What's for Dinner?

Hey mom...I'm hungry....what can I eat?

Every evening I seem to get the same phone call at work from my son: Hey mom...I'm hungry....what can I eat? I work 4pm to midnight at the Tribune so I am not home when he is ready for dinner. I miss seeing my son greatly, so one of the things I want to implement into my routine is creating a weekly menu plan and having it posted on the fridge. It's not that don't enjoy the phone calls, because I love it that he calls me. By planning our weekly menu, I am accomplishing several things that I would normally do if I worked a regular 9-5 job - I am deciding what nutrition my son receives in his evening meal. I can control my food budget better and I have something yummy to take in my lunch to work.

When I plan my menu, I use a few tools - the best one I have found so far is All Recipes.com. You can't go wrong and you can easily find good recipes from an ingredients search using what you have in your pantry. Last week I made an awesome Southwest Chicken Salad using only ingredients I had on hand. The other tool I use is a menu planner worksheet from the website - Organize Your Way - that I posted about in a previous post. Menu planning is easiest if you have your grocery store weekly sales ad handy. My menu was simple this week because I already had all of the meats purchased (which are generally the most expensive part).

I only ever plan one meal per day except on Friday and Saturday - on these days I am off work so I try to plan a breakfast of sorts for everyone. I will only be posting my dinner menus, unless I decide to make breakfast for dinner - which I love to do on occasion! If you see anything that sounds good but doesn't include a recipe link, just ask me via comments and I will post the recipe!

Here is this week's dinner menu:

Monday - Spaghetti and Breadsticks
Tuesday - Tuscan Soup and Grilled Cheese sandwiches
Wednesday - Broccoli Chicken Alfredo (want this recipe - just ask)
Thursday - Hamburger Helper (want this recipe - just ask)
Friday - California Chicken Casserole 
Saturday - Taco Bake (want this recipe - just ask)
Sunday - Pizza and Salad