I hate that question so much! Honestly, I only have about 4 dishes I’m good at and the kids don’t want to eat the same 4 things rotated over and over. So, PLEASE, give me some ideas of whats for dinner at your house? What are your favorites? What are you making tonight? Whats the best thing to make lots of a freeze?
Whats the best food to help a kid at 1600 on the SATs? (Ok, just kidding)
My wife and I are rarely ever at home until well past dinner time, so my kid has no issues revolving around 6 things (helps to have a car): 1) Chipotle beef burrito 3) Subway oven roasted chicken sandwich 3) In And Out Double Cheeseburger with only meat cheese and lettuce 4) rock cod with vegetables over rice at one of the local Hong Kong style restaurants in the area. 5) spaghetti and meatballs frozen dinner 6) spicy chicken fettuccini with broccoli frozen dinner. For snacks or late night he either makes a grill cheese sandwich on his own or ramen. He doesn’t vary much amongst these things.
OP, what are your 4 things you rotate? Maybe you can put a twist on each to make 8 things to rotate.
Or another method to create more dishes…
Pick a few products you really like - then come up with various dishes to use that product.
For instance, if you have a marinara you really like, it can become:
Spaghetti and meatballs
Penne with fresh mozzarella and basil
Chicken parmesean
Pizza sauce for homemade pizzas on french bread or store bought crusts
Meatball or sausage hoagies
Lightly breaded chicken strips can become:
Chicken parm
Topped on a chopped salad
Cut up baked chicken and put in a tortilla with shredded cheese, greens and salsa
Chicken nachos
See how that works?? 
We are in such a rut too. Part of the problem is DD’19 is super picky. BUT, last night, even though she wasn’t around, I fixed chicken nuggets and ramen for supper :)) We eat pretty simple.
My favorites are meatballs, baked potatoes, beef stew, chili, chicken & noodles over mashed potatoes, grilled hamburgers, homemade breaded chicken breasts, grilled pork chops, BBQ boneless ribs in the crockpot, roast beef, spaghetti, beef stir fry, and tacos!
Rut Dweller here, too.
When my last child went to college, I thought I would die. Turns out that I not only survived, but learned to love eating more casually and simply with my husband. Now that the boy is home for the summer, meals are much more complicated and fraught because he is not only ridiculously picky, but he stays up until the wee hours and eats absolutely everything he can get his hands on.
Last week my husband made two meat loaves, one for the night and one as leftovers. well, after we went to bed, my son ate the entire other meatloaf. Leaving me stuck to figure out dinner for his picky self at the last minute.
I look forward to seeing what other people cook.
Steak, lamb chops, tri tip, tacos, pasta with chicken and veggies, two different salads. Wow. Hadn’t really thought about it but we really do have one of those just about every night we’re home. Is it considered a rut if these meals make us pretty happy?! Once in a blue moon, dh will make pork (which I don’t tend to eat) or I’ll make salmon (which dh doesn’t eat).
For ease, I really recommend the seasoned tri tip from Costco. So quick and easy and it’s delicious.
If he eats everything in sight, how is he picky?
One of my kids only eats fruit. She’s going through about 5 packages of strawberries every 3-4 days. She doesn’t eat bananas. She doesn’t eat meat (unless she does).
Other kid eats tamales. By the dozen.
When he’s home, we buy all of the things he likes, and which we don’t buy when he isn’t home.
I love having DS home for the summer, but hate the cooking meals again. He’s working a FT job andbcomes home tired and starved. Since I’m only working PT, I don’t mind proving meals, I just hate the planning of them.
So, we’ve had meatloaf and Bob Evans mashed potatoes, chicken tacos with Mexican rice, spaghetti with meat sauce and salad, chicken casserole that has lots of easy ingredients but takes a bit to pull together. I make a lot of that and it lasts days.
Jambalaya, chicken thighs with my own special seasoning. Serve with asparagus or broccoli and 5 minute browned rice. Pasta salad with tons of stuff in it.
I like to cook, but I do always cook for at least two nights so that I can make more time consuming dishes. I LOVE the Ottolenghi cookbooks (Plenty, Plenty More and Jerusalem). Mostly middle-eastern, though less so for Plenty More. The two Plenty books are vegetarian.
Things I cook a lot:
Roast chicken - Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook recipe is great
Boned lamb (marinate in olive oil, lemon and fresh rosemary) and cook it on the grill
Steak (usually on grill, but in the winter more often inside - after cooking I put some red wine and shallots in the pan to make a bit of a sauce. It’s also good topped with mushrooms)
Pork chops - saute then cook in apple juice or cider or I pick one of the 60 Minute Gourmet pork chop recipes
Indian dinner - I have tons of books, but if I’m feeling lazy I open a jar of Korma sauce and stick in some vegetables and cut up meat
Stir Fry - great way to use up stuff in the fridge
Pork loin make a hole down the center and stuff it with prunes and/or apricots with some cinnamon and ginger
Chicken and apricots from Mark Bittman’s Best Recipes book
Meat loaf - I love meatloaf!
Tonight I’m eating a leftover Korean dish - you make crepelike pancakes and stuff them with mushrooms, omelette, beef, zucchini, carrot, shitake mushrooms, radish and scallions that have all bit cut into tiny pieces and cooked separately. You can put everything or just some things in the pancake. There’s a dipping sauce of soy sauce, vinegar and toasted sesame seeds.
I don’t think so! I would be happy eating the exact same thing every day. But my kids get cranky about it. Also, they are all picky in different ways.
@conmama I’d love the chicken casserole recipe. Any chance you could PM me?
Also, what is a tri tip?
Thanks everyone!
Homemade pizza can be fun: you buy the unbaked dough, pizza sauce or pesto, then throw all kinds of veggies and cheese on top. Almost anything can be pizzafied. Besides the standards, my family’s favorite is carmelized onion, chicken, pear with a sharp cheese of some sort.
You could plan a couple meals around a roast chicken - get that at Costco or your local market. Eat that on Sunday night, then shred the left overs into a soup on Tuesday and a pasta dish on Thursday. (Spreading out the left overs through the week, that’s the idea here.)
Or get some good quality sausage. Sunday night in a bun with roasted peppers, Tuesday night on a pizza, Thursday night mixed with veggies and store-bought gnocchi.
When I get in a rut, I check out cook books from the library. My recent discoveries are cookbooks by a British restaurant owner Yotam Ottolenghi. He has several books, (Jerusalem, Plenty, Plenty More) all of them highly creative, mostly vegetable-oriented recipes that have really jazzed up our dinners.
I’m sure I could recommend some quick meals but without knowing specifics about what your family will/won’t eat, it makes it tough to do so.
"But my kids get cranky about it. "
Since summer is around the corner, my suggestion to assign each of your kids a night to cook per week. Have them pick a recipe and either buy the ingredients at the store if they can drive or give you their grocery list ahead of time. It will teach them to cook, meal plan, etc. which are good life skills to have and will also make them more grateful when others do the cooking for them. It doesn’t have to be complicated stuff. It could be chicken on the grill and potato salad, pesto pasta, whatever. Both my kids are wonderful cooks and do quite complicated stuff now but they didn’t start out that way.
As a single parent, all the burden shouldn’t fall on you every night. Even younger kids can whip up a simple meal.
Pinterest is a good place to browse for meal ideas. We used to get cookbooks from the library and some of our favorite meals in our family repertoire have come from recipes the kids found in those cookbooks and decided to try.
Sweet potatoes with sloppy joe mix (with a lot of veggies in it) over the top & Caesar salad.
Next week is a sheet pan chicken dish I like. I use grape tomatoes, not cherry:
I also like this sheet pan recipe: https://gimmedelicious.com/2017/03/05/sheet-pan-greek-chicken-veggies-pita-pockets/ Mine isn’t as pretty, I just jumble the veggies together, and use the veggies I like best.
Yes, sheetpan dinners are great. British chefs Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver have a lot of recipes for them. The British call them traybakes.
Here’s a Nigella recipe we make a few times per year. Very easy and flavorful.
https://www.nigella.com/recipes/spanish-chicken-with-chorizo-and-potatoes
@gallentjill …done!
@doschicos …yum, I’m doing that recipe one night! Chorizo!
I’m making coq au vin tonight, but really my version is more like a chicken stew. It’s a very simple one-pot dish with leftovers that get better the next day.
Buy your favorite chicken - I use legs and thighs. I usually brown the chicken first, but for the lazy man’s version just throw everything in the pot at the same time - it’s just as good. So throw in a whole bottle of red wine (I use a cab), a few chopped carrots. Onion and garlic to taste, salt and pepper to taste (I use two de-seeded chopped jalapeños). I also use fresh thyme to taste, or you can use dried. Oh and “Better than Buillion” chicken stock - that’s the concentrated stuff, not chicken broth (broth will extend your cooking time too much).
Bring the whole thing to a boil then reduce to a fast simmer; go do something else meanwhile then start taste-testing around the 50-60 minute mark once about 70% of the wine has cooked off. Should be perfect once the sauce has reduced to about 80-90% (about 90 mins), almost a glaze.
Fantastic over fresh rice or a baked potato!
How about rotating in some breakfast items for dinner, to shake things up? Everyone loves breakfast, don’t they?
I’ll make 2 pork tenderloins. Roasted with olive oil, salt/pepper/oregano. Last 10 minutes I’ll drizzles balsamic vinegar over a slit on the top. With roasted potatoes and carrots. The leftovers become a pork fried rice dish another night.
Pork Loin in the crock pot with pork or beef broth. Shredded over pappardelle pasta with the broth, Parmesan cheese and either arugula or spinach. The second meal is on a hoagie roll with provolone cheese and either spinach or broccoli rabe.
3 lbs of ground turkey breast with chopped onions and then frozen in 1lb ziplock bags. They become bolognese sauce, tacos or chili.
Chicken thighs in the insta pot with a bit of water/salt/pepper. Shredded and put in whole wheat tortillas. I’ll use the leftover broth it makes and cook up some rice. Then cheese, corn, fried onions. The leftovers will become something else the second meal.