06/22/2024
What’s on your menu for this week?
This board is dry erase. The names of the days are written in permanent marker, so it’s easy to wipe and rewrite for the next week. The kids get to pick a dinner and make it. This week, it’s my son’s birthday Friday, so we left it open for him to choose his birthday dinner (he will probably want to go out to eat. In the South Bay, Pura Vita, Green Temple, and the Grain Cafe are some of his favorite restaurants).
We have been crafting weekly dinner menus for over a decade! It helps us be prepared for the week and avoid last-minute stressful food decisions. We also have “backup” meals: bean tacos, pasta with red sauce, frozen soups from prior weeks.
From this menu, we make a shopping list and then we have everything we need to eat for the week ahead.
Kid lunches are “standardized” (subject to change when it stars coming home uneaten). My 12-year-old son gets a peanut butter and banana sandwich and my 5-year-old daughter has a 2-3 tortillas with nutritional yeast “tacos.”
Weekday breakfast is also standardized: oatmeal with fruit or smoothie. Sometimes overnight oats (depending on how prepared we were the night before).
What tricks do you use to make it easier to make good food choices?
Do you plan a weekly menu?
