Ideas to Keep the Family Dinner Menu Fresh

The ideal meal is nutritious, relatively simple and quick to prepare, and will appeal to a variety of eaters. However, with today's busy schedules, it's easy to fall in a cooking rut and end up with the same 10 meals all of the time or an excess amount of take out dinners. With limited time (and often funds) what are some of the best places to find new meal ideas, or even dinner itself?

Ask Others

Word of mouth is one of the most effective ways to get ideas for what to feed your family. People like to talk about their favorites, and likely would like to hear suggestions to add to their weekly repertoire. Many of these family dinners are just a variation on old stand-bys but a new twist is enough to re-charge the tired day-in-day-out menu. For instance, instead of spaghetti with marinara sauce, serve egg noodles with olive oil and veggies. Just talking about what kinds of things you typically serve can spark ideas for how to change them. And a friend or co-worker might have a completely new idea for a fast and easy dinner.

Online Forums

Go on any parenting or pregnancy message board and one of the hot topics is virtually guaranteed to "what's for dinner tonight" or "quick meals for toddlers, please share." Yes, people are interested in what others are eating, but mostly they want to get ideas for what they can feed their growing families. Because of this, message boards are a terrific place to get information about what other families are having for dinner, and even instructions for how to make the meal. One woman's old-standby (i.e. veggie burger or hummus and pita) is another woman's new star meal. The beauty of this venue is the posters are likely in similar situations (i.e. suffering from morning sickness, transitioning young eaters to solid foods, or with a houseful of school-age children) and can make recommendations based on that point in time.

Magazines

Whether it is a cooking-themed magazine like Cooking Light, or women's interest like Self, or children-themed magazine such as Parenting, healthy meal or dinner recommendations are virtually guaranteed to be included, complete with a recipe. In the case of cooking magazines, the recipes may follow rely on seasonal ingredients or lump in according to time. Cooking Light has two sections "Dinner Tonight" and "20 Minute Dishes" that specifically cater to the needs of busy families who want to have healthy, delicious meals. Again, ingredient substitutions are often relatively simple to include as needed for your family's individual tastes.

Online Menu Services

The idea of an online menu service seems like a redundant idea since most people have multiple cookbooks and may even subscribe to multiple magazines with recipes. Services like DineWithoutWhine.com and SavingDinner.com will streamline the process for you and offer a week's worth of main course recipes and the requisite ingredients list. DineWithoutWhine.com is $14.75 for a three-month subscription and SavingDinner.com is $17.95 for six months. Both allow you to customize your requests to a certain degree (i.e. vegetarian). Paying someone else to plan meals seems like a waste of money, until you stop to think about how little time you take to flip through cookbooks or magazines and instead end up cooking by the seat of your pants every other night. Even for a short period of time, these types of services can increase the number of meals in your imagination.

Take It Out

No, not take out (although take out has a near and dear place in the hearts of busy families everywhere). Establishments that offer a menu of prepared foods are popping up all over the place. At the national chain My Girlfriend's Kitchen (www.mygirlfriendskitchen.com) people can go into the store, pick out the meal they want, compile it there, and take it home to be cooked at a later date. For people with less time or interest in preparing their meal, establishments such as Pasta Vita in Old Saybrook, Connecticut (www.pastavita.com) and The Ample Pantry (www.theamplepantry.com) in Kalamazoo, Michigan offer a variety prepared entrees, side dishes, and desserts that customers can take home or have delivered. All of these establishments have rotating menus of prepared foods that customers still cook themselves. Local establishments of this kind are likely available near you. Like the menu service, you can get ideas from their offerings after a few visits.

In addition to these typical ways of getting new meal ideas, families can 1) rely on a predictable weekly routine (i.e. casserole on Monday, pasta on Tuesday, etc.), 2) start a dinner swap tradition where families make large portions to share and therefore cut down on the number of nights they have to cook, 3) plan for a night of frozen prepared meals or leftovers, or 4) give up the fantasy of a full schedule of home cooked meals and embrace a night of take out on a regular basis.

No matter how you find new meals, even adding in one or two will help keep the dinner doldrums away and your family happy, healthy, and with full bellies.