The core mission of Organizing Dinner is to help you figure out dinner for your family in your own kitchen. Because your family has unique tastes, allergies and schedules only you can truly decide what goes on your table.

Most food blogs and services tell you what to eat when. We’re here to say managing it all on your own is easier than you think.

There are two main strategies that can help you WIN at dinner:

1 – Don’t be distracted by the store.

  There are SO many options to choose from. Banners announcing certain items, coupons touting another. Things like the mustard in this photo strategically placed for you to grab and go. What all the promotions and “buy me” tactics at the store add up to is a cart full of this-and-that. Did you ever get home from a full trip to the grocery store and still feel like you don’t have ingredients that add up to dinner? It happens. A lot. Because we are busy, packaged food companies have taken charge of telling us what to buy. Take back control. It’s easy.

 

2 – Know your 10

Either write it out, or just mentally gather a list of 10 dinners your family will eat any night of the year. I do this with my cooking classes. At my last one-on-one class, her list included:

 

pork chops
salmon
pasta
hamburgers
meatloaf
baked chicken
grilled chicken
tilapia
stuffed baked potatoes
salad

Her new strategy was to fill her grocery cart every week with these items and things to complement them. The result is there will be little room for other “ingredient clutter”, and there will always be WINNING ingredients on hand at home for dinner. The salads, potatoes and pasta and meat courses can be mixed and matched for many variations on these themes. Remember this is weeknight dinner, not special-event menu planning. So don’t over-complicate it.

One person I consulted about dinner told me “All we ever want are Sloppy Joe’s and I never have tomato paste or ground beef”.  Her homework was easy. I sent her to the store to stock up on tomato paste and ground beef (like these freezable 1-pound packs of 100% Grass Fed Ground Beef from Aldi). I told her to even grab a few bags of buns and put them in her freezer. This example shows how truly simple it is to Win at Dinner when you take control away from the packaged food companies promoting their ingredients and buy just what works for you. In addition to saving tons of $$ by not buying things you won’t use!

Know your family’s 10 (or even one if you’re like my friend with the Sloppy Joe’s, or somewhere in between).

Go to the store with a game plan.

Use the 70 Meals, One Trip to the Store cookbook for inspiration and/or if you don’t know where to start, and Win at Dinner!

 

The post Back to Basics — Know Your 10 Dinners appeared first on Smart Ingredients Blog.