Menu Plan Monday

Ever run out of ideas for feeding your family? Ever dread the question "what's for dinner?" Ever look at the clock, see that it is 5 o'clock and thank heavens your husband can pick up fast food again?

Sadly, I do. Starting at about 4:30 is the witching hour at my house. Right about the time I need to get dinner on, the kids all go bezerk. The last thing I want to do is chop onions with them fighting and crying around my ankles. Even worse is having to come up with an idea for dinner with them all crazy.

It is a work in progress, but I'm trying to fix this problem. As tasty as Subway sandwiches are, we can only eat so many of them. One solution would be freezer meals, but I haven't devoted myself to that in a while. But my other solution I have done fairly consistently for years and years. It helps. When it doesn't help, it is usually because I'm lazy.

Menu planning. Do you plan a menu? I love it. Really. Almost as much as peanut m&ms!

There are a gazillion methods out there and almost as many websites to guide you through the process, but it is really quite simple. Just write down what you'd like to have for dinner for a week. I like to do it two weeks or a month at a time, but that is just me. Now there are methods ... using the grocery store ads to plan it so you can plan your meals around specials and sales or planning a theme night for every night of the week (Italian night, Mexican night, Breakfast night, etc.). But none of that is necessary. Just write it down, use that as a guide when you do your grocery shopping (or plan your menu based on what's in your pantry), and, VOILA, you have a menu plan.

So, I was thinking ... since we are all friends here and I'm sure we could all use more variety in our diets, what do you think about doing a Menu Plan Monday? It is fairly common in blog-land. Each Monday we would just list our dinner menu for the week, linking to recipes if they are online. Orgjunkie.com does a linky party for it every week, so here is a lot of samples from last week: Menu Plan Monday.

Wanna play? I'll post my menu for the week on Monday...