As a full-time working mom of two girls (a 2 1/2 year-old and a 3 month-old), figuring out what to make for dinner each night can be overwhelming. I have learned in the last few years that if I don't plan out my meals in advance, we either eat something I grab from a drive-thru window on my way home or we are eating grilled cheese, cereal, or mac and cheese from a box. This may have been okay when it was just my husband and I, but now that we have our two girls, those are not the family dinners I want them to remember when reflecting back upon their childhood.
The system that I have found which works the best for me is to plan my meals one week at a time. Over the weekend I search for recipes for the coming week's dinners. I occasionally use cookbooks, recipes I've received from family or friends, but lately I've been using the internet to find ideas. I have started following cooking and recipe blogs and have been able to take ideas from a variety of places to create my weekly menus. What I haven't found (and it could be out there, I just haven't seen it) is a blog that has weekly recipes ready to go for working moms. Recipes that are reasonable time-wise, easy to make, and kid-friendly. Call me lazy, but I wanted someone to plan out my week for me! Haven't found it yet, so I thought I'd try and do it myself and maybe help out some other busy moms.
I plan five dinners per week, as we generally have at least one night where we are either invited for dinner by family or friends or we go out to dinner. We also make one night a week "Leftover Night". So my plan with this blog is to post my five dinner recipes each week. I am in no way claiming any of these recipes as my own (unless one of them is actually my own), and if I have found them on the internet, I will post the links. I also plan to type up any changes I made to the recipes, any that I would like to make in the future, and anything else that might be helpful to someone attempting the recipe for the first time.
So, hopefully this will be useful. If nothing else, it will help me keep track of the meals I have cooked!
Enjoy!
Go Z! I feel your pain - two working parents and 3 kids make for a lot of PB&J dinners around here, followed up by a serving of "Mom Guilt". I will be following your blog faithfully! Glad to see you joining the ranks of us bloggers. :)
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! I also plan my meals in advance (about 2 weeks, cuz I hate the planning part!) I'm always looking for new recipes that are kid friendly! Most of what we eat is kid driven...or driven by whether we need left overs for next days lunch! errrr :-)
ReplyDeleteAwesome-I'm reading now. :) My sister and I have a blog onourdinnertable.blogspot.com that you can check out for more recipes. Also, I love ourbestbites.com (a lot of the recipes on my blog are from there). Good luck!
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