What's for dinner?

Sigh. 

Anyone who has been a couple for more than five minutes knows, has said and regrets hearing this question.  I will never understand why it's so difficult for two people to agree on one thing to have for dinner.  I mean, everyone knows what foods they like and what foods they don't like.  Are we afraid that people are going to judge us if we say that we want steak versus Italian food?  Have we developed some sort of amnesia and are now incapable of describing the food that we are hungry for?  Perhaps it's because we want something weird like donuts for dinner or something like that. 

My husband and I literally have this discussion every single night unless there is a meal plan in place in our house.  If we plan out seven meals for the week and allow ourselves to pick from those meals then it doesn't seem near as stressful.  We know what we are having already.  Most of the time the prep work is done on the longer to cook meals.  The most that you normally have to worry about is what vegetable we are going to cook with which dinner. 

It's literally so easy to meal plan... why don't we do it more often?  There are like a million and one people online willing to tell you how to meal plan but you could just use common sense and plan out five-seven meals that you will eat at home.  Plus we save money on grocery shopping when we meal plan because we know what we are buying ahead of time and don't tend to impulse buy.  I don't know about you, but if Corry and I haven't planned groceries and meals for the week before shopping then we end up buying food items for more than 7 meals for some reason, plus we buy more breakfast, lunch and snack items than we need. 

With that being said, this upcoming week, I am back on the meal planning bandwagon.  With my new shift at work, I am home from work every night before dinner gets started so that gives me the option to cook something every night.  I was relying on Corry to cook those three nights that I wasn't home before dinner needed to get started.  Let me say that Corry is a good cook, but trying to cook dinner often doesn't turn out as expected with two rowdy children under two and a half who are often times acting like crazy lunatics and are trying to crawl into the oven. 

Let me say that Corry and I normally make out a list of seven items that we would like to eat and then just choose the meal for the day from that list instead of going in order.  This week we really only need to plan four meals because we are going camping Friday night. 

1. Spaghetti, garlic bread and toasted ravioli
2. Taco Pasta Bake - I have a recipe post here for this on this blog from January.
3. Chicken Cordon Bleu, veggie and pasta side dish
4. Pulled pork sandwiches and tator tots

Meal plan complete.  Next step - tackling the grocery store on the weekends.  I will advise if I survive. 

-Sara

My mouth is on fire!

My husband had to work late tonight for his job and I get home later than most Americans, I think, from work which stinks especially considering that I leave my house in the mornings around 5:30am.   Because of this we decided that Chicken Express was going to make an appearance for dinner. Bad, I know, but still so good.  I must confess -  I am super excited (sarcastically) about cooking when I get home from an 11 hour workday and a 1.5hour commute each way.  Pretty much the only thing I am excited about after work is seeing my family, vegging out on the sofa and convincing my husband that I am not going to fall asleep watching television.  We have been together since 2007 and I would say that on average I fall asleep watching television at night at least 3-4 nights a week... for some reason he doesn't just leave me there.  I'm not going to lie that if I had to gripe to someone to get off the sofa and go to bed everyday for 5+ years, that I would be sleeping alone and they would be on the sofa!!

 

For all those who aren't swooning right now about our dinner, or those who live under a rock and are unfamiliar, Chicken Express is a fast food chicken place with awesome sweet tea (unsweet now for us), chicken and sides.  Up until today I had a love/hate relationship with their chicken tenders, okra, yeast rolls, and jalapeno poppers.  Now it's more of a straight-up hatred.  They have changed their recipe or started using only the seeds in their poppers or something.  Normally you got one really hot one in a batch and the rest just have the awesome flavor of cheddar cheese and jalapenos without the insane heat.  That was refreshing because you could get the heat but still taste the rest of your dinner.  The last time we ate there all four of them were BURNING hot.  I do not appreciate spicy foods to begin with, and especially not hot enough food where I feel like smoke is coming out of my mouth.  I like the taste of jalapenos and I like to cook with jalapenos but that's where I draw the line.  I don't need to cry while eating my food and I don't need to have my tongue burned off in order to feel like I had an awesome eating experience. 

Now, after five of them, I think that my tongue has been singed and is potentially going to crumble to ash in about five minutes.  Not a good feeling.  Now that we know this little piece of information, will we continue to order them?  In all honesty, yes, because they are awesome.  If I could figure out how to make these at home, we wouldn't eat there nearly as often and I would still have some feeling in my tongue. 

-Sara