30 Dinner Ideas When Meal Planning is Hard ~ Tammy Skipper

Many of us have experienced a new set of challenges in grocery shopping and meal planning over the last two months. Early this year, we were working full time outside the home and enjoying the Empty Nest life. Seemingly overnight, we both began working full time at home and our youngest child returned home to finish college online. Our meal plan and strategy changed just as quickly – and it wasn’t a smooth transition! Dinner ideas felt like the hardest part.

For decades I routinely

Planned meals weeks or a month at a time
Shopped and prepped for bulk cooking
Doubled meals for the freezer
Ate leftovers for lunch

Those habits got a hard reboot in March, and it was honestly overwhelming at first.

The mental load of figuring out what groceries we had, what I could get at the store, making meals and maximizing leftovers was exhausting.

So, I started where I do anytime I don’t know where to start: a list.

I started tracking what we had for dinner each day in my planner. We didn’t always have a plan and it wasn’t always healthy, but I tracked every single day for 8 weeks.

The result is a list of meal ideas we can pull from and continue tweaking to improve the healthiness of by incorporating better ingredients.