Comments on: How to Decide What’s For Dinner?

By: Hilary

Hilary — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 22:56:36 +0000

In reply to Lynness. Makes sense.... you are a smart lady. ;)

By: Lynness

Lynness — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 22:16:39 +0000

In reply to Hilary. It's already cooked, so I nuke it on defrost just enough so that it's not a big frozen blog, but can be broken apart. Usually less than 5 min. If it's something from uncooked, I usually use the boneless skinless individually quick-frozen chicken breasts from Costco. They thaw quickly. If I'm doing a roast, I will pull that down the night before, but that's usually a Sunday dinner-type thing. I often buy meat that's reduced because the sell-by date is the next day, so sometimes I'll just buy something know I either need to cook it or freeze it and plan my meal around that.

By: Hilary

Hilary — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:44:15 +0000

In reply to Havok.

Yes, it does seem to end-up being the “maker’s” choice… and getting it on the table is often just good enough! 🙂

By: Hilary

Hilary — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:42:46 +0000

In reply to Lynness. So, how do you get your meat thawed out in time? That's a big part of the morning pick... and frankly, your way sounds really smart! :)

By: Havok

Havok — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:58:29 +0000

Heck, I wish I had the *room* for a dart board!
Normally, I plan meals week to week, and I’ll ask the Mister what he wants each day, and half the time I end up deciding it all anyway. We normally eat the same things over and over, just in different order. We’ve tried doing the “pick dinner on that day” thing before, but it never worked out well – we had a kitchen full of food, but nothing sounded good. With choosing it ahead of time, there’s no worrying about if it sounds good or not – that’s what’s for dinner, and if you don’t like that, we don’t eat dinner that night, ha!

By: Lynness

Lynness — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:11:17 +0000

I did menu plans at one point, but found that most nights I changed it (just had beef the night before, no time, etc), so for about 3 years now, I have done a retrospective meal calendar: on a white board, I write what we had AFTER the fact. I also made a list of all the meals we usually eat, categorized by meat type (including meatless). So when it’s time to cook, I just look at what we’ve had recently (hmmm, tacos last night and fish the night before that- let’s do chicken tonight) and then look at the meal list under chicken. And I’m the opposite of you- I hardly ever know what dinner will be before it’s time to cook, but it helps tremendously that I always have cooked chicken, ground beef, and some sort of beans in the freezer from my bulk sale buys. I’ve never seen anyone else plan meals this way, but it totally works for me.