I need to know because I am making a very long list. Let me explain.
Do you plan your meals a week ahead? Do you make a menu for the week then shop accordingly? What do you think about meal plans. I think about them a lot but I am a great thinker!
I kind of make a plan when I have a house full of people. I look to see what we have in the freezers and gardens and plan my dinner around that. At least a day ahead anyway. In the morning I write on my black board what we are eating that day, so if I get held up outside with the milk cow or something or if I am working down the back pretending I don’t know what time it is, anyone can begin the dinner because the menu is on the board and the recipe cards are on the bench.
But I am not consistent. And if I do NOT have a plan (which is most of the time) I always have this low moan clamour in my brain all day, a kind of white noise anxiety – ” What shall I make for dinner? What shall I make for dinner? What shall I make for dinner, what shall … then the moan comes up above my subconscious. “Who put me in charge?! Why do I have to be in charge?! WHAT WILL I MAKE FOR DINNER!” – then it drops back to the white noise clamour so I can try to ignore it again – well, you get the idea.
So I began to make a long list of all the meals I might make with the ingredients commonly found here. You know what they are – you have watched me grow them for years. Not fancy, but good. Later I will shuffle the list into menu’s organise then into seasonal weeks, add left over days, and create the flow (like a roast chicken today becomes tomorrows chicken and noodle soup, beef stew left overs become shepherds pie, etc ), then my decision is made and I can proceed and the white noise anxiety will go away.
So to the list –
I stood with chalk in hand and could only write three meals on the board. I wrote split pea soup because that was what John was making for dinner and I could smell it. Then pumpkin soup because I saw a butternut squash on the bench. Then gnocchi with sage and burnt butter because my daughter told me she had that for dinner last night but I can’t have sage as it is all frozen to the ground. Then I ran out of ideas again.
SO. What are you having for dinner? What shall I have for dinner? Any ideas for my list?
Love celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
162 responses to “What are you having for dinner?”
I plan out 4 weeks worth of dinners as I only go to “town” once a month (90 miles round trip). My grocery list consists mostly of toilet paper and alcohol as we grow the rest. When we have company I extend the menus to include breakfast and lunch. I plan seasonally and with what’s ready in the garden, greenhouse, dairy, chicken house and freezer. Winter dinners include a lot of soups — ham & bean, chili, beef stew, minestrone, chicken with homemade noodles, fish (trout from the pond) and corn chowder, and roasted things that go in the wood cookstove oven – beef roasts, elk roasts, meat loaf, whole chickens, ham (once a month or so I thaw out fresh ham roasts, ham hocks, and side pork and smoke them on my home smoker and then re-freeze all but that night’s dinner) I try to make the meat parts last for at least another dinner and/or lunch in maybe another form. Friday night is movie night and I usually make a pizza — homemade sausage, grilled chicken, bacon and potato. Sides include potatoes – oven fries, baked, mashed, boiled with butter & parsley, veggies from the freezer or home-canned – green and yellow beans, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, and greens. LOTS of home canned tomatoes in different forms. On busy days dinner is sometimes just homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese (my own!) sandwiches.
I would LOVE to have a wood stove cooker with an oven – one day. You eat very well. in fact your menu sounds a lot like ours but much more organised.. thank you.. c
I always struggle with dinner. I always need leftovers for my daughter’s school lunchbox for the next day, and mine and hubby’s lunch. Ahhh!
I love gnocchi with browned sage butter, but in the winter I put gnocchi in my chicken soup instead of noodles. Just put them in at the end until they are cooked. I also use pumpkin or squash in the kale salads, hat recipe has finally been posted on my blog, just search kale.
I can’t wait to see the list and get some ideas.
Yes it is looking like a great collection of meals so far! Love the idea of gnocchi in soup – thank you..c
I decide that day or the night before. I don’t drive so have to shop almost daily, as I can only manage to carry one-three bags at a time during the twenty minute walk home. Weekday dinners have to be fairly quick, preferably 15-45 minutes to make. Sometimes I’ll cook baked potatoes in the oven in advance. Lots of pasta (spaghetti carbonara is a favourite) Tofu stir fries. Curries. Stews in the winter. Chicken and peppers wrapped up in corn tortillas, tomato sauce and cheese over the top and warmed up in the oven.
You must be very fit with all the walking that not driving demands, i was like that when I lived in London.. c
I am so very, very fortunate as My John was a chef with his own restaurant before we married (for the second time!) and he became a teacher, and then we became farmers! So he is the one who deals with the question ‘What shall I make for dinner?” and my daily question ‘What are we having for dinner?” He does make large batches of all different, delicious bean dishes, and red chilies and white bean chilies, and chicken and dumplings and soups, and we freeze them so there usually seems to be something we can defrost and eat if he is too tired to cook up a gourmet meal. We had a glut of green peppers and cabbages this summer, so made loads of stuffed green peppers and cabbage rolls, which we froze and have been wonderful eating! So now I’m sold on making extra when cooking so that it can be eaten later with none of the white noise and nagging questions on the part of the cook. 🙂
Oh I’m sorry – was that your husband I just stole?! c
Tonight it will be a Thai vegetable soup, because I have broccoli that needs to be used. Tomorrow a mixed veggie saute that uses up my limp zucchini, then we start the new week over. My routine consists of choosing recipes for the week, or 1/2 week, prepping my grocery list around what I may already have or need to use up, and then shopping. Most of my list is the veggie components because I keep my pantry stocked with all the canned, dry, easily stored items so only have to buy those on occasion. We have an odd household when it comes to food. The remaining “at home” daughter and I eat vegetarian, although I toss in fish or chicken for myself one night per week. Those nights are our “you cook for yourself” night. We try to share the choosing and cooking responsibilities because mentally I have no interest in cooking every night and as she is here rent free at this point, kitchen duty for her is a must. The spouse goes between odd diet menus and foods, salad and carnivore gluttony with smoked meat and BBQ and store bought, pre-prepped dinners. He doesn’t eat breakfast and I have no idea what he does for lunch while at work as he doesn’t take food from home. It’s funny that you asked this question today. I have that little dinner voice going off in my head as well, not so much “what will I make” but more likely “do I really have to cook tonight.” We always have a few odd cans of store made organic soup sitting around as well so we can just heat and eat with a salad if no one wants to be in the kitchen.
The Last Daughter – that sounds like a book title.. Nice that you are not in charge of the kitchen anymore – it is a chore isn’t it!
Haha! Did ‘The Last Daughter’ sound odd. I go back and forth on naming outright or finding descriptive ways to label my adult children in everything I write. And now that you mention it, it does sound like a book title 😉
Two weeks ago we both had a desire for pizza. We make our own dough and use homemade pesto instead of red sauce. Part way through the build, Melanie turned on the oven. We finished the work of art. Our taste buds were tingling. We looked at the temp on the oven. It hadn’t moved! Our oven was broke. We put the creation into the freezer very disappointed. Two days later we left on a road trip to DC. Yesterday, the repairman came and fixed the broken igniter. He said the stove was a basic model, and one of the best. It should last for years.
Years ago, we cut index cards in half. On each we wrote a meal combination we liked. Ended up with quite a stack. It made planning a week ahead easier. Both of us worked full time. The white noise phenomenon you speak of didn’t bother us.
I hope you got to eat the pizza! What a funny story.. I like your idea of the index cards also.. I use cards too.. c
Pizza is on the menu for tonight. Hurray
I have always moaned over that question myself. I raised five children by myself too and that was the first question I was asked when I got home from work. I learned to be creative with the basics on hand!! That said, I grow alot of green chile here in Albuquerque, so it is almost always a part of my meal. Green chile stew , bean burritos with veges,enchiladas are my favorites in winter.
GOOD! bean burritos and enchiladas – neither of which I know how to make so I can learn something too.. c
Burritos are super simple! You only have to chop the fresh veggies up , saute a little meat, (as Our John likes it), quickly heat the tortilla, layer all ingredients in the burrito, add some cheese and salsa on top and then you and he each build and roll up the burrito the way you like it! Yummy! This is something I make when giving My John a break from the kitchen 🙂
In an attempt to eliminate a daily grocery store run, a few years back I created 5 weekly menus. Every week, I take the menu of the week and create a grocery list, go shopping once a week (for the most part). I post the menu of the week on the fridge, so everyone knows what’s for dinner without asking me about it. The 5 menus are different and are rotated monthly so I also eliminated the “we just had this” complaint. And yes, I do add and delete items based on new recipes or items that simply get old. But the greatest benefit to all of this is the end of that white noise in my head!
Wow, Elizabeth, what a tremendous idea. I am going to think about that one for the madness of summer! c
O like the idea of rotating 5 weekly menus! It also allows for the spontaneous idea to be filtered in. Thanks Elizabeth.
Ooh – good question! I tend to have a vague idea and buy/grow/get given food that can be recycled or turned into a couple of other meals. Today we have soupy rice with fish (arroz caldoso) and while I was cooking that I made a chicken and vegetable soup for tonight. I will strain off some f the stock and we’ll have mushroom risotto tomorrow for lunch and in the evening it will be jamon/cheese and salad! Luckily we don’t have to worry about fitting in shopping/cooking with work hours so it does make it easier. I always have stock in the freezer and rice in the larder so the arroz caldoso is a regular on our menu, even if we just have it with veggies 🙂 Just realsied, we eat a lot of rice!
I love how your meals dove tail into one another.. and it all hinges on the stock – I love home made stock – it is my favourite to make!c
I always used meal planning when my boys were home. It made shopping and cooking so much easier and faster when I was working full time. Now that I look after just me I choose just a couple of things a week. I love what I make and will eat the same thing day after day until it is done. Tonight though it will probably be thin crust pizza of the frozen variety and V8. This week will make delucious meat loaf and mashed. Mmmmm
Meat loaf! YES! thank you Chris.. c
Oh that’s always fun, standing in front of the fridge wandering what in the world to make! Arg! My go to meal in this situation is bacon and leek pasta. Just chopped bacon, some larger noodles like penne, some chopped up leeks fried in the bacon fat, all tossed together with a little sprinkle of parmasean…served with a salad. Everybody has always loved that to pieces. The other thing I love is my slow cooker for bone broths and no fuss morning stews/chilies/soups, that just bubble around all day and I don’t have to think about it. 😀
Bacon and Leek pasta – that sounds wonderful – thank you Veronica! c
i must be the only one in the world that never plans ahead.
i just open freezer, grap whatever dead animal part is on top, and plan around that.
grab, i really should proofread
This is exactly what I do too. But this planning thing does have some merit – I am warming towards it.. c
I like the way you plan, Ron! 🙂
You hit the nail on the head! I have known for a long time how much I loathe cooking and baking – it gets worse as I get older. It was doable before we went with Paleo lifestyle (well, not true Paleo but our own version of eating as a modern day hunter/gatherer would do), but my time in the kitchen is a nightmare. I go through the same mental agony most days, trying to think of some meal plan. I resent that it is my responsibility to come up with meal plans. It used to be doable when I could indulge in dairy, grains and legumes. Physically, I feel better than I ever have… but mentally – I have a real attitude that takes away from the pleasure of eating. Eating clean and organic is expensive and quite a challenge.
It is hard – maybe you could join me on making a list too.. we can be coaches for each other or something! No legumes is a toughie – John likes his beans and they are so cheap. c
I have indulged in off-Paleo dining when we eat out (which is rare) and in small amounts items like beans or grains do not seem to bother much. The whole Paleo movement is about eating clean, and taking in foods that are not an irritant to the gut. I still use a small amount of butter and cheese. If I had to give those up, I would be VERY unhappy!! Ha ha. But I do miss the ease of cooking beans and having whole grains. And I am not nearly as busy with chores as you are. I admire that you are able to spend much time cooking at all, let alone come up with a meal plan!
Cooking and meal planning is not my forte. I hate it and used to answer the question of what’s for dinner with a snappy “whatever you are cooking” I know that brain rumble well. I liked living alone so no one would ask. Now my son is living with me and I’m teaching him how to make everything.:) I just want enough to keep the stomach from grumbling now and not think about it. Love one pot meals. Chili, lentil soup with potatoes, (mom’s recipe) spaghetti. I make large pots of anything and freeze much. I’m not an adventurous cook. No help here.
But what are you making tonight? c
We ended up going out for a good burger. I’d done my grocery shopping in the morning and had planned to grill some steaks but when my sister showed up, she wanted to go for burgers. The steaks can marinate now till the rain slows down so I can grill outdoors. 🙂 I am not much of a cook. 😦
Oh Celie! I don’t plan ahead much, and when I do, the odds are that I won’t have the energy to carry it out. When I cook, I try and make enough for two or three meals, and freeze for those dead tired days. The freezer is my backstop, containing lots of cooked dishes, veg and puds.
Tonight: I’ve made a fish pie with cod, prawns and smoked mackerel. It was an effort, but it’s all ready to go in the oven in half an hour to brown the cheese on top. Now I am sprawled in my comfy chair.
Viv, I am so with you. I cook for the freezer as well as me. There are days when my energy drains as if someone had pulled a bath plug in my feet – my heart does not always love me. 😦 Living alone and on a hill where I overlook a three story block of apartments with a gable roof built on the level of the town, means I have to plan shopping trips. I know several widows who do not cook, saying that it is not worth cooking for themselves… it is the road to ill health. I have one good solid meal everyday. You can see my breakfast here in a video made by Elly for my blog post hip surgery in 2009.
Fish pie – I love fish pie thank you Viv.. c