Come and get some dinner ideas for the family this week!
“Hey, what’s for dinner?”
“Hey Mom, what are you making for dinner?”
“Hey Honey, what’s planned for dinner?”
Those questions can be blood curdling. After a long day of work or tending to the house and kids, that is the last thing you want to hear. Am I right? I want to share with you some dinner ideas for the family.
I’m going to give you a look into our meal plan and I also want to share with you some dinner prep ideas to make dinner time even more easy for you.
I do not like assigning a certain meal to a certain day. I just like to number my days 1-5 and assign the meals that way. It makes it easier to move meals around to accommodate different plans during the week. I also only plan 5 meals a week and then we have a leftover night and a pantry or eat out night.
Day 1 – Italian Pasta Salad
This recipe is so great to get rid of all the odds and ends in your fridge! You could use anything you have at home to make this pasta salad. You can use whatever meat, cheese, veggies, whatever you and your family like!
So to get some prep done ahead of time for this recipe, you can go ahead and chop all the veggies and meat up in the morning, and have them waiting for you in the fridge when you are ready to assemble your pasta salad!
Day 2 – Blt Sandwich Bar
I love any kind of “bar” type dinner. Pasta bar, pizza bar, baked potato bar, etc! This helps so so much with picky eaters! They can pick and choose what and how they want to eat their sandwich!
A huge way to help prep for dinner time with this recipe would be to pre cook your bacon! Cooking bacon ahead of time will save you so much time and will help make the cleaning up process easy!
Day 3 – Enchilada Casserole
What I love about enchilada casserole is that, it is still the yummy enchiladas but, it is way less time consuming and messy. Meaning, we aren’t hand rolling all these enchiladas! You just layer all the ingredients in a dish and bake it that way!
This is a recipe that you can prep a month, week, couple days before and freeze! It freezes so well. You could also pre-cook your chicken and have that ready for the night you want to make this yummy casserole!
Day 4 – Zuppa Toscana
I love this soup! Even though it isn’t too cold right now where I live, I still love to eat this soup all year round! It is full of yummy potatoes and veggies. For those picky eaters, make sure to leave the veggies large enough so that they can eat around the veggies they do not want. Also, I like to put my veggies in the last 30 minutes of cooking so they do not get to soggy.
To prep for this recipe, go ahead and chop your potatoes in the morning. Just leave them in a pot of cold water with the lid on during the day. When you are ready to make your soup, make sure to dump and rinse your potatoes to get all that excess starch off!
Day 5 – Slow Cooker Chicken Curry
This is not your average crockpot dinner! This recipe is full of so many yummy flavors! We usually serve this with a side of rice and Naan bread. My kiddos love to dip their Naan bread in the curry sauce! It’s that good!
This is a crockpot meal so to prep for this, just wake up about 5 minutes earlier and throw everything in the crockpot to cook all day! BOOM! DINNER IS DONE!
Come Meal Plan With Me!
I hope you enjoy all of these dinner ideas for the family! My family sure loves them! Be sure and try the steps to prep each meal ahead of time to make dinner time a breeze.
Want more recipes like this? In our Meal Planning on a Budget Membership I plan out a month’s worth of meals like this AND the grocery list that goes along with it! Click here for more information!
Talk to you soon!
Brittany
