Editor's Note: I am an analytical person who collects and analyzes data for a living.
Due to Derek's work schedule I cook dinner alone about 4 nights per week. On my days off I typically prep dinner when S&Z are napping, and then we prepare the meal together. I find that having a realistic game plan during the week relieves a lot of stress for me as I'm trying to juggle the end of the day chaos. "What's for dinner?" is a no-brainer if I have done a little meal planning, and I can start cooking as soon as S&Z are in bed.
I typically plan meals for the upcoming week while the kids eat breakfast on Saturday morning. I bring my iPad, a cup of coffee, and the grocery list(s) to the kitchen table. I continue to use pepperplate to catalog all of my recipes, and I find the planner function to be very helpful in organizing what I'm making when. I follow a few food blogs right now so my pepperplate account has a pretty regular infusion of new recipes that will hopefully make an appearance on an upcoming menu. Dinner: A Love Story is by far my favorite because it's written by a professional food writer, but it's about her own personal experience with balancing busy schedules and kid palates. Since the the fall I have tried to include one crockpot recipe every week that Derek can get started when the kids are at preschool. My mom gave D. the America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook for Christmas and everything we have made so far has been great. I have been rocking our rice cooker since last winter and my repertoire of delicious vegetarian indian food has expanded a lot in the last year. I get the most ideas from the mother of Girl's Gone Child, who writes an 'Eat Well' series on the GGC blog.
When I sat down to plan meals for the last week of January I noticed that I was really on a roll this month. The first thing I wanted to do was pat myself on the back for being so organized. The next thing I wanted to do was characterize what our meals have looked like based on such a rich dataset (see editor's note!).
Due to Derek's work schedule I cook dinner alone about 4 nights per week. On my days off I typically prep dinner when S&Z are napping, and then we prepare the meal together. I find that having a realistic game plan during the week relieves a lot of stress for me as I'm trying to juggle the end of the day chaos. "What's for dinner?" is a no-brainer if I have done a little meal planning, and I can start cooking as soon as S&Z are in bed.
I typically plan meals for the upcoming week while the kids eat breakfast on Saturday morning. I bring my iPad, a cup of coffee, and the grocery list(s) to the kitchen table. I continue to use pepperplate to catalog all of my recipes, and I find the planner function to be very helpful in organizing what I'm making when. I follow a few food blogs right now so my pepperplate account has a pretty regular infusion of new recipes that will hopefully make an appearance on an upcoming menu. Dinner: A Love Story is by far my favorite because it's written by a professional food writer, but it's about her own personal experience with balancing busy schedules and kid palates. Since the the fall I have tried to include one crockpot recipe every week that Derek can get started when the kids are at preschool. My mom gave D. the America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook for Christmas and everything we have made so far has been great. I have been rocking our rice cooker since last winter and my repertoire of delicious vegetarian indian food has expanded a lot in the last year. I get the most ideas from the mother of Girl's Gone Child, who writes an 'Eat Well' series on the GGC blog.
When I sat down to plan meals for the last week of January I noticed that I was really on a roll this month. The first thing I wanted to do was pat myself on the back for being so organized. The next thing I wanted to do was characterize what our meals have looked like based on such a rich dataset (see editor's note!).
Out of 31 days this month I have data available for 30 days. Here is the breakdown across various categories:
-New recipes: 10
-Vegetarian: 8
-Asian or indian: 6
-Soup: 5
-Pasta: 4
-Crockpot: 4
Our meals primarily featured chicken (7), beans (5), or lentils (4) for protein. We ate leftovers once, relied on Trader Joe's prepared meals twice, ate out once (indian) and got take-out once (BBQ). I made a handful of new recipes that were big hits and will definitely be worked into the regular rotation.
Asian Chicken Noodle Soup from America's Test Kitchen Best Simple Recipes cookbook. I will never make regular chicken noodle soup again!
Chicken Enchilada Pasta from Budget Bytes blog. With minor modifications like adding a can of green chiles along with roasted squash, this was so easy and delicious.
Coconut and Red Lentil Soup (more like dal) from Girl's Gone Child. The addition of a lot of lemon juice to a pretty standard lentil dish made this one sing!
Stromboli from Dinner: A Love Story. This was a clear winner with the entire family!
Of course a few tried-and-true recipes made an appearance as well.
Sloppy joes plus lentils (this is a combination of a Rachael Ray recipe for regular sloppy joes and a Budget Bytes variation that includes brown lentils)
Stay warm, and happy cooking!
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