How I organize Recipes- Part II-Meal Rotations & Dinner Games

Meal Rotation List

I have a list. It hangs in my pantry. The list contains the most popular meals I prepare. These are 'tried and true', they've been cooked many many times. They don't fail me, and when I make them, my family knows exactly what to expect. I have prepared the list in two different forms. Alphabetical & Categorical. The list has many purposes. It serves to me as a reminder of things I cook that my family loves. I have approximately 70 recipes on that list, and it's always growing, so of course I forget sometimes what I know how to make! Or I may just me in a cooking rut. With 70 recipes I can go two months and not cook the same thing twice. Sometimes for the life of me I just can't think of what to make for dinner! Do you ever have that happen? Well, this helps.

The List can be found here.

Also, when I plan my meals out for the week,  I stress the when, I like to let the kids look at the list and pick out something for that week too. It lets them feel involved. Separately, I'd like to mention that sometimes at dinner we play games. One of their favorite DINNER GAMES is "The Ingredient Game." Pretty self explanatory. They take turns picking out ingredients that are in the prepared meal. {If I still have ingredients on the counter I will catch them peeking.} They name everything down to the spices. We also play the "Alphabet Game." Basically, you pick a category. Vegetables, singers, historical figures, animals, countries, cities, etc. The first person starts with 'A'. The have to pick an animal that starts with A, like Antelope. The next person gets B, and would say Baboon, and so on and so forth. Obviously Q, U, X, and V are difficult. But, you'll figure it out. That's what Google's for!

I always buy Costco’s frozen fish and chicken. It’s boneless, skinless, and easy to store and prepare. I use a lot of recipes from friends and family. My favorite recipe website is AllRecipes.com and my favorite cookbooks are from the Saving Dinner Series by: Leanne Ely as shown in the photo above.

I love my Crockpot and wish I had more recipes for it, especially chicken crockpot recipes. I also love my rice cooker. I keep all recipes stored in one place. Recipes that are printed get put into one of several binders as shown in the previous post.

One note on my storage system: The magazine storage boxes really store those little recipe booklets, not full size magazines. They are the smaller in size, mostly Pillsbury and Pampered Chef, and the like. Recipes I do get from magazines, get cut out and stored in page protecters in the back of the binders. Also, I have an entire list of salad combinations that are stored in the binder as well.

How do decide what to cook each week?