Dinner for a Year

No it's not a giveaway.( Although that'd be nice) It's something I saw on Pinterest. This woman is amazing! I'm not so naive to think that this is something I could do or that I even really want to do but I did want to put something together to keep me out of a cooking rut. Homemade Gourmet used to be the answer for me but after 3 years a lot of those meals found their way into a rut of their own. (Although some of our favorite meals are HG meals & pop up often in our menus) So I sat down and wrote out a list of all the meals I cook. Then I asked Rustin if there were meals on the list that he absolutely didn't want to eat unless he was stranded on a deserted island. That took out a good chunk of my list. At least I know that if I put one of the meals from the list on the table I'm going to hear ANY complaints. So I found this Menu that you could type right into.


I started filling in the blanks to fit our lives like MacKenzie had mentioned. For instance on Wednesday Rustin is on his own for dinner since Molly & I go to Bible Study. Tuesdays & Thursdays are Jazzercise nights so crock-pot/ easy recipes are a must. Saturday's I usually have time to try something new and since there were a lot of meals that I'd pinned (and I really wanted to try them not just look at them) I designated Saturdays as *NEW RECIPE nights. These recipes are completely new to us and therefore come with the Pizza Clause (If it tastes awful then order pizza). I took my finished menu and wrote out a grocery list for the recipes on the menu that way all I have to do is add the little things like lunch stuff, milk, eggs, etc. to my weekly grocery list.



After a few days of poking around I'd picked more than a few new recipes so many that I started an entirely new Board.

And after looking through my list and the board of new ideas I've come up with 3 months of recipes with very few repeats (just the favorites). I know that there are going to be things that come up (last night Rustin didn't get home until 10) and that the menus are meant to be flexible. But it sure does make it easy to know how many points I'll be having each night, what groceries I need each week, and that dinner isn't as much of a hassle as it has been the last few months. It may not be in a fancy binder but I'm pretty proud them.