The Dinner Desert

7 Sure-Fire Ways to Rescue Yourself from the Dinner Desert

As Moms4Change, we’re supposed to be reaching Across our Table. Here are some practical ideas for blessing your family’s mealtime! I’d love to hear how you make meal planning or the lack thereof, work in your house!

I confess I’m currently wandering in the Dinner Desert. And it’s hotter than the Sahara itself. Haven’t heard of it? Oh, trust me you have. It’s just that no one has named it until now. Let’s dig our way out of it together.

The Dinner Desert. It’s a dry, sun-scorched, lonely place. We’ve all been there at one point or another. Oh sure, I find my way out every now & then, but eventually I wake up one day and think, “How the heck did I get here? I was kicking serious mommy booty! My family was actually eating something besides cereal or ramen noodles every night! Ugh!”

Okay, so enough of the analogy. You get it!

Let’s return to the Land of Plenty where there is plenty of love, plenty of joy

and plenty of food for another meal!

Really, I’ll stop this time.

Here are 7 Sure-Fire Way to Rescue Yourself from the Dinner Desert:

1. Send out an SOS – yes, cry for help! Admit you’re burned out! Admit that you have a problem! As we know, that’s the first step to solving anything!

2. Stop doing it on your own (or trying to do it!) I will never for the life of me understand why family & friends don’t share meal-planning ideas more often. Realize you’re not alone. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are great resources from women who’ve been where you are! Here are some online.

• http://lds.about.com/od/visualmusicalaids/a/meal_planning.htm – Rachel Bruner shares pdf files of two-week meal planning calendars. You’ll see that she has a meal idea list, as I describe below.
• http://www.5dollardinners.com/category/meal-planning – Erin Chase, a missionary mom decided to share her ideas on how to cook for her family of 4 every night for under $5. Not only has she done it, she’s got a business & book deal out of it! She has the recipes on her website as well as other resourceful dinner planning ideas such as couponing & freezing meals to use later on. I’ve used her recipes and man, she can cook, and cook cheap!
• http://30daycafe.com/ - This is a really fun, informative website for meal planning. I’m the type that gets overwhelmed with cooking 30 days ahead, but for some of you, this is just what you’ll need. The website offers specific details on how to do everything from shopping frugally, to freezing & thawing correctly, to eating healthy.

3.  Get a calendar. No seriously, go get a calendar. Either online or on paper, you need to write it down! Personally I use Google Calendar.  http://www.google.com/googlecalendar/about.html It’s amazing (when I use it!) because you can set reminder emails to be sent to you the day before so you know what meal is coming up without having to look. And even better, Google Calendar can be set to REPEAT! You heard right! We all repeat our meals, don’t we? Why not do it on purpose?! Within minutes you can have an entire year’s worth of meals planned out ON PURPOSE! I set repeats for all our favorite meals. For example, my kids love lasagna, so its on the calendar, set to repeat once a month or until the kids get tired of it!

4.  Make a Meal List. Before adding meals to a calendar, write down all the meals you make that your family enjoys. Just one big list. Once you get the list, start adding them to the calendar. Keep this list for future reference and add to it as you find yummy new recipes.

5.  Pick 30 minutes of ONE day out of the week that you plan your meals. For me, it’s Sunday afternoon. Then it’s time for grocery shopping with my list in hand!!!! Leave the kids at home if at all possible! Because we know grocery shopping & kids don’t mix!

6.  Start in the morning. What? But breakfast is in the morning! Yep, but before you head out the door, pull out the marinade and throw that bird in the fridge. It’ll be thawed & flavorful by the time you get home & you’ll have just decreased your dinnertime stress by half.

7.  Headline your meals. By this I mean choose meal categories. For example, Sunday night is Pizza Night. Monday night is Crock Pot Night. Tuesday is Breakfast Night. Wednesday is Buffet Night (I refuse to call it leftovers, but essential that’s what it is. Everyone gets to choose what they want that night from the 3 previous nights). Thursday is Mexican or Seafood. Friday is Dinner Out. Saturday is Italian (pasta dishes). The kids love this, by the way. They look especially look forward to Breakfast Night!

The Rewards:

1. Renewed Self-confidence – don’t you love that feeling when you know you’re serving your family the best of yourself? Me too.
2. Spend less Moola – because you’re not out buying last-minute fast food meals.
3. Save more Moola – consider using the money you save to sponsor an orphan through Children’s Hopechest www.hopechest.org OR save for vacation!
4. Your family is fed & you’ve just created a perfect atmosphere for family talk time WITHOUT exhausting yourself!

In the interest of honesty, I want to be clear that I don’t always live by these tips myself. But when I do this Momma is much happier & healthier, and as a result the whole family is happier & healthier as well.

Now let’s hear what’s working for you? What’s not working for you? And how you get yourself out of the Dinner Desert into the Land of Plenty?!

Let’s network, Moms!!!!!