What's For Dinner?!

So, for me one of the most difficult things is meal planning. Often time DH and I get home from work at the same time, then often sit around going, "What do you want to eat?", "I dunno, what do you want?" This goes on for a while, then we end up eating take out. After this topic came up several times in another thread, I though it would be great if we could all share meal ideas, what we are making for dinner tonight, and some of our favorite recipes.

I have no idea what I'm making tonight, but a couple of weeks a go I made a really awesome chicken parm Chicken Parmesan Recipe : Tyler Florence : Food Network. The recipe calls for 4 chicken breasts, but it makes so much sauce, I made 6, and had plenty of leftovers.

I love this one because it is so much quicker to make and it's practically same as a traditional lasagna. Replace ground beef with turkey beef if you want.

Skillet Lasagna Recipe

I'm going all out tonight! We are having penne pasta in homemade marinara sauce, chickened seasoned and pan fried, salad, cucumber salad, and garlic bread. And for dessert....key lime poke cake (which is AWESOME btw..hubby loves it and it's so easy to make).

I love that recipe Di - and it really is easy and quick!

I really love Thai food, so I chose this recipe. Thai curry is so easy to make and super yummy.

Trick: instead of making your own thai curry paste using lemongrass, etc. you can buy the prepackaged thai curry paste in the store (it's really cheap to buy), then just add the chicken, veggies and coconut milk and voila! Done!

Vegetarian Thai - Vegetarian Thai Curry Recipe

I have no idea what I'm having for dinner tonight, but I would love to share some great recipes with you ladies when I have time to share.

We always try to make a meal a plan for the week, and leave a couple days of wiggle room in case we aren't home on the weekends or if something comes up. Not only does it actually save us a TON of $$$$, but it also rids the the whole "what's for dinner" delemma (we also found that we were throwing away less food b/c we had a plan for it all, thus reducing our waste). I had a really hard time doing this at first but it got a lot easier as time went by and now DH and I actually like to sit down together and plan our meals for the week.

And I know this is horrible, but I always like to keep a couple of Bertolli (sp?) on hand just in case we're late from work, feeling a bit lazy, or if my hubby's out of town as something for me to eat.

Karla I love this thread!! this will be my new fav as i'm ALWAYS trying to think of new dinner ideas.

I'll post better recipes later....but this is one i love and is so easy and it's always in my house...Ground beef all cooked up with a sprinkle of Lawreys seasoning salt. mix a can of condensed mushroom soup with 3/4 can milk with the beef...mix up good and heat...can add onion and celery too.

Cook up rice pasta or potatoes and serve the mush/beef on top of the rice/pasta/pots! yummy and easy to make.

I love the skillet lasagna recipe Di - it looks yummy! I was eyeing it when you posted it the other day, and meant to write it down but then I forgot, lol...so thanks for the reminder. I think I'm going to try it over the weekend!

Great thread Karla!!

We always try to plan out 4 days of meals on Sunday. Otherwise we end up eating out too.

I love the crock pot and try to do 1 slow cooker meal a week. It usually feeds us for 2 nights. Yesterday was roast with potatoes and carrots, so left overs tonight!

And tomorrow will probably be Zatarain's Jumbalaya Mix with kielbasa.

I also cook a lot out of a Weight Watchers 20 min cookbook: Weight Watchers in 20 Minutes: 250 Fresh, Fast Recipes - Weight Watchers International Staff - Paperback (ISBN 9780470287453) - Buy Books, Music and Movies at Borders

Ohhh skillet lasagna. I like the sound of that! At first I was retarded and couldn't figure out what you do with the noodles- but I get it now! They are broken up! LOL

I so need to start cooking again! And I'm totally checking out that WW book! Thanks for the recommendation!