My husband and I have arrived at a way of sharing the duties of cooking dinner - he cooks the dinner twice a week, always the same thing (Taco Tuesday and Spaghetti Thursday). It's predictable, easy, and the kids like it.
We also have a regular weekly family dinner at my in-law's, which is also predictable, tasty, and my kids like it.
So I'm left with only four dinners a week to figure out (and breakfast is when I use processed foods - cereal and toast - and lunch is usually left over dinners), which feels like a big reduction in my food planning job. And yet, I get easily bored with the same food over and over again, so I still need to work out a varied plan of different foods.
This month I hit upon a theme, and so far having a theme is making the whole dinner thing even more fun. January is National Soup Month, so my theme is just that - Soup! My goal is to cook a different soup recipe for each of my dinners. So far I've done Rustic Potato Leek (from here), turkey (I made that one up and used our own turkey we raised), Squash and Apple (I had that recipe in an old magazine), and slowcooker Hungarian Beef Stew (from here).
It makes cooking dinner a project, and an experiment, and maybe we love some of the recipes and don't like some of the others, but we just move on to the next one and I don't need to stress any one dinner too much. I like this.
But February isn't looking as easy. National Canned Food month? Or Cherry month? Or Grapefruit month? Obviously we can't eat cherries or grapefruit for dinner all month. And Canned Food all month sounds gross. So .... ideas for a dinner theme in February?
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