The Ultimate List Of Meals For Dinner You Need Tonight

Last year I really dropped the ball with making dinner, and we relied on takeout a few too many times. This month, I’m making an extra effort to get my dinner-making under control.

One of the problems I was having was that I never had a PLAN, and ended up staring into my void of a fridge once dinnertime came around……And then I ordered takeout.

So, I put together this ultimate (and easy) list of meals for dinner. Having this list on hand to scroll for dinner ideas is a TON easier than starting from scratch, trying to pull dinner recipes from your brain….and fridge.

Quick Tips To Make Dinnertime Easy

Make Meal Planning and Meal Prepping a Part of Your Week

Since we don’t really have the luxury of quickly popping into the market for things anymore, making sure there is food in the house is more important than ever.

So, we have to be more intentional each time we go to the grocery store. That’s where this list of easy dinner meals comes in SO handy.

We can look through the list and pick out the dinner recipes for the week all at once, and make one grocery list for the week that covers everything.

Meal planning in general is important for two reasons:

It takes away the need to make that decision every day, freeing up brain power, and
It helps give structure to your day and to your family, which is especially important when you have children. Nobody’s asking, “What’s for dinner” anymore, they already know.

Meal prepping can go hand in hand with your meal plan, and this is what REALLY helps me get out of the order-takeout-rut.

You see, once you know your daily dinner recipe, you know what needs to be thawed, mixed, and all that before dinner comes.

I use a very simple meal prep plan, which is preparing the ingredients ahead of dinnertime (usually on Sunday or Tuesday of each week). Chopping, slicing, marinating, mixing, etc.

This way, all I have to do is throw the ingredients into the pot or pan to cook, and my nightly dinner cooking time is literally however long it takes to cook the meal. It’s the BEST time saving hack I have in my working mom arsenal.

Here is my post all about meal prepping for busy moms, it even includes three days of meals if you are feeling stuck on what to make!

Get the Kids Involved in Picking Dinner Recipes

The kids (and the rest of the family, really) can get involved with dinner and basically take some of the load off of your shoulders. Here’s how:

They can help pick out the recipes with you for the week
They can help prep the ingredients with you on your meal prep day
For older children, your house can rotate dinner duty each night, giving each family member the job of making a dinner they pick out. This not only gives the child some (supervised) responsibility, but it also makes sure they are home for family time on some nights during the week.

Benefits of Cooking at Home By Having a List of Meals for Dinner at The Ready

It’s cheaper,
It pretty much guarantees you won’t be throwing away expired & rotten food at the end of each week, and
You are much more likely to use items on your shelf and pantry that are easily forgotten.

Ultimate List of Meals for Dinner

This list of easy family meals will make sure you NEVER run out of dinner ideas ever again! If you want to skip around by category, click on any of these: