What to cook for dinner??

I did, until I joined a CSA a couple of months ago. A CSA, for those that don't know, stands for "Community Supported Agriculture." Some require you to sign a contract and pay for months at a time. The one I joined is a pay-as-you-go basis. They have a website and post the menu for the week a few days before you order. Then basically you just decide you're going to purchase the week's bag of organic produce or not. I get a wide variety of things every week, from apples, kiwi, grapefruit and strawberries to turnips, sweet potatoes, lettuce, chard, zucchini, onions, and even some herbs, like parsley and basil. They also have recipe suggestions on their website that include the produce for the week. I made this roasted cauliflower and dill soup the other day that was to die for!! :) I also try to use cookbooks a lot for different ideas. I always keep things like onion, garlic, and a few fresh herbs on hand, and then I can substitute other things for ingredients I don't have. I highly recommend Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything." That is always the cookbook I consult first, and it hasn't let me down yet! Happy cooking everyone!

i agree..because of our budget and time i can't really concoct things with different or lots of ingredients so there are a set amount of things i can make in my time span and under my budget. i took ground beef out but not sure what to make with it..the other day i made meatloaf n i made spaghetti yesterday so those r out of the question n i make tacos way toooo much.

I hate trying to decide what to make for dinner. I remember my mom saying that when I was a teenager... that she couldn't come up with new things to make for dinner. Wow! I was the youngest of five so that was a lot of years of being a wife and mother before she uttered those words. I don't cook dinner every night. I spend all day in and out of thinking of what to make for dinner. And then it gets too late to take any meat out of the freezer. Ground beef is the easiest thing to thaw on an instant. If I am making spaghetti I can actually put it in the frying pan frozen and it will break down there. I have fussy eaters in this house, which doesn't help. Plus schedules are a drag. This is what happened yesterday. It was my daughter's 16th birthday. But she is training to try out for Team Canada in Taekwondo this Sunday so she has been going to TK every night this week. Because it was her birthday she wanted to go hang out with friends after school. When she goes to TK she doesn't want to eat beforehand because she'll get a cramp. She had to leave at 6:30. My husband was working days, until 7pm. My younger daughter had ball hockey at 7:30pm. So.... 5pm, rush 12yo out to deliver newspapers, return home for about 20 minutes then take 16yo to Taekwondo (she arrived home while we were out delivering papers), return for another 1/2 hour (put a load of laundry in the washing machine), then as I am leaving to take 12yo to hockey, 16yo calls and says she is done early because there was something else going on at the gym. So I said I would drop 12yo off and then swing around and pick up 16yo. On my way down our street I see my husband driving up the street. We stop, chat, 12yo jumps in his car to go to ball hockey while I go and pick up 16yo. Now where or where would I find time to make dinner let alone eat it? We ended out eating pizza at 10 o'clock at night followed by a couple of candle-lit cupcakes for my daughter's birthday. The ground beef I had taken out was thawed already but being Good Friday we are not supposed to eat meat today, Saturday is McDonald's day and Sunday I will make an Easter meal for our family to enjoy after my husband and 16yo get back from the Taekwondo tournament. So... will that ground beef still be good come Monday??? I have been turning to on-line recipe sites for new ideas. Got a great one for the chicken thighs I made earlier this week. I would much prefer slow cooker recipes then I can plan in advance and have it be magically ready come dinner time. But sometimes I go to all the trouble to make these meals only to have no one home at dinner time. My 12yo has taken to go off playing with her friends after school and then having dinner where ever she is WITHOUT telling me. I throw up my hands in defeat and swear I will never make another dinner again. I even wrote a retirement speech in writing group as a joke (you can read it here: http://www.authspot.com/Biographies/My-Retirement-Speech.480885) and read it to my family. Well, they help out a little more often but retiring is never an option of a wife and mother. I can hardly wait to have enough money to hire someone to come in and make meals 3 or 4 days a week.

I have a little suggestion to do. If you ever cook up any type of chicken and have left overs of it try making a pasta chicken dinner and cutting up the chicken into little pieces and you can add whatever you want into the chicken and now you have something dinner with chicken and not the same type of chicken all the time. You can do this with a lot of left over meat as we do it all the time and its a great dish and a lot of kids do like pasta if you have kids in the house. I'm not sure what else i can suggest for you to do, but if you do cook inside on the stove or in the oven it is time to pull out the BBQ and start eating some BBQ good as it is that time of year and that will start making some different taste if your food and its also yummy and its GRILLED not FRIED or BAKED.

If you donw know what to cook for dinner... http://www.iwillcooktonight.com/

What to cook for tonight... http://www.iwillcooktonight.com/

When I was a stay-at-home mom, I would plan my meals a day inadvance (so that I could stock up on ingredients without having to run out to the store at the last minute). I tried to make something new everyday and would also look up on the net for new recipes.I'm not a master chef either but I cook fairly well when I am in the mood. But now that I am working and have a young child, I don't get the time to plan in advance. I'm always thinking of what to cook and by the time I figure out breakfast, I don't have the time to cook lunch or dinner or else I'm too tired to do any thinking...let alone cook a meal!

I am so in agreement with you. I got so fed up of the same foods all the time so I started to buy recipe magazines or books. With the magazines I would tear out recipes that appeal and put them in a recipe folder that I made. Each week I go through this folder, which now has hundreds of different recipes and make a shopping list for the next week. I then make a menu of the meals and put it on my fridge so I know what I am having everyday for the next week. This stops me paying countless visits to my freezer and staring in the drawers like looking at a tv that only has one channel - because no matter how many times I went in there the food choices never changed. If you need new recipe ideas, just add me as a friend and let me know what you like and I can try and find some good recipes from my collection for you :-)

I understand what you are talking about. I am a stay at home mom as well and feel like I cook the same meals over and over sometimes. I've started going online and finding recipes that I think look or sound good and then I'll try to make them. I also ask friends for recipes that their families enjoy and I'll make them sometimes too.

I try to vary the menu some also. I dont like having the same things over and over either. There are so many possiblities of what to make that alittle creativity seems to be in order. I will sometimes look at cookbooks for inspiration or if I se something online that I really want to make I will incorporate it into the menu.

Well,i'm agree with you,i'm not good at cook,and i alway pick the food which i like,so i eat the same food frequently.Yep,i'm fed with it,but i don't know what to cook,so sometimes i go out to eat,eat something i felt fresh and new

As I am a Chinese, I can cook some chinese cuisines, they are a lot. And I am also fond of western cuisines, I try to learn different cuisines, so I try to make different cuisines for my dinner, and it makes dinners not so boring and tedious.

yes.

Yes I do get tired of eat the same old thing,You know what you can do you can go to the shops and try to buy a Recipe book there are some recipe books that have over 100 recipes so all you have to do is follow the instructions and if you have kids in the house you can ask them if you would like to help you cook :) and its fun sometimes too.

Hi there, I feel the same way that you do, but what i usually do is when I can't think of what to cook - I go to the recipe site and kind of browse around until i find something I would like to cook. I then print out the recipe, make sure i have all ingredients and prepare. And one thing i find great about doing this is that, the meals are so much satisfying when you haven't had it before.

I also try to have cook different foods for dinner. I'm just being creative with different foods. And most of the times I watch cooking shows. I just go for healthy and easy to cook foods

I totally agree with you. I try to cook different things too but it's hard to come up with good ideas especially for someone like me who is from Mexico and is married to someone from El Salvador(totally different flavors!). Sometimes I wish I could have a family chef and just tel him or her what I feel like eating. Happy Mylotting!

I find that the best way to get out of a food rut is to look at foods from other countries. It is amazing how many ways people around the world have found to jazz up food. I would also recommend looking at a recipe website such as allrecipes.com to find new ways to prepare the meats and vegetables that you have on hand. Also, try thinking of different styles of eating. Sometimes eating outdoors or making a little homestyle buffet will give new life to familiar foods. Making familiar dishes with unfamiliar sides can make the dinner different also. For example, if you always pair fried chicken with mashed potatoes and corn, try doing a green bean casserole and baked beans instead. Bon Apetit! Christian M. Archer

i am also sick of eating the same stuff for dinner everyday to an extent that sometimes i just refuse to eat at all. i feel that to make food more attractive and appetizing, it must be eaten while its hot, the food must look fresh. even if it is the same food, as long as it is appetizing, i dont mind eating the same thing everyday.