Dinner Planning

Mom says that getting dinner on the table is an issue whether you are homeschooling or not, so she wanted me to put this article on dinner planning here. I hope you enjoy reading it. Please leave a comment if you do.

Dinner Planning For School Days


Another summer has quickly passed us by. The kids have reluctantly gone back to school. It stands to reason that life should be a little less hectic, right? Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case. Between all of your daily ‘Mom obligations’, helping with homework and providing transportation to every extra-curricular activity under the sun, you probably have little time to devote to dinner planning.



Many times busy parents resort to hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, frozen pizza or frequent trips to a fast-food restaurant. That’s not healthy for you or the kids – not to mention its pretty rough on the family grocery budget.



Kitchen time savers

There are things you can do to cut down on time spent in the kitchen. Pick one day a week and prepare several freezer friendly meals. You can even go the extra mile and package them in individual serving size containers. Doing so will provide your family with a larger variety of entrée choices, on any given day.



Do you have friends that are intrigued with the idea of a one-day a week cooking spree or a meal planning service? Get together with 2 or 3 of them. Each of you decides on 2 main dishes you want to prepare. Buy enough ingredients to make the entrees for each family.



You need to plan ahead

One simple thing that you can do is keep an ample supply of fresh fruits, salad ingredients, soups and fresh sandwich fixings, on hand. Quick meals such as this are nutritious and don’t require a great deal of preparation time.



If you take on the task of meal planning and want to get in the habit of consistently putting together weekly menus yourself, you may be surprised at how much time it involves. Did you know that the typical family meal planner spends roughly 3 hours per week combing through cookbooks, choosing recipes and compiling a grocery list? That translates into 156 hours, per year. Yikes!



A menu service can help

You can say goodbye to last minute thrown together meals and eliminate the stress of dinner planning for your family by subscribing to a meal planning service. This type of service is very affordable, usually costing only a few cents per day. Menus are often designed to be family friendly and easily adaptable.



When you purchase a subscription to a service such as this, your membership will typically feature a weekly menu emailed right to your inbox. This includes seven main dish recipes, side dish suggestions and dessert ideas. As an added benefit, you receive a detailed shopping list, categorized by aisle, which makes your trip to the grocery store that much easier. Simply cross off items already in your pantry, add any other products you may be in need of and you’re off!



If you enjoy planning your own menu, you may want to consider a dinner planning service, in addition to your own choices. Why? It will still save you time, in the long run. Use the membership menu as a base. Then, search for recipes that will deliciously compliment that weekly plan.



Remember, nothing is more important than family time. Don’t let dinner planning get you down. Consider the suggestions we’ve made and you’ll spend less time
slaving over hot stove and more time with the people you love.


For a free one week trial of a family friendly meal planning service, visit www.dinewithoutwhine.com

Pinky and Rex and the Bully

Pinky and Rex and the Bully is about a boy named Pinky and a girl named Rex and one day while Pinky's riding on his bike after school, a 3rd grade bully knocks him off his bike.

Then the bully starts teasing Pinky. He calls him a sissy and then he says only a girl would ride a pink bike and have a name like Pinky. Pinky's favorite color is pink. But his real name is William.

I won't tell you what happens in the end, that way you have to read it yourself.

Little House In The Big Woods

My mom and I are reading Little House in the Big Woods. It is the true story of a woman named Laura Ingalls Wilder. She lived over 200 years ago. She wrote about her life as a farmer's daughter. The books tell what it was like to live a long time ago in America before there were things like TV, computers, even cars. Laura only got one piece of storebought candy every year usually. My Mom reminds me of how happy she and her family were even without a lot of stuff.

Little House in the Big Woods is the first book about Laura's life when she was a little girl.




Note from Mom:I'm really excited about delving into the Little House series with Caleb and the kids. I've read the books a couple of times myself and have always loved them. I even sat on the couch last night and completed The First Four Years, about Laura and Manly's experiences as newlyweds. My mouth waters when they talk about the food they ate. It was so simple and so tasty! But I wouldn't trade her hardships for my own. Although, I wonder if things are really that much different now as far as economic uncertainty. And the experiences of her unrelenting nausea and the difficulties she had doing housework during her pregnancies sure sounded familiar. :)