fresh ingredients you have to pick up. Just pick from your queue instead of the thousands of possibilities that otherwise exist.
The idea is to have a quick list of recipes that fit the season/stage of your life so that there is less stress when you think “what is for dinner?”