For a mother it can be difficult to come up with a meal idea every day and also one that our children will eat. In my home growing up we all were so picky about our foods and I know it drove my mom crazy. Eventually by the time most of us were teenagers she just stopped making dinner for us because my siblings didn't want her English style homemade meals, but fast food instead and would go off and get their own dinners. Then there is my own little family now who have different diet needs. My husband and daughter have high metabolisms and are carbaholics. I am on the opposite side of the metabolism chart and can't handle that much pasta etc. in my system. They would eat it every night too if I let them, but I like variety. So coming up with what to eat each night that everyone will like off the top of my head is frustrating.
A friend of mine takes her children's school lunch menu and rotates the meals on that menu from two weeks earlier and uses that to plan her dinner meals for the week. Since she knows her children are familiar with those foods, she has a head start on what to prepare for a whole month. If you have children in different grades and schools who eat lunches at school, than you have even more meal ideas to pull from. For those of us who don't, you can ask a mother who does and make copies of their kids lunch menu flyers or type in lunch menu and the local schools on the web and they always have a list of the menu and nutrition facts sometimes too. Also you could jot down the meals your family enjoyed that week or in the past and eventually you will have enough good meals to put together on a rotation system on your calender. Ask other mothers too what their family favorite meals are or collect some new recipes from them and try them out. Get a small spiral ring calender and plan out the meals for the week. All you have to do then is write down the ingredients you need from the store for your weekly shopping trip saving you many trips to the grocery store.
I also try to make one extra portion size for our meal for my husband to take to work the next day for his lunch. He loves this because it saves him time in the morning before work trying to think of what to prepare for lunch and getting it made before he heads out the door. We have a great cookbook that I bought from the LDS bookstore when we were first married. Since there was just two of us cooking large family meals and having days of leftovers was boring for me and most of those left overs would get thrown away because of this. The cook book is called Cooking For Two by Debbie G. Harman. The recipes are easy and the perfect size portions for two people. So if you are a young married couple without children or have a single college student learning to make their own meals, you have to get this cook book. Another book I love, is the one written by the comedian actor Jerry Seinfield's Wife, Jessica Seinfeild and is called Deceptively Delicious. It teaches you how to add vegetables to your kids foods without them knowing. Great for those picky veggie kids! If your kid's aren't picky then check out the button link on the side of my blog called I Have Fun With Food Storage for ideas on how to incorporate your pantry food storage items into your meals. Good luck and Happy Meal Planning Everyone!
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