5 Dinners in 1 Hour

Menu Planning Tips

I love once a month cooking for Shabbos meals, but our weekday dinners have been less than ideal. We usually just have whatever is in the freezer, which probably means it isn’t as healthy as it could be. So, while browsing the web I came across Make 5 Dinners in 1 Hour. It’s a blog that offers a subscription to weekly dinner menus and the idea is that you spend one hour in the beginning of the week to prepare 5 dinners.

All dinners are cooked fresh (many use the crock-pot) and if plans change there are always some dinners on the menu that can be frozen for later. Brilliant! I loved the idea, but of course none of the menu plans are completely kosher so I decided not to subscribe (after receiving my free trial) because I think it would be too hard to “kosherize” all the recipes.

Then, one night I was browsing the links at the bottom of a Monday Menu Planning post on Orgjunkie.com and saw a link to a blog called Living, Laughing and Loving, where the author, Renee, implements the “Make 5 Dinners in 1 Hour” method using her own recipes. It made the whole concept really come alive, so I’ve been toying with the idea of trying it. Plus, now I have a new blog to follow.

So, why haven’t I tried it yet? Here are a few of the obstacles:

  1. Time on Sunday to menu plan, shop and prepare the food. It only takes an hour to prepare the meals, but that hour doesn’t count the amount of time you need to plan the menu and shop for the food.
  2. Budget-friendly recipes. Many of the recipes I’ve seen use chicken cutlets, chopped meat and other ingredients that are waayyy more expensive when you keep Kosher.

Even though I love the idea, it might take a while to implement. Maybe I’ll try it by using some of my easy dinner ideas along with one or two crock-pot recipes. I’m not really sure yet, all I know is that I want to try something like it.

Is anyone else interested in this kind of menu planning? I’m curious what you think about it!

Until next time,
Shaindy

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