How to make dinner

Ahhh, Autumn Dinners. Nothing compares to the yummy foods of this time of year- Roasts, Stews, Soups, Baking, Gravy (Gravy!), Braises…you name it, Fall is the time for it. I’ve recently begun using Pinterest to help me plan my meals- what’s better than a list? A visual list!

This week I tried a few new recipes that came out quite good, as well as let myself relax about time spent in the kitchen, and all-in-all it’s worked out for a happier, healthier Autumn so far! Here’s what I did to change it up:

Salad- I love salad, but I don’t love making it anymore. I want LOTS of choices, which translates to LOTS of prepwork, which I just don’t have time for anymore. So we’ve found a few places that do amazing salads, and go there for date-night a couple of times a month. (one of them is our favorite pizza joint, which makes it a win-win for Mr. Awesome. And yes, I just gave my hubby a bloggy nickname. We’ll have to see if it sticks, shall we?)

Man food- It’s been all-chicken-all-the-time around here this summer, so I wanted to make sure I plan in some Man Food nights to the ol’ dinner rotation. Steak and Bleu Cheese is a huge favorite, I just make sure I get small, organically raised (which, due to the cost, helps keep the portions small) steaks with minimal marbling. Sausage is an old favorite which got left by the roadside years ago, but now that I’ve discovered chicken sausage, is back on the table (you put enough red pepper in those bad boys, he’ll eat them all day long-even if it is chicken!) Pizza is a by-product of Salad Night (yes!), and ooey-gooey desserts happen at the other salad place (oddly enough, I don’t have as huge of a sweet tooth anymore, so I grab a small cookie, sit back and watch the carnage).

Pinterest boards for menu planning- this is an interesting recent development. I do tend to have a love/hate experience with social media, but Pinterest has more or less been a random bingey kind of thing for me. Until I came across people using theirs as file storage. Now, instead of just mindlessly clicking everything that looks good, I throw images into two categories: Dinner; or Baking Board. Then, every Thursday I look through those files and research what I’ve pulled for the week, clicking over to the source site for the recipe, tweaking what I have to change for our diet, and drawing up my shopping lists. I also delete any ideas that didn’t work, or make the cut from last week, which helps thin the board down to a manageable size. (I hate ginormous Pinterest Boards, that I have to scroll through for hours just to get to the end if it. I have more important things to waste my time on!)

So far, I’ve tried 3 new recipes (Sausage, Kale and Potato Soup; Sausage, Zucchini, Squash and Onion Foil Packets; and Zucchini and Mushrooms Sauté), cooked dinner 4 times since Saturday, and cut down on the amount of wasted food for the last month (you know when you have a fabulous idea for a series of meals, but they are all untried and untested, and no one wants to eat the strange new food- including the chef? lol, yeah, that happens too often lately. Back to the basics! Now if only I could convince the Faeries to take up teacup piglet farming…)