What's for dinner?

What's cookin?

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(parent)thetically speaking.

I wish I was the one asking that question instead of answering it - but like many of us who have succumbed to adulthood, we are now in charge of feeding ourselves (and in many cases, one or multiple other people!)

So what to make? I have found that waiting until 5pm to answer that question only results in something like chicken fingers or Bisquick pancakes. Good, but not good, ifyouknowwhatImean.

So some advance planning is required, like (you might want to write this down) if I want to have broccoli with chicken, I have to remember to buy both the broccoli and the chicken when I go to the grocery store. Amazingly, I have managed to not buy that stuff, instead thinking that somehow the fall-colored double stuff Oreos will transform into the nutritious, balanced dinner my body needs in order to function (but honestly, we all need fall-colored double stuff Oreos to be productive human beings).

I've recently started working on getting to a higher level of planning, like, figuring out what to make each day of week - before 5pm on that actual day! I did a meal plan on Sunday (so, literally recently) and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Now, I'm not going to go out and buy a chalkboard day-of-the-week calendar to hang in my kitchen with "what's cookin good-lookin" scrolled across the top...but maybe a girl can dream.

We're all in this dinner-cooking-thing together - so I'll tell you my favorite go-to recipes if you tell me yours!

* whole grain pasta with ground turkey meat sauce and peas

* chicken sautéed with olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic, with brown rice or couscous and green beans

* slow cooker shredded BBQ chicken (did you know they sell bag liners for slow cookers? total life-changer...)

* chicken or beef fried rice

* meatballs (beef or turkey)

* noodles with peanut sauce and chicken or beef (recipe)

* white chili (I've adapted this recipe in the past) 

* a slightly adapted version of this recipe for mustard-tarragon chicken