Hello to all! Today I wanted to answer a great question I received by email from a newbie menu planner. She asked if I’ve ever encountered a case of a wife who can’t cook and whether or not I have any helpful recipes/sites that I could recommend.

I absolutely love this question because I am that wife who can’t cook!! Seriously when I worked in the corporate world up to three years ago it was my hubbie that did all the cooking. When I came home to be a SAHM I really struggled with taking on the cooking duties. The one thing that saved my hiney was menu planning. Menu planning allowed me to assign recipes to each meal because without a recipe I’m doomed. To this day I rarely make anything from scratch without a recipe. I just don’t have that kind of confidence in myself. By spending some time with my Taste of Home magazines or their website I could select recipes that were simple and required few ingredients. I’ve had great success with the whole line of Taste of Home publications, they are without fail my go to books. In fact I’ve almost gotten rid of all of my other cookbooks as a result. The pictures in their magazines and on their website are something else and I like knowing what a recipe is suppose to look like :) Unfortunately they have just recently changed their website and it’s not as user friendly as it once was which bothers me. I’ve emailed the company letting them know my concerns but so far I’ve not heard back from them.

The other thing I might suggest is signing up with a menu planning service for the first little while until you get the hang of it. Taste of Home actually has a free one you can sign up for here and each week they’ll send you an email with a menu and recipes for the week. Here is a sample one to check out.

I’ve also compiled a list of other menu planning resources which you may find helpful as well.

So my fellow menu planners, now it’s your turn. Can you help out a mom who can’t cook by telling us the one tip/recipe/resource that you can’t live without for basic simple cooking.

Okay so moving on now I want to tell you that if you are looking for a great pizza variation you must try the Chicken Pesto Pizza. It was sooooo good, really delicious and just a nice change of pace. I used my own pizza dough recipe in the bread machine and added feta cheese as well which was a really nice touch. Yum, yum. Gosh I wish there were more leftovers.

So this week we are having:

Monday: Fuss Free Ravioli and Cheese Bake – my daughter is going to start cooking one night a week

Tuesday: Barbecued Burgers served with caesar salad

Wednesday: 5 Minute Southwest Layered Salad

Thursday: Honey Mustard Chicken Pasta

Friday: Leftover Buffet

Saturday: Steak and Vegetable Kabobs served with Ranch Potato Salad

For all of you who asked me about my price book, I’ll post later this week about it.

WHAT’S ON YOUR MENU?

Menu Plan Monday guidelines and banners here.

Tagged as: Menu Plan Monday