When I surf momblogs, a lot of times it’s because I’m looking for ideas on how to do things better/faster/more efficiently. So I’d like to invite everyone occasionally to share their strategies on a particular topic, and I’m starting out with dinner. Please pitch in, and maybe we’ll all learn something from each other!

How do YOU plan weeknight dinners? Or do you?

In our house, we sit down on Saturday mornings with the grocery store circular and the coupons, and we plot out meals for the week based on what’s on sale and what could go with what we’ve already got. Then we add it to our whiteboard that lives on our refrigerator along with our grocery list.

This dinner planner/grocery list combo saves my sanity.

I don’t always plan out the weekends, because  I usually don’t know what’s going on that far in advance. And Friday night is almost always frozen pizza or Little Ceasar’s drive-thru pizza. I grew up with Friday night pizza, so it’s a very long-term habit … the kids dig it … it’s easy … and it’s one thing extra in the world that we don’t have to spend mental energy on.

Sometimes we’ll skip around on the board if plans change or if we just feel like having something different that night. And on the occasion that we don’t eat that meal altogether for whatever reason, it just bumps to the weekend or the next week.

If we didn’t plan dinners out like this, we’d probably end up eating fast food every night because speed and ease is important with 3 kids to feed, clean up after and get to bed each night. Especially when mommy works late — and that is several times a week.

Please share your strategies! Do you eat the same things over and over so you don’t have to think about it? Take it on the fly every night? I’m dying to hear!

And you’ve still got a bit of time to visit Moody Mom here and leave a comment to try to win a professional photo session. What a great deal! Good luck!