Monday, September 5, 2011

Stress Free Meals


I'm pretty sure that I have posted about this before, but one thing that I HATE and I mean really HATE is coming up with what to eat for dinner every night.  Cooking it, even doing the dishes from it isn't as bad as coming up with the idea!  I have had several people offer up great ideas for me and I sorta combined all of them into one plan that works for me!  This is not some super magical idea that I came up with, but one that I like and saves me LOTS of time and thought...and negative thoughts about dinner ha ha.  I thought I would share it with all of you! 
(please excuse the weird screen shot I took to give you this photo)
 
It is probably hard to see from the picture, so go ahead and click on it to make it larger.  I decided it is SO hard to come up with an idea since there are a million billion things I could make for dinner.  So I decided to give each day a "theme" or style of food.  Here is what I chose: Crock Pot, Mexican, Pizza, Italian, Asian, Breakfast, Soup/Sandwich.  With these categories it narrows down the possibilities by a LOT.  And if I made a calendar all I had to do was come up with four different entrees'.  Simple as that!  Dinner around here has been much more planned out, healthier, happier and stress free!  Feel free to copy from me if you like!  Thanks to my cousin Erin and friend Shantel for their ideas, inspiration and recipes that helped me make this!  Happy eating to all!

10 comments:

erinmalia said...

oooh, i'm so glad you found something that works for you. isn't meal planning the worst?! i mean, not really, but dang, it's not fun.

Jessica Stark said...

Ok, so I love your idea, but now you need to post all of your recipes!! I suck at cooking and need all the help I can get!

Tiff said...

This is a genius idea! I might steal it (or a version of it) and adapt it to our dinners. I also hate hate hate planning meals. Also like you, I don't mind the cooking part or the dishes part, just the planning part is AWFUL!

Clinton and Danielle said...

We do the exact same thing!

Jewls said...

We are planning week by week...it's amazing how much planning your meals can help with the temptation of eating out!

You should come enter our giveaway, so far there's not much competition so you have a GREAT chance of winning! ;)
http://lanceandjulie.blogspot.com/2011/08/approval-celebration-giveaway-time.html

Amy Lovell said...

I used to do something just like this when we first got married. But I think I've been blessed with a weird gift of loving to cook and be in the kitchen, so I abandoned that idea a few weeks into it. Now my problem is, I make so many different things I can't remember all of the good things that I want to remake. Perhaps, I should start writing things down...

Niederfam said...

AWESOME. Good for you!!! Ideas are the WORST part, agreed.

Elizabeth said...

I love the theme nights, that will be fun. We love the Thai peanut noodles, Max calls them spicy peanut butter honey noodles.

Shauna said...

What a great idea! I'm so going to copy you - probably with a few different nights, but the same idea. Thanks for sharing!

Wendy said...

I'm totally stealing it! What. Great idea!