Ah- the question almost every mother, wife, home-maker, or person “in charge” of fixing dinner hates to think about or hear.
I am very excited to have found a website that will e-mail you a menu with a main and a side dish, shopping list, and recipes every week. A mom on a parenting group board that I belong to, recommended them. It is called Relish and I have only used the free trial menu, but have been very impressed. You can cook up to 5 meals a week, and the neat thing is they code each meal with a letter, so if you only want to make 4 meals, or there is meal you don’t want to try, you just cross off the shopping list all the items that correspond to that letter.
Their shopping list was VERY organized, and in my local store, all the ingredients were actually categorized correctly with Relish’s list. They list all the produce, baking goods, meat, etc. on the list and keep it all to one page. I was a bit skeptical but I tried it last week. I was in and out of the store in 45 minutes, and spent what I usually do, when I would just wander the aisles with no menu in mind. For the final test, the food has to taste good and not take forever to prepare.
Well, they passed those tests too. The first night we had Soy and Ginger Flank Steak with Asian Spinach Salad. We had enough for left-overs, so we had that the next night too. Then I made Creamy Chicken Pot Pies with Ambrosia Salad. We had left-overs again, and tonight I made Spinach Lasagna Roll-ups with a Garden Salad. There was one recipe I didn’t want to make, and I haven’t made the last one yet. All of these are under the trial menu.
The meals are generally healthy and follow the prep and cook time very close, with most the meals under 30 minutes to cook; even with my two boys in the kitchen and underfoot. I also love that you can easily tailor the recipes for your particular tastes. One of the menus I haven’t made yet is Mu Shu Chicken Wraps and it called for chicken thighs. Since we don’t eat dark meat, I just bought the same amount of breast tenders. You could also sub. vegies or tofu for meat, chicken for fish, and vice-versa.
We also want to try more vegetarian dishes and this is a great way for us to get started. The Spinach Lasagna looks very good, and I plan to take it to a mom’s-night-out potluck I am going to tomorrow.
So I am sold and plan to sign up. It costs $7 a month, which I believe will more than pay for itself in saved time for me wondering the grocery store, trying to think of something for dinner, and hopefully we won’t have to resort to going out to eat so much when I can’t think of anything for dinner. When we do go out, we usually spend at least $15, so if this prevents us from doing it once a month, we have already saved some money.
One of my friends told me either Good Housekeeping, or Better Homes and Gardens does the same thing, but I haven’t checked that out for myself yet. She said she also didn’t think they categorized everything so well for you either, but it may be worth looking into if you want to try something like this free, before you buy a membership.