Motivated

I am not a great cook.  I'm not even that good of a good cook.  For Father's Day my mom got my husband a drink coozie that says, "My wife's a better cook since she found out the smoke alarm isn't a timer."  I'm serious.  And so was she.

I am well known for my kitchen mishaps.  I've shattered a pot lid cooking spaghetti sauce.  I've burned a pot beyond saving while steaming veggies (I got distracted and it ran out of water...easy to do, right?  Just me?).  And best of all, I set a pan on fire.  I was heating butter.  Enough said.  In my defense though, that last one was when I was sleep deprived right after my son was born, and my husband was gone so I was getting like NO sleep.  (On the bright side I learned how to use a fire extinguisher.)  So, in my bio, where I say "I often try and fail at being domestic," this is kind of what I'm talking about.)

Anyways, we recently moved, and we're on a really tight budget being on a soldiers salary, so I have become super motivated to cook every night.  Well, at least 6 nights a week.  I got this great idea to plan a menu for the week, do ONE shopping trip for everything to make those meals, then we would pick something off the list to make for dinner.  I know this sounds like a totally normal thing that people probably ALREADY do, but we didn't.  We just figured it out that night and would have to run to the store, or try to figure out what we can make out of our pantry and fridge contents.  We also have a problem being incredibly indecisive, so this helps a lot with that.  If it's not planned out, our evenings usually go like this:
Hubby comes home from work at 530.  We sit and play with baby.
Hubby:  What should we do for dinner?
Me:  I don't know, what do you want to do?
Hubby:  I don't know...
Repeat every 30 minutes, until finally around 8 or 9 we end up just getting fast food.

It's very frustrating.  And we end up very hungry and cranky.


So, I compiled a list of the meals that we already make, scoured the interwebz for recipes (feel free to leave recipes or links to recipes in comments, we need more options!), and every weekend we make a menu from the list of meals, go grocery shopping, and every night we pick something off the list to make.  It's wonderful.  I feel like I'm one step closer to a better housewife.