It\u2019s the age-old question: What\u2019s for dinner? I asked it thousands of times growing up, usually the instant I came through the door after school. My favorite answers included meatloaf, tacos, potato casserole (often called \u201creally good potatoes\u201d), and spaghetti (home made sauce, of course).<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t so thrilled when I heard stir fry or barbecue. Yeah, yeah, I\u2019m a bit weird on the barbecue thing. Consider it one of my charming eccentricities. :=) As for stir fry, I liked it better when I grew up and only put it on the menu once a month rather than twice a week. (I swear there was a phase in the late 80\u2019s or early 90\u2019s when everyone had stir fry for dinner. Most of my college friends recalled going through the same thing.)<\/p>\n
Noe I\u2019m an adult with a family and it\u2019s my turn to answer the question. For some reason, though, it was stumping me for the longest time. In part, I have a lot to live up to. My mom can cook. Even after an 8-hour shift at work, she managed to have a good dinner on the table every night. (When my dad switched to an earlier shift, she made him cook but she always did the meal planning.)<\/p>\n
My other problem is that I don\u2019t really like planning menus. I could spend hours pouring through cookbooks to find a single recipe \u2014 and then I\u2019d still have to think up a side dish. Side dishes, by the way, are harder to come by than main dishes. I started using Lipton Sides but they don\u2019t really taste very good and they get boring.<\/p>\n
I like to try new things, but I don\u2019t like to look up recipes. I like fancy meals, but I don\u2019t want to spend hours in the kitchen with a toddler underfoot.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the solution, you ask? Well, I\u2019ll tell you. A little over a month ago I came across a web site that offers meal planning. It costs $5 a month (you pay three months at a time) and for that you get a menu every week with seven dinners, including sides. You can select the number of people you are feeding (round up, some of the serving sizes are kind of small) and choose whether or not to include beef, seafood, poultry, pork, or vegetarian meals. They provide a menu with recipes and an organized grocery list. They guarantee that every meal can be made in under an hour (except for a few slow cooker recipes that sit all day while you\u2019re at work). Many of their recipes can be made in under half an hour.<\/p>\n
The place is www.dinnerselect.com.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a lot of fun trying a new recipe every night. I\u2019m not getting bored, that\u2019s for sure! They aren\u2019t all wonderful. There are a few I definitely don\u2019t need to try again, but over the last five weeks I have added 20 recipes to \u201cmy favorites\u201d on the web site. You can add your own recipes as well and substitute your favorites for any of their suggestions.<\/p>\n
This week I had:<\/p>\n
Pork chops with corn salsa (good)
\nChinese beef and green bean stir fry (very good \u2014 use fresh green beans)
\nStuffed peppers (good)
\nLinguine with tuna and capers (didn\u2019t work for me)
\nGrilled rosemary shrimp (very good)<\/p>\n
What\u2019s for dinner tonight? Chicken pot pie! We\u2019ll see if it\u2019s good.<\/p>\n
They have a free sample to try without registering. The stir fry I liked is on it.<\/p>\n
P.S. I got next week\u2019s menu today (they come on Fridays) and I have to register one teensy little complaint that I can correct in my own home. Two of next week\u2019s recipes call for bacon, the first time that ingredient has come up, and the recipes say to microwave it! YUCK! You don\u2019t microwave bacon. It doesn\u2019t take any longer to fry it in a skillet and it just tastes so much better to do it right. Some short cuts aren\u2019t work taking. :=)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s the age-old question: What\u2019s for dinner? I asked it thousands of times growing up, usually the instant I came through the door after school. My favorite answers included meatloaf, tacos, potato casserole (often called \u201creally good potatoes\u201d), and spaghetti (home made sauce, of course). I wasn\u2019t so thrilled when I heard stir fry or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chitchat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}