How I Keep Dinner Sane for a Family of 5

I will just get it out of the way and say that our family is busy.  Even without extracurricular activities, we are lucky to get to our house by 5:45 each night just getting home from work and school.  That means the earliest we eat dinner if I cook at home is 6:30.  That's assuming there was no traffic to deal with, I have dinner planned and ready to go, and no one distracts me with silly things like mail, school stuff, "Mom, I need...", or I take a potty break.  In order to keep this family functioning (and fed) in the evening, I devised the following plan to keep our meals on an organized program (and us out of the drive-thru).  This has also helped with the "we have the same things every week" argument.  I can now say (with confidence), "No, we didn't.  We haven't had this for 4 weeks now!"

First, you need to sit down with your family and devise a list of meals you like to eat.  It helped my family to come up with categories, so I used beef, pork, chicken, pasta, and other.  The "other" category is for odd ball things that don't fit into one of the other categories like French toast or homemade pizza.  We were able to come up with 5 items for each category.  This works out nicely because this gives us 5 planned dinners, a night for what we call "fend for yourself," and one night for going out.  We'll just be honest and say if we didn't schedule it in, we would do it all the time.  ;)

Next,  we made a schedule like the following:

****Please don't comment on the foods listed - this is just an example list. ;) 

For this schedule, we picked one item from each of our categories for each week.  That gave us 5 different meals for the week, and we can't complain that we are having ground beef, boiled chicken, or pasta every meal.  We also paired up the main dish with a side dish (if needed).  And we were careful to make sure that we were not selecting similar type items on the same week - meaning, if we are grilling steaks or burgers, we didn't also choose grilled chicken for the same week.

Once you have your schedule made, you can do the next part, which is quite honestly GEN.I.US!!!!

The amaze-balls part about this list is that these are 25 foods I actually know how to make!  Therefore, I already know what (and how much) ingredients are needed to feed my family for these foods.  So, I sat down and made another "list."   (Yes, I am a list maker.  Yes, it keeps me sane.  Try it.  You'll like it.  I promise.  LOL!)

So, my next list looks like this:

 



Now, I have a list prepared for what dinner groceries I need for each week of this "menu."  No more excuses for not knowing what to buy for dinner at the store, or "Hey, I forgot the..."  It also helps that I have been using Peapod grocery service for the majority of this year, but that is post for another day.  And this list will help a (lost) husband if he is trying to help with grocery shopping. 

 

For our family, we run on a five-week calendar based on my husband's work schedule.  I created a calendar to keep track of his work schedule, kids' activities, family gatherings, and birthdays/anniversaries/holidays.  I now ALSO use it for our dinner menu.  It is convenient that we started this process at the beginning of a five-week calendar cycle, so we just started it with the "Week 1" menu and have been keeping up with that.  I get the printed calendar off the fridge, view it for nights my husband will be home, and assign meals for the week.  Since there are only 5 categories to my list, it is important to also remember to schedule "fend" and "out" night as well.  This step also alleviates the stress that accompanies the "what are we having for dinner?" question I used to get every day around 5:20 p.m. from each of my kids.

 

It's important to note that the menu does not have to be in the order you have created it for each individual week.  The first square does not always have to be prepared on the first day of your week.  You can mix it up if needed; it doesn't have to be "Taco Tuesday" if you don't want.  ;)

 

So, in a nutshell, you can make a list of meals your family likes and you are able to cook, create a grocery list of items you for those meals, and have 25 (or more or less) different meals planned to feed your family.

 

Hope this helps at least one person with the chaos of dinner at their home.

 

DISCLAIMER: This is based off the list of meals my family likes.  This can be customized in any way to meet the needs of your family.

 

P.S.  This process also works with "cooking day" programs.

 

P.P.S. For greater help, I often buy my ground beef in bulk for the whole 5 weeks and will brown and season it all at one time for each "hamburger" meal on the monthly board.  ** You will need to remember you did this when grocery shopping, so you do not end up purchasing tons of meat you do not need.  :)  Then I measure the meat in 2 cup portions and save it in ziplock sandwich bags.  2 cups of browned ground meat will equal 1 lb.  I can then grab a lb of prebrowned burger and toss it into spaghetti sauce, add taco seasoning, or have it ready for whatever meal I need.  It also thaws very easily that way as well.