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what do you eat for dinner during the week?
do you plan out your meals for the whole week? i am really have issues there. i can think of about 3 meals tops to make during the week and then i am stuck. i try to add new foods to our dinner, like i tried to make risotto once, but since i had never had it before i don't think the texture was right (it tasted undercooked) and that was a flop.
i have seen some recipes with bulgur and quinoa, but i don't want to go buy it and have DH or myself or both of us hate it. cuz then we are still hungry and now i have food that we are not going to eat.
i think i just have issues with planning. so i think of something and then i don't have the ingredients. or i am thinking that we had some form of pasta too many times in a week. i just don't know many options.
can i get some suggestions?
oh yeah, the only meat i eat is seafood and DH eats everything. that raises some issues as well. but i have no problem putting meat on the side and he can mix and add later.
TIA.
Re: what do you eat for dinner during the week?
Yes I meal plan every week. We usually do about 4-5 meals because we have left overs or just eat something random for 1 night. I don't really like meat too much and don't eat red meat or pork. I will eat chicken (but don't like it all that much) and love seafood.
So here are a few of our frequent meals:
We have salmon (wild caught) or another fish almost 1x per week.
Veggie stir fry - a bunch of random vegetables mixed with soy sauce and some other seasonings that H uses and sometimes we throw in shrimp.
Pasta of some sort with veggies
Shrimp with couscous or rice with mixed veggies
Turkey burgers if H is craving meat
Homemade pizza (.99 cent dough at Trader Joes) topped with veggies
If I'm extra lazy I'll get a rotisserie chicken from whole foods
Then a few times a month I'll get sushi or another prepared food from Whole Foods
Salads with shrimp and baked potato and veggies on the side
H makes crab cakes and I usually sear some scallops to go with them
So those are things in regular rotation for us. All of which are pretty quick, simple and healthy. Hope that helps!
Haven't read the other responses, but I would suggest picking one new meal per week either from a cookbook or recipe site, etc. (I love 5dollardinners.com!). If you like it, jot it down on a recipe card or in a recipe book to have for later.
As you expand the number of meals you like and feel confident cooking it will become easier. When I meal plan I have certain goals I try to meet - such as at least one meatless meal, only one day of red meat, and no more than 2 days with pasta. This helps guide me because I know where in the cookbook to look for another recipe if I'm short on ideas.
Another good idea if you keep cooking essentials well stocked in your home is to go to the grocery store and buy whatever veggies and meat is on sale. Then do an ingredient search on allrecipes.com and find something you can make with what you have on hand. This is great for the end of the month when you're trying to clean out your fridge/pantry too.
We have a lot of stapes in our menu - usually one mexican dish each week, like tacos or enchiladas (you could make fish tacos!); spagetti; anything in the crockpot; I make a lot of soups which are super flexible with ingredients you like/don't like or don't have on hand...just to name a few.
The last month not withstanding, we do plan meals ahead of time. I aim for 3-4 meals per week, assuming that we will eat leftovers at least once and go out another time.
I am vegetarian and DH is mostly vegetarian. Usually, we have 1 bean dish, 1 fake meat, 1 pasta type and sometimes stir fry. On weekends, I make a batch of homemade calzones or pizza dough and freeze these. I pull them out of the freezer the night before I plan to cook them. I reserve any new dishes for Sunday or Saturday night, so I have plenty of time to cook it/try it. Also, I usually make 1/2 recipes of a lot of dishes, since a whole recipe for DH and I is too much.
It can be hard to plan. I sit down on Saturday or Sunday (BEFORE we go shopping), see what is in season/one sale, then look through cookbooks and make a list of things that we need. Then I make my menu. Most dishes are interchangeable and I try to have a mix of quick and easy, i.e. veggie burgers and fries, with more complicated dishes or dishes that take longer to cook, i.e. southern fried tofu.
This week's menus will be something like:
veggie burgers with fries
Eat at a friend's
calzones
spicy chickpeas with basmati rice and carrots OR chickpeas with penne
Good luck!
I've found that its easiest for me to have a theme for every night of the week. This helps with my planning. I shop every Saturday with a list, but finalize my meal choices when I'm at the store. This doesn't work every week, but its made things easier.
Sat - "meat and potatoes" type meal
Sun- easy entertaining (my sister comes over every Sunday, so I make something fun and possibly time consuming because I have the whole day to make it
Mon- vegetarian
Tues - fish
Wed- pasta, stirfry or pizza
Thurs - leftovers or sandwiches
Fri - out to dinner or more leftovers
I meal plan. I do 5-6 meals a week with the expectation that we'll probably eat out once. I go to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, buy whatever looks good, come home, and meal plan using those ingredients. I make a grocery list from the recipes, and go to Bloom (our local grocery store) or Whole Foods if I need something unique, like veggie sausage. For example, at the Farmer's Market this week I bought potatoes, onions, a dinner bread loaf, salad greens, arugula, pasta, BBQ sauce, and eggs. We also have a well-stocked pantry with lots of beans, lentils, rice, quinoa, and canned veggies I can pull from. Anything that takes more than 30+ minutes is a weekend meal. Risotta is definetely a weekend meal for us, adding hot stock slowly over the course of ~45 mins. isn't gonna happen on a weekday. So this is what my vegetarian menu is this week:
-Veggie sausage and arugula frittata with bread. We eat this a lot, substituting whatever leafy veggie is currently in season (arugula, spinach, swiss chard, or kale).
-Dal (an Indian lentil dish), rice, and naan (indian bread that we freeze and eat one loaf at a time)
-BBQ tofu, mashed potatoes, and salad
-Tempeh fajitas and southwestern corn (canned).
-Veggie sausage and vegetable (whatever's left over from the fajitas and salad) pizza
-Channa Masala (indian chickpea dish), rice, and naan
Ditto what PP said regarding getting started. When I started meal planning, I'd either pull new recipes from cookbooks or online, or search www.vegetariantimes.com by ingredient to use something I already had. I printed out all the recipes we liked and put them into sheet protectors in a 3-ring binder, and now we have a binder full of time-tested recipes I can pull from anytime, like Channa Masala.
It really does get easier once you do it for awhile. The first few weeks are tough, but once you get the hang of it, like using 1 ingredient multiple times (like veggie sausage in a frittata and on pizza) it's easy.
FYI, if you don't try new ingredients (like quinoa) and make a recipe you failed on again (like risotto) you'll never have new foods or recipes to try, and will keep eating the same old thing, and eating out a lot. Try to avoid thinking "oh we're not going to like this..." about new foods, because you'll end up not liking it
. Try to keep an open mind. Try quinoa, it's delicious! It's fairly bland, so we usually make a salad (like pasta salad but with quinoa) with red wine vinagrette dressing, or quinoa loaf (tastes like meatloaf). Try making risotto again, that's a complicated dish and easy to undercook.
thank you guys. i really appreciate all the responses. it is just really hard for me to think of something different for DH to eat all the time. and he goes through these phases of he doesn't want something, but doesn't know what he wants instead. today he made a comment that there aren't a lot of choices when you are trying to eat healthy and i just know that isn't true. i don't want him to get frustrated because that will just make me frustrated.
and supergreen - i will try risotto again on a weekend. thanks.
I meal plan for the entire week (7days). Here are some of our favorites:
brown rice w/black beans, lettuce, tomato, avocado and salsa
tofu w/rice stir fry veggies and soy sauce
salads w/any of the following: tempeh, shrimp, beans
broth based soup w/lots of green veggies and beans
rice w/lots of veggies, tofu and feta
Wow are you married to my husband? He does the exact same thing and it annoys me! I just read him what you wrote and asked who it sounded like. lol.
I feel your pain
We grill out almost every night and eat some sort of grilled meat with veggies. I change up the veggies (onions, tomatoes, potatoes, asparagus, squash, zucchini, etc) and vary the cuts of meat as well as the marinade (ie. cilantro lime chicken taste different than balsamic chicken). Sometimes I'll throw a whole chicken in the crockpot and have a side salad with it.
I don't normally plan ahead but we just started getting an organic produce delivery service and since they deliver a box per week I'm trying to center our meals around what's in the box.
Dh and i eat different things (partially preference, partially consious choice and also allergies). Common meals in our house (add meat if desired):
gyros (pita, cucumber, yogurt-dill sauce)
taco salad or wrap (chips/tortilla, salsa, spinach/lettuce, yogurt, black beans)
beans and rice (black beans, brown rice, a small bit of salsa, cheese)
pasta (usually served with sauted mushrooms and basil; steamed kale on the side)
massuman curry (spice mix, coconut milk, potatoes, carrots, brown rice, tofu)
homemade pizza
lentil joes (lentils, bbq-ish sauce, bread, cheese)
salad (lettuce/spinach, nuts/seeds, dried berries, apple/pear, balsamic vin.)
soup (carrots, celery, broth, egg noodles, etc.)
roasted veggies (variety of root veggies; can also blend with broth, etc. to make into soup)
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