Simplified!!

I love to cook. I also hate to cook. It's such a stressful thing to decide what to do for dinner each night. It's a pain to make a grocery list of things you'll need for the meals for a week or two. Then what happens if you have a menu made up and you don't feel like making that meal? I always dreaded dinnertime. Then I discovered two things that have simplified my life

First one.
I love this cookbook:
It has 30 weeks worth of meal ideas and most of the meals are easy to put together and they taste good. Before I started swapping meals I went through almost the entire book. I didn't try all of the sides but I loved the main course and dessert recipes. We've found quite a few new favorites that we cook often. I was given this cookbook by my Mother-in-law and it's been one of my favorite gifts! I ordered a few online for Christmas gifts 2 years ago and those that got the cookbook have loved the recipes in it also.

Here's a layout of the start of each week. It give you meal ideas for each day except Fridays (that's date night!!) and then it gives the recipes for each of the days. The book is only $16- I think. Worth every penny!!

2nd one.

I love to cook. It's fun to experiment with new things and it's more fun to share my fun meals/snacks with others. When I had the chance to start a meal swap with some gals back in Kuna I was so excited. I knew I would end up with some great new meals. I would also get my fix of cooking in and then have the rest of the week to enjoy my family. I started a meal swap with girls here now and it's going so good. The gals are wonderful cooks and they have some wondeful meals that we have added to our favorites.

Here's what we do. There are 4 of us in the group. We each have a night to cook. I cook on Mondays. We got together and planned out our meals for 1-2 months. On our day to cook, we plan on making 4 dinners. We provide the main course and a side. It can be a salad, bread, fruit, veggies or dessert. We have to have the meals ready to eat and delivered by a certain time each night. If they need to cook the dinner, we deliver the meal early enough for them to cook it. It's been good for my kids to experience other people's way of eating. It's preparing them for a mission or a spouse that eats differently than we do.

Don't get me wrong. It's work. But it's only work for 1 day a week. I don't have to stress over what to make 3 other nights of the week. I don't spend hours in the kitchen each day preparing meals that take less than 10 minutes to eat. We eat healthy meals and not just breakfast foods 3 or 4 times a week (not that there's anything wrong with breakfast foods!). My family loves it. I love it more though.

One week I couldn't decide on a side and I thought that deviled eggs sounded good to me. I got busy on them and after getting the yoke out of all the eggs I started to laugh. How many times do you see that many eggs on your counter? My counters are covered with food on my cooking days and it's so fun to see.

Last week I did up pizza and I actually remembered to take a picture. The tricky part with this meal was getting it delivered. I had all the kids go with me and they each held at least 1 pizza.

This has been such a great thing for me. It has simplified my life so I can have more time with my kids and not have the stress of what to make for my family and keep it healthy. It's also helped with my grocery budget. I only spend money on about 3 meals a week. The rest of it is leftovers over the weekend (I also will prepare one extra meal sometimes when it's my day to cook and put it in the freezer so I have a meal to eat a month or so later for a weekend meal.)

Now I enjoy cooking even more because it's not a daily thing in my house. It's also funny how much better food tastes when you didn't cook it. Life is good at our house!!!