half dozen cuties

Mega Menu Mailer

One of my least favorite household chores is making dinner. It's not that I don't like to cook, it's that I don't like to cook with three toddlers hanging on my leg and three big kids trying to talk to me, ask for help with homework and various other requests.

Even when I didn't have a bunch of kids this was still the dreaded task of my domestic life. Back in the day my friend Betsy and I started a frozen casserole group. There were three of us in the group. Each month we got together, made a menu and each took turns doing the shopping. We took turns hosting our casserole group and always left with several frozen casseroles. We were so innovative that we were even asked to do a homemaking meeting all about our ingenious idea. I am sure that the more mature members of the ward realized that freezer casseroles are disgusting but we thought we were pretty smart mamas. After a few months we (actually, I think it was our husbands) realized that chicken lasagna and chopstick casserole are NASTY and the group came to an abrupt halt and we returned to our staples of grilled cheese sandwiches and Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner.

Then I discovered, through flylady, savingdinner.com: http://www.savingdinner.com/. This site features a program called menu mailer. Basically you subscribe to the service and every week you get a complete menu with a shopping list. This worked off and on for me but I still had the dilemna of how to find the time to fix dinner without losing my mind.

The website recently developed what they call Mega Menu mailer. This is a month's worth of meals prepared in one day. It is so awesome and has truly changed my life. She gives you a shopping list and instructions on how to prepare 20 meals in one sitting. It is a lot of work but worth it for all the time it saves me. Plus my family is so happy when we have a good homecooked meal on the table and we are able to eat together. This has totally improved our scripture study too since we read after dinner, which is hard to do when we are standing around the counter eating pizza.