12 Weeks of Our Favorite Family Dinners

Several blogs I have looked at lately (and you all know which ones they are LOL) have been posting 8 weeks worth of dinner menues. So here is mine and it is a 12 week rotation. Many of the meal plans I have looked at assign a different type of main course for each day such as beef, chicken, fish or veg. Mine is organized a bit differently. For instance, for Sunday dinner I like to have a big roast or pasta meal usually so I can have leftovers to use for other meals. Monday is usually crock pot day but not always. Tuesdays are usually kid pleasing or fairly easy meals to throw together. I try to have no more than 3 red meat meals a week (You'll will notice that some weeks have 4 red meat meals but then are usually followed by a 2 red meat meal week- It averages out to 3 per week. It probably should be less but my family likes red meat and I just don't have a big enough repetoire of meatless meals. To reduce the red meat meals you could substitute vegetable meat substitute crumbles such as Boca or Morningstar farms, or use ground turkey in place of any ground beef recipes. Saturday I like to grill or cook outside if possible so most Saturday meals can be prepared outside on the grill. Friday is for fish or mostly vegetarian meals. I say mostly vegetarian because most of my vegetarian meals are not 100% vegetarian. I try not to have a pasta meal next to a rice meal, and I try not to have any same kind of meat 2 days in a row. I use to do a pizza night once a week, but have cut that back to every other week. Darling son gets plenty of pizza through school lunch, scouts and youth group to give him his weekly fix of pizza.

This is just a master rotation list. I do not stick to this, I just use it as a guide. As you can see this master list doesn't take into account nights when we eat out or have leftovers piled up or holiday meals. It is just used as a jumping off point. Also, I have not included all the vegetable and side dishes that I usually serve with the main dish.

This is just a chart of the main dishes. Yes I do serve vegetables and or salad with most meals unless it is a casserole or one pot dish that has the vegetables included.

Most of the Main Dish Recipes Can be Found in

My Online Recipe Collection

Click the chart to enlarge it.