What’s for Dinner?

Shortly after getting married, I was already tired of making dinner. It was a pain. Figuring out what to make, what to have with it, whether or not we had all the ingredients…..and so on. It seemed like we would have the same things over and over and over. I wanted a way to make it easier, so that you don’t really have to put much thought into it, and so dinner could be made quickly. So, I compiled a list of all the dinners that we like, along with side dishes that go with them. This list started about 3 years ago and has gradually worked it’s way into this masterpiece:

This cookbook contains recipes for approximately 40 meals. The order is arranged to have some variation from night to night (i.e. tacos is not immediately after enchiladas). The nice thing about this is that you don’t have to worry about what you are going to have each night, you just make the next thing on the list (which is conveniently located on the spine of the notebook)

 

I would say that at least half of the recipes come from my mom and Justin’s mom, the others are things that I have found online.  The list is always changing too; things are added, things are taken off, sometimes I switch to a different recipe (I’m still looking for the right chicken pot pie recipe). Also, I don’t always make things in the order listed. If the next thing on the list is something that cooks all day in the crock pot and it is a day that I am at work, I go to the next one, and then come back to the one that I skipped.

The other part of this system that makes it work really well is my grocery list. Every single ingredient in any of the recipes is on my grocery list. That way, when I go shopping, I go through my list, highlight anything that I don’t have, and then I have everything I need to make ANY of the recipes.

(You’ll notice that this list is in order of our path through WinCo…this adds a touch of “crazy”, but really does make a shopping trip fast and easy). When I am looking for new recipes, if 75% of it’s ingredients aren’t already on this list, and are things that I wouldn’t normally get, I just toss it. No point in a recipe that has 8 ingredients that I am going to use only every 6 weeks or so.

The nightly recipes are only one section of my cook book. I also have a section for desserts (again, mostly stuff that our mom’s have made for us growing up)

Also, there is a section in the back of recipes that we use for things like football games, holidays, parties, etc.

All in all, this whole thing may seem a little OCD, but it really makes life easier.