Recipe Jar: Solving the What’s for Dinner dilemma

I’m a big fan of time well spent. I don’t like to waste time deciding what we’re going to eat for dinner each night or spend my time making numerous trips to the grocery store each week, I save a tremendous amount of time by simply menu-planning each week.  Some weeks are simple, I sit down and write out a quick meal-plan, take it the grocery store, and I’m back home in no time. But (you knew there was a but coming) lately, I’ve been in this meal-planning and cooking rut. I feel like we eat the same things over and over. I waste time scouring the Internet, I forget about some of my favorites, and my husband is usually asking for anything but chicken by the end of the week.

I made a list of our favorite recipes and created this fun  Recipe Jar to help answer the infamous, What’s for dinner? question each week. I think my weekly meal planning just got a whole lot easier. Now, I’ll be able to sit down and plan out our meals without falling into my familiar pattern of scouring Pinterest or leaving out recipes we really love.

I color-coded the sticks. One of my problems is always cooking dishes with chicken. I’m not sure why, it just always seems to be my meat of choice. Now I can easily pull some of our favorite dishes that feature other proteins to add a little variety, and I know just where they are based on the color.

Here’s a look at the favorites I included:

Green sticks have favorite Soups:

• Chicken Enchilada Soup
• Beefy Nacho Soup
• Taco Soup (great to freeze)
• White Bean Chicken Chili
• Chicken and Corn Chowder
• Loaded Potato Soup
• Chili (I don’t have a specific recipe, it always turns out different. I use some type of chili seasoning packet, a whole can of my grandmothers canned-tomatoes, black beans, red beans and ground turkey)

Black sticks feature our favorite poultry recipes:

• Cheese and Chicken Shells
• Buffalo Chicken Grilled Cheese
• Turkey Burgers (just a grilled turkey burger and a side of baked sweet potato wedges)
• Honey Sesame Chicken
• Jalepeno Popper Chicken
• Southwestern Egg Rolls (great to freeze)
• Chicken Parmesan Mini’s
• White Chicken Enchiladas (great to freeze)
• Prosciutto Chicken Bundles

Gray sticks are recipes that feature beef as the main ingredient

• Pioneer Woman’s Lasagna 
• Beef Stroganoff (I need to post the actual recipe I use, but this is close, I leave out the mushrooms)
• Bow Tie Fiesta 
• Spaghetti (double the sauce when you make PW’s lasagna and freeze half for spaghetti night)
• Slow Cooker Barbocoa Beef
• Mini-Lasagna Cups
• Slow Cooker Roast and Veggies (just a packet of seasoning, carrots, new potatoes, celery, and a little onion, in the crock-pot all day)

Cream colored sticks feature pork as the main ingredient:

• Verde Pork Enchiladas (great to freeze)
• Pork Carnitas
• Cuban Style Pork
• BBQ Sliders
• BLT’s (you know this classic, if you really want to spice it up sub your sliced tomato for a fried green tomato)
• Fiesta-Stuffed Baked Potato
• Spinach, Bacon and Pesto Pizza

Purple sticks feature some of my most overlooked favorite recipes, we love shrimp and white fish (as long as it’s very mild), but I don’t ever think to add it to our menu. Here are our favorites:

• Cajun Shrimp Pasta (great to freeze)
• Blackened Fish (I buy Old Bay blackening seasoning and bake in the oven inside foil packets)
• Shrimp Fried Rice (I leave out the red pepper)
• Garlic and Lemon Shrimp
• Crab Cakes
• New Orleans Style Shrimp
• Shrimp and Wild Rice Casserole
• Shrimp and Grits

I still want to try new recipes and if we fall in love, add them to our jar. I used the shelf above my cookbooks to give the Recipe Jar and the extra sticks a home. Now, when I cook a new recipe that we love, I can add it to our jar.