This year I have decided that I am going to do some sort of monthly challenge. In January it is going to be cook dinner at least 6 nights each week. My full post on this challenge is here. I got the buy in from the guy’s and the agreement that they where going to even help out with the planning of the menus.

Week-1

Challenges

• We only eat two types of meat – chicken and ground beef
• DH does not like same type of meat in back to back meals
• Planning in the last minutes is not the best way to menu planning
• Do on-line recipe searching before trying to do menu planning
• Amount of dirty dishes

Things that worked

• We where able to come up with a list of 20+ dinners that everyone could agree on
• I made a shopping list that is set up the same way as our store to make shopping a bit more efficient (I have a spreadsheet)
• Pinning items on Pinterest , this is a good place to keep recipes for use later. You really could use anything that allows you to “clip” them from the internet (let me know if you need an invite)
• Filling out the shopping list from the recipes then adding what I am going to be making this week at the bottom. That way we can get side-dishes to go with them

When I tossed this idea out on Facebook I got a bunch of suggestions for meals with lots of leftovers so I would not have to cook as much each week. We don’t really like leftovers, so that really would not be the best way to go. Besides that is really not the reason behind this challenge. The fact that we have a list of things to pull from will help out in the up coming planning.

I spent all day cooking for New Year’s eve, I trashed the kitchen. The sink was full of stuff that didn’t fit in the dishwasher. It was crazy the amount of things I managed to get dirty. I can see where the lack of having the space to wash things or if whatever I need to cook with is dirty will lead to me grabbing the keys and hitting a drive thru. So I need to keep up on that much better then I have in the past, otherwise it will be the undoing to this challenge.

I am going to add a link-up for this post it will be open for the week. If you are going to join me please come back and link up.

I picked up this too day at the grocery store, I can’t wait to try some of them: