New Way to Do Dinner
I was so sick and tired of my family complaining about our dinners. I had to come up with a new way to do dinner!
It’s so demoralizing to spend time meal planning and meal preparing only to have everyone hate what you’ve made. We are working on training the boys to simply say, “Thank you for cooking!” when they don’t like a meal rather than saying they don’t like a meal.
But still. It’s obvious they don’t like what I cook!
Luckily, we eat out twice a week (on Friday night and Saturday nights), so I only have to worry about five meals rather than seven.
I say “I” because I’m the one who takes the lead on meal planning. I take it on because I care more than anyone else about the quality of the food we put in our bodies. Matt does pretty much everything else around the house (laundry, emptying the dishwasher, cleaning the bathrooms, etc.). He only works 0.25 time and I work full-time. So that distribution makes sense for us.
So here’s my new way to do dinner:
Every Sunday we eat “breakfast for dinner.” For many years, I wanted to cook a big family breakfast on Sunday morning. However, I really don’t like to eat big breakfasts. I’m perfectly content with a healthy smoothie. So when I finally realized we could have a big yummy breakfast for dinner and have a weekly family ritual that everyone loves, I was thrilled.
Our breakfast for dinner consists of bacon for the non-vegetarians, some type of egg situation (omelettes, scrambled, etc.), hash browns, pancakes, fruit, and homemade whipped cream. We all love it and it’s a great way to chase off the “Sunday Scaries.”
Then, for the other four meals, I make everyone choose a meal. They may or may not have to cook it depending on our schedule. However, they have to generate the idea. For example, this week, Matt chose egg, black bean, and potato tacos with salad. Henry chose taquitos with broccoli. Tate chose spring rolls with edamame.
I always choose to make a new recipe out of my Ottolenghi Simple cookbook.
So I don’t feel all the pressure of meal planning on my shoulders. It’s working out for now!
What’s working for your dinner routine right now?
One Comment
Diana
I ended up doing the same, except I make everyone pick 2 meals instead of one (we try not to eat out more than once per week). I have groceries delivered on Sunday for the rest of the week.
Like in your post, the pressure is off is as the cook and everyone knows they’ll get two favorite meals that week. Bonus: they often like what someone else picked too. The only downside is there are a ton of recipes that I like that never get made because only my husband and I like them. Oh well.