What’s for dinner?  Ah yes, the eternal question.  You may have echos of the wonderful voice of Sam Elliot going through your head as you ask it…Well, beef.  Yes, of course, that’s what’s for dinner!  Thank you check off dollars ha! 

But back to my point, “what’s for dinner,” is one of the most ever present, annoying, nagging, stressful and relentless questions there is.  It never gives up because every time I turn around it’s time to eat.  Sigh. 

To relieve some of this stress and give inspiration to the moment (because no one else is going to help you with this question), I have turned to attempting meal planning.  And amazingly, even an attempted, scribbled, notes-in-the-margin-meal-plan is better than none when it’s 5pm and no dinner is in sight.  So here’s a few tips on meal planning from a wanna-be-organized-not-so-much-mom-wife-businessperson-rancher. 

1. Spend a little time looking through cookbooks you want to cook from or on blogs or pinterest posts to get meal and recipe inspiration.  Say 30min…45min?? I seem to cook the same things a lot, so if I want to branch out I try to look up new recipes or try a cookbook I haven’t cooked from in awhile.

2. Write the recipe name, the cookbook it comes from (or other source) and the page number or link.  Make it easy to find!  I have often wrote down a recipe then forget to remind myself where it came from.  Good luck 10 days later lol. 

3. Keep a grocery list while you’re jotting down recipes. Want to make that recipe?  Do I have all of those ingredients?  This is how I come up with the majority of my grocery list.  Meal plan AND grocery list done.  Perfect.

4. Check your pantry first.  I hate buying something only to come home and find it in my cupboard.  No, I don’t remember what I have in my cupboard. I figure if Einstein didn’t bother to remember phone numbers because he could look them up, then I don’t need to stress over remembering what I have on hand. I can just take a peek at what I have and go from there. Ha!

5. Note several recipes from the same section of the cookbook that use similar cuts of meat.  That way if you have left overs or extra of a cut, you have a recipe on hand that you can use it in.  **For example; Night #1 -hamburgers, Night #2-super nachos, Night #3-broccoli cheese soup with hamburger.  No one will know you are using the same thing in three different dishes.  Or maybe they will, but hey – it was good every time!

6. (For the truly dedicated or truly desperate aka - ME!)  Get a meal planning notebook or create you own spreadsheet or document you can fill in when you plan for the week, two weeks or month (craziness).  I got one off of Amazon on a whim this past fall.  I don’t use every feature, but it does give me a place to write down recipes I want to try and make a grocery lists for those recipes.  Keeps stuff all in one place.  That’s handy.

   I DO NOT decide in advance what I want to eat every day, and map it out on a calendar. Ha! Nope. Who knows what I will be in the mood for! I just have a list of recipes I have things on hand for and decide that day or sometimes a day or two in advance what I want to make. If things need thawed it’s handy to look ahead a bit. But let’s not get too uptight here…

7. Bonus Tip- If all else fails take Sam Elliot’s advice and serve beef.  It it what’s for dinner :)

And while we’re on the subject of beef. 

— Check out our new crockpot/instapot beef bundle!  —

The perfect selection of beef if you are a crockpot aficionado!