I stave off uncertainty by systematizing.
We have always been very loose about dinner times and meal planning. But we always aim to sit down to dinner together.
Since this school year’s launch, we have set a goal to eat dinner at 6:30 every night. And now we have a dinner plan:
- Meatless Monday
- Taco Tuesday
- Prince Spaghetti Wednesday
- Comfort Food Thursday
- Fish Friday*
- **Clean the Refrigerator Saturday
- **Sunday Supper
*Friday might be pizza. (The kids don’t like fish).
**Saturday and Sunday might be FFY, Fend For Yourselves.
So far, so good.
Chris loves to eat but he takes forever to cook. And he is a messy cook. So having this schedule get keeps him moving and motivated. (I think the Parkinson’s meds have affected his executive function/planning.)
Besides, the kids are starving when they walk in the door from various afterschool activities at 6:30 pm. (They leave the house at 7:35 am — long day!)
Last night, it was FFY, because the girls and I went to see Pippin on Broadway for their birthday. How fun was that! The understudy was on and I can’t imagine the real lead, Kyle Dean Massey, could be any better than the understudy, Mike Schwitter. (Chris’s friend John Dossett played the king! Other highlights: Rachel Bay Jones as Catherine and Lucie Arnaz as Grandma Bertha.)
I think the message of the musical is find the extraordinary in your ordinary.
It’s a highlight of the day to eat dinner together. It’s the ordinary.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 
Fun, simple goal to plan meals. Thanks!
great ideas 🙂
I have toyed with doing this kind of meal planning for a long time… and it just hasn’t happened! I like to play around with food too much, I think. We do have a couple of vegetarian days (Wed/Fri), so I suppose that’s some consistency. 🙂 I have to know… what is Prince Spaghetti Wednesday???
Okay, and I cannot BELIEVE this (and I know you didn’t actually see him in Pippin), but you mentioned Kyle Dean Massey, and the name rang a bell — I went to college with him at MSU! We were in choirs together, and I saw him on stage in university productions a few times. He was incredible. Such a funny coincidence!
We don’t have children but meal planning is key for us!!! I am working on enjoying the kitchen so planning helps me achieve that goal. We usually eat out once or twice a week, at a minimum, and we do pizzas on the grill every Wednesday. We just moved, and the hubs is retiring from the Marine Corps on the 31st of this month, so we need to create a new schedule and meal plan. Meal planning really has helped us eat healthier too!!!