What's for Dinner?

What is for dinner?  That is a common question that is asked daily by millions of people.  I mean we all have to eat right?  So what is for dinner?  Will you decide to eat out or eat at home?  Will you have healthy foods or non-healthy foods?  

Whatever your decision is for dinner everyone has one thing in common, planning.  You plan where to go if you eat out, plan what foods you will cook, and you plan what foods you will buy at the grocery store.  When it comes to planning meals everyone has a different way that they plan.  The most common ways are picking the night before, planning for the whole week, and planning for the whole month by rotating menus.  So to help you plan for all your dinner needs, I have found some websites that are very helpful.

The first one is Food on the Table.  With this site you can search recipes and add your local grocery stores and it will check for you what is on sale according to the recipe you choose.  So if you wanted beef tenderloin and Food Lion had it on sale it will you show what the sale price is at Food Lion.  Very neat little feature to have especially if you are pre-planning for the week.  It will also build a grocery list for you based off what recipes you chose.  

The second site Dinner Tool.  This site has a lot of recipes to choose from and the best feature is that once you add a recipe to your recipe box you can create your meal plan.  There is a menu planner calendar where you choose if you want to plan for one day, the whole week, or the whole month.  You just take recipes that are in your box and drag them to whatever day you want to make them and voila, your menu is ready.  You will also find lots of great articles to help you with dinner ideas.  Make sure to check out the video page too where you can learn some cooking techniques.   

If you are someone that prefers to have a hard copy for menu planning check out these free templates for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly planning.  http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/meal-planner.html

And a very popular site now to get recipes is Pinterest.  I have some recipes pinned in my folder but have yet to actually try any of them.  If you have tried any recipes from Pinterest I would love to hear how they were.

I hope that these two sites can help you answer the age old question of What's for Dinner!