5 No Brainer Dinner Ideas or Prompts

I used to tout myself as being a grandiose meal planner. Grocery shopper. Childhood feeding extraordinaire. Today I’m sort of flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to feeding my family. Yes, I still consider what a well-balanced diet or meal should look like when I plate breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And yes, I do some produce prep once or twice a week to make sure we get some extra goodness in our diets. But I’ve fallen off the meal planning wagon this year. And for some reason the 4^th week of school has me thinking it’s a good time to start again!

Honestly, the real reason I want to add some new items into our weekly rotation of pasta and pizza is because I’m sick of cleaning [or vacuuming] parmesan cheese off the couch, carpet, Michael’s sheets, you name it. I also am feeling inspired by the air fryer I’ve been using about once a week. I haven’t quite mastered or even thought about pasta in an air fryer. Sorry, Michael!

He might be cute, but he’s really messy. If you think that parmesan cheese stayed on the table, you’re wrong!

There’s really no science to meal planning other than taking the time to do it. Some of my favorite meal planning resources on M2MN include:

Mix n’ Match Meal Planning

15 Themed Dinner Ideas

10 Cook Once and Eat Twice Ground Beef Recipes

5 Weeks of Real Dinner Menus

Lately I’ve been using a dinner prompt or idea to help me set my menu for the week. That along with one really organized calendar. Because let’s face it. If it’s a night when everyone has an activity, we might just be eating pizza [delivery] again.

Or heck, we might just have ice cream for dinner!

A prompt is just meant to help spark that dinner idea. So when I think bowls, I might think about a protein, whole grain, and veggie everyone will eat. I’ll definitely have it served in a bowl, but someone else might want it plated. And then there’s sheet pan. A sheet pan sausage meal never goes uneaten here. Only the veggies are picked at, while most enjoy kielbasa or Italian sausage.Bowls