Wednesday, September 26, 2012

A Month of Dinners

I am a Real Simple addict. Have been for yeeears. It's one magazine subscription I've never been able to give up. So this month, one of the features was this fabulousness: a month of dinners, complete with recipes and WEEKLY SHOPPING LISTS.

(I'm typing this up on the sad-excuse-for-a-functional-app Blogger app, which has zero functionality, so bear with the full links as opposed to a hyperlink. My apologies :( )

http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/recipe-collections-favorites/month-of-dinner-recipes/

Color me thrilled!!!!

I've been attempting to meal plan every week but only manage it about 60% of the time. So this was an answer to my prayers! I glanced through the recipes but didn't give it too much thought. There were a couple that I knew would be a gamble but I figured we'd try them anyways.

So Monday we all loaded up and went to Kroger with my ready-made grocery list in hand. Now, I am a two-to-three times per week grocery shopper normally. So the sticker shock of a one-trip shopping bill was not. pretty. But we survived once I figured it was probably less than what I spend hitting up the store several times a week. Happy by-product of this experiment.

Meal one: beef and mushroom ragu with fettuccine. http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/beef-mushroom-ragu-00100000086755/index.html

Score: eight thumbs (hey, there are four of us eating here!) way up!! Deeeeelicious! And Boyo was all about it, so that makes it a win! He talked about it all evening and the next day. Score one for Real Simple and me!!

Meal two: eggplant and tofu stir fry.
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/eggplant-tofu-stir-fry-00100000086757/index.html

Score: eight thumbs down. Umm, not our cup of tea. We ordered a pizza. :/

Meal three: roasted chicken with collards
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/roasted-chicken-collards-00100000086759/index.html

Score: five thumbs up. A draw. Chicken was yummy, same with the tomatoes and even the onions. The collards, well, as far as sautéed greens go, these were the best I've ever made. That being said, we still didn't really like them.

That's as far as we've gotten in this experiment but I'm excited to continue. It's nice not having the stress of "what the heck are we having for dinner tonight????" hanging over my head every evening, that's for sure! We'll see where we land by the end of the month, but hopefully we'll find several more recipes we're all about. If not, I'm afraid there will be a lot more pizza and Chipotle in my future....

Stay tuned...

(Photos courtesy of Realsimple.com)

1 comment:

  1. Wow, that isn't even the right picture order....way to go, Blogger app...

    ReplyDelete