Food Rut- Dinner Suggestions

Try breakfast for dinner, pancakes, crepes very easy and good to make, homemade waffles, homemade pizza just buy crust at trader joes for $1.19 and add stuff to it done in 20 minutes, hot days you don't feel like cooking too long.

Wow, it sounds like you cook quite the variety. I love to cook but this summer it has been so hot and we have been so busy that we have pretty much lived on microwaveable foods and sandwiches! :(

However here is a very easy dish to prepare. We make this comfort-food dish often and most recently made it for a big group on vacation; everyone loved it.

Susan Chicken (named after my MIL)

Chicken breasts
cheese slices (any kind.Recipe calls for swiss cheese but I use whatever we have on hand. 1 slice per chicken breast)
Cream of chicken soup (2 small cans)- thinned with a bit of milk
1 pckg dry stuffing mix
1/2 cube butter, melted

Cut chicken breasts into 4 oz pieces. Place in a 9 by 13 pan. Top each chicken with a slice of cheese. Dump thinned cream of chix soup on top, Sprinkle with dry stuffing mix. Drizzle with melted butter. Cover dish with foil, bake at 375 for an hour. Serve with rice or mashed potatoes.

Here is my menu for the last two weeks:

Spaghetti/Garlic Bread/Salad
Pork BBQ/Potato Salad
Taco Salad
Baked Chicken/Broccoli Casserole/Rice
Shepherd’s Pie
Stir Fry
Salsa Chicken
Chili Caramelized Pork Medallions/Asparagus/Mashed Potatoes
Red Beans and Rice/Green Beans
Baked Chicken/Twice Baked Potatoes/Corn
Long Grain Wild Rice & Chicken Casserole
Onion Soup Rice and Chicken

My menu for this week looks like this:
Bean Dip
Lemon Dill Chicken/Rice/Green Beans
Appetizer Night
Hamburgers/Potato Salad/Fresh Vegetables
Fajita quesadillas/Beans/Homemade Mexican rice
Stuffed Chicken/Salad
Hot Dogs/Mac and Cheese/Green Beans
French Bread Pizza

I am not done with the second menu, I need a few more dinners on there...but you get the idea. I'm trying not to repeat meals in a month, so this is helping me get that done :).

Hi! I just wanted to share that I just started using an app/website called Pepper Plate and I'm loving it. I get in food ruts too even though I have many things in my repertoire; its like I forget what I've made before! So with this, you log in your recipes and then you can browse through and pick stuff. I can also ask my husband what he feels like and he can look through there instead of just saying "something good" as he usually does - not helpful! So it does take some up front work to load your recipes in; it can also import recipes you find online. So just a thought for meal/menu planning that is helping me when I'm in ruts.

As far as new ideas, some of my family's favorites are lemon caper chicken (you just saute chicken breasts in olive oil with garlic and kosher salt, then squeeze a lemon, throw in some capers, a little butter, and some white wine. i usually serve with quinoa pasta), meatloaf balls (meatloaf formed into balls instead of a loaf and baked on a cookie sheet- very versatile, can be used as meatballs with pasta and sauce, just by themselves dipped in bbq sauce or ketchup, or sliced and put on sandwiches), grilled chicken (I marinade mine in a mixture of olive oil, soy sauce, garlic, honey, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar).

Good luck! Food ruts are annoying when you're trying to put good healthy interesting food on the table every night!

Shepherd's pie
Pizza, salad
Tacos
Rotisserie chicken, pasta salad, corn on the cob
Taco salad
Steaks, veggies, salad
Stir fry chicken & veggies, rice
Chicken breasts on the bbq, veggies, rice
Pasta w/sausage link slices
Hamburgers, Ore Ida fries
Goulash (cooked ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, served over
white rice)

If you want exotic:
1) llapingachas --a potato and cheese pancake topped with peanut sauce popular in Ecuador. Yum!
2) Badridzhani Nigvsit --Fried Eggplant with Walnut Sauce from the Republic of Georgia. What I'd order if I was selecting a last meal.
3) Korean tacos --though these are almost mainstream now thanks to the food truck mania.
In the summer, we often do a big salad with a muffin tin of assorted add ins along the side. You can put chopped fresh, stirfried, and pickled veggies, cooked beans, diced roast chicken, beef, or pork, olives, etc. I started making these falafel "crackles" because I'm not interested in standing over a pot of boiling oil. I make the falafel mix and then spread it on a cookie sheet and bake. It gets crisp on the top and bottom. Then break it into pieces. Perfect in a salad.
In winter, I do the same thing with miso soup. I make the soup and then set out things to add: poached eggs, fresh, stirfried, and pickled veggies, steamed shrimp, some leftover steamed or fried rice, etc.
Breakfast for dinner never gets turned down at my house.
And sometimes, you just have to match new flavors with familiar textures: lamb and mint meatballs, pizza with jerk or thai seasoning, sweet potato chili.

I would recommend going to allrecipes.com. (Free site) The website has a page where you can type in all the ingredients you have on hand (or just part of them) and they will give you a list of recipes that you can make from your list.

I like spaghetti based on the list you've given. Or Hungarian goulash.

I also like rice and gravy. Take your meat and dice it or crumble it. Cook a cream of mushroom or chicken or . . . soup. Use twice as much milk as the can says to use water. Add celery leaves (not stalks), diced onions, garlic, sliced or diced fresh button mushrooms and bring to a boil. Add a tablespoon of flour and bring to a boil. Bring the gravy to the table to pour over cooked rice or potatoes, or pasta.

Good luck to you and yours.

I love these kinds of threads and reading what other people are cooking and recipe ideas.
Tonight, I'm making taco quiche, to be served with salad. I'm actually making two - one with meat and one without since my daughter prefers vegetarian. I've been experimenting with more meat free meals, but she'll be leaving for college in a week. Then maybe I'll try more fish since my son likes it.