Default Dinners!

I am a planner. I always plan my menus for the week and try to do basically one shopping trip a week, although I do make periodic extra trips to Trader Joes and Costco. Some weeks I really enjoy doing this and some weeks I just cannot get into it. Nothing sounds good, I'm too busy or not feeling adventurous, or I don't want to spend a lot of money and buy a lot of new things. Lots of times I just end up doing a poor job planning and we end up eating junk or doing take-out in that situation.

Last month, I was reading this post and was inspired to make a list of default dinners. Basically, it was a weeks worth of dinners to fall-back on when I could not come up with something else for whatever reason. Note - this was before I went GF and dairy-free.

Here is what I had come up with:
DAY ONE
mexican night(tacos,beans and rice,enchiladas,burritoes)
DAY TWO
pasta night
DAY THREE
pizza night
DAY FOUR
fried rice or noodle night (asian)
DAY FIVE
Soup (winter) or Salad (summer)

When I found out I needed to stop eating gluten and dairy I found myself really struggling to make my menu plans. I originally thought I would just have to throw out my default dinners and start from scratch but soon discovered that having this list was a lifesaver. Most the items on this list (except pizza) are not that hard to tweak to make them gluten- and dairy- free.

And now, without much effort, I can put together a simple menu of things I can eat and my family can enjoy.