I've come to hate having a big meal at night because I, for one, don't sleep as well after eating so much. I hate it because I don't like spending the hours in the afternoon when we're all ready to chill out and wind down before bed cooking and then cleaning up. This is something I've been mulling over for some time, but I haven't come up with the perfect solution. I could move "dinner" to lunch time, but that is less than ideal for many reasons. I could try harder to have dinner earlier in the afternoon so we aren't going to sleep with full stomachs, but I've tried that before and it's really hard, especially during the school year.Right now I think the solution may be planning fewer "big" meals and more "light" meals. It's not the way my mom ran her house, but I've decided that especially in the summer time there is nothing in the world wrong with actually planning on cheese sandwiches and fresh fruit for dinner. This week's meal plan will be my experiment. I'm shooting for three heavier, probably meat based dinners and four lighter, possibly even raw foods nights. I'm going to be spending some real time today playing with a site I wrote about last week hoping for some good ideas (that will also help save some grocery dollars). This venture comes with one big potential bonus - my girls usually just eat things like a piece of fruit and some cottage cheese for dinner anyway because they don't like foods like pork chops or baked potatoes. With this plan, they'll hopefully eat what is planned instead of having to pull out something additional for them.
I'll post again when I have this week's meal plan all figured out. And of course, if anyone has suggestions for simple meals, please post them in the comments! I'm always looking for tried and true ideas!
