How “theme” night meals can simplify dinner time

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Weekly “Theme” Nights Can Simplify Dinner Time

(And get your family back to the dinner table)

As the school year has picked up and demands have increased in our weekly schedule, family dinner seems like an impossible task. Not only is it harder and harder to gather everyone around the table for dinner but it gets harder and harder to plan, prepare and execute healthy home cooked meals every evening. I am the first to admit that this doesn’t always happen, however in our family we have started having nightly “themed” meals which eliminates the guess work, speeds up the planning process and over all makes meal prep much quicker.

Our nightly themed dinners may look something like this:

Monday: Fusion Night

Tuesday: Taco Night

Wednesday: Italian Night

Thursday: Breakfast Night

Friday: Pizza Night

Saturday: Grill Night

Sunday: Brunch

On Mondays I liked to do Asian meatballs, tiny spicy chicken, Korean beef, or beef and broccoli. I may even throw in Butter Curry chicken, or chicken Schwarma. It’s flexible but has some guidelines to help make dinner on Monday a snap.

Tuesday dinners are ALWAYS taco Tuesdays. We mix it up with Lime chicken, or Fish. Sometimes we get fancy with shrimp, and we can always rely on original ground beef.

Taco Tuesday : Simple Meal Planning : Coastal Bend Mom

Wednesdays are easy. Spaghetti is our go to, but I also love to throw in Chicken and Broccoli alfredo, or risotto. And I even mix it up and do zoodles when I am feeling creative.

Past Night : Coastal Bend Mom

Thursdays are my kids’ favorite. They would eat pancakes every night of the week, so knowing that we will have breakfast for dinner makes them excited and they look forward to it. We usually end up doing pancakes, but we also love Crepes, muffins, German pancakes or even breakfast sandwiches.

Breakfast for Dinner : Coastal Bend Mom

Friday is a long standing family tradition. Pizza night sometimes mean homemade, it sometimes means take and bake, or frozen. Sometimes we have a coupon to somewhere fancy, but most often we love 5$ hot and ready Little Caesars.

Pizza Night : Coastal Bend Mom

We love grilling season, but because weeknights are so rushed we often don’t have time to grill on a week night. So Saturday’s are the perfect solution! And my husband loves to take this one over, and will often plan all week what he is going to grill for us.

I don’t know about you but when we get home from church on Sundays my family is always famished! So we look forward to brunch and my kids love it! They talk about it all week and they think it is just the BEST.

Over the years I have heard of other people who love to do theme nights and I enjoy seeing how they mix it up. If you need any more inspiration for your theme nights I love the Food Nanny!