The challenge: to plan a week of simple dinners.

Around the dinner hour, do you find yourself stressed because you are scampering around the kitchen trying to quickly thaw the meat,  cook the noodles, and chop the vegetables?  Let me guess, you didn’t plan and prepare for dinner? When your husband walks in the door, you have to say, “sorry honey, I wasn’t able to get dinner made today, it was WAY too busy of a day.”  Is that the truth? or is it that you just didn’t plan ahead?  By simply planning a menu and preparing some simple tasks, you can have a dinner on your table every night, ON TIME!

Why make the change:

If figuring out what you are going to have for dinner each night is a “stressor” in your home, consider creating a weekly menu.  Decide on a week’s worth of simple dinners, set on a specific day of the week. Make a grocery list of what you need for each meal and then purchase the ingredients.  Sounds simple, right?!?!?  Then why isn’t dinner made on time, more than once throughout the month??  NO MORE EXCUSES!

How to make the change:

Okay, we are going to make this simple.  We are going to plan for one week.  Let’s try this approach…..

• Sunday–larger heartier–complete meals
• Monday–casseroles
• Tuesday-soup, salad, and sandwiches
• Wednesday–Italian
• Thursday–chicken something
• Friday–crockpot cooking
• Saturday–fun family meal

Let me suggest one very important rule

Keep all of your recipes simple.  Stay away from the ones that have a bunch of  ingredients.  Save the extravagant meals for a later date.  This week think easy.  STAY AWAY FROM PINTEREST.  Even though there are many yummy recipes, try to avoid them.  Keep it plain this week.  It will be much easier. Oops………I actually retract that statement…….If you do a Pinterest search do so with “quick dinner ideas” or “under 5 ingredients”, something that will help you choose plain dinners.

Here are some very simple basic meals :

Sunday—the heartier meal

salisbury steak chicken and rice made simple Here are some complete meal plans from our Home economics course

Monday–casserole

 

• tater tot casserole
• sloppy joe casserole
• sausage red beans and rice
• cheeseburger casserole

 

Tuesday–soup, salad, sandwiches

Make a simple salad, lettuce with a few vegetables chopped up makes it easy.

• creamy chicken and rice
• easy vegetable soup
• potato bacon chowder
• chicken noodle soup

For sandwiches, you can make them simple.  Choose a tuna fish melt, grilled cheese, a wrap with basic meat, vegetables, and dressing.  Keep them simple, something that takes no time to prepare.

Wednesday–Italian

This one is easy, make spaghetti.  Need an easy version??? Buy the jarred sauce, pasta, and a pkg of hamburger—-very simple.  For those who want homemade click here. or boil some fettuccine noodles and pour some jarred Alfredo sauce over top of.  Serve with some baked chicken.

Thursday–chicken something

Here is a link from our Home economics course for chicken dinners

Friday is crockpot cooking day

Here is a link from our Home economics course for crockpot dinners

Saturday–choose a fun family meal

homemade pizza Click here for some recipes made with ground beef Okay if all else fails, our large family foods tab has lots of different ideas as well.

The goal this week is to make your dinner meals plain and simple.  Get rid of the stressful dinner hour in your home and learn to enjoy this time.

I do not like wasting food.  When we make homemade bread it usually disappears quickly, but there are some weeks that we just don’t get around to eating it.  I then put it into the freezer and it seems it might sit there for quite some time.  When I take it out, it is usually a little bit harder and not so soft. That is when I came up with this idea……

I cut my bread in slices, almost cutting through to the bottom but leaving it still in tact.

I then poured melted butter down the center of the bread.  Paying careful attention to make it into each and every slit.

I then mixed up some cinnamon and sugar combination and sprinkled it over top of the bread.  I wrapped it in foil and put it into the oven with dinner.  It was on 350 for about 20 minutes.  

Finally I mixed up some powdered sugar and water to a drizzle consistency.  Poured it over top of the bread, making sure to reach into the crevices.

There you have a delicious alternative to day old hard stale leftover bread.