Me, Myself and Mommy

Before we begin, I in no way came up with this idea. I’m simply endorsing it. I just want to put that out there.

About a week or so before Labor Day, a friend of mine from church approached me about joining her dinner group. I had heard of these groups before and had been eager to pledge one for sometime now. They are very popular in my community and church, and well, I wanted to feel popular. A week after pledging my loyalty to the other three women in the group, we began cooking. Life will never be the same.

Here’s how this all works.

There are four families in our dinner group. Each family is assigned one night a week to cook for all four families. On Monday, I cook enough food for my family, as well as, the other three families in the group and deliver it to their homes. On Tuesday, another family cooks and delivers, and so on. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we are on our own. Each family gets enough food to feed four people. We have agreed that all of the food needs to be delivered by 6:00PM. We also have a rule of no fish or seafood.

Before we began our group we each emailed our menus up to Thanksgiving to one person. That person compiled all of the menus and emailed them out to the entire group. This way we all knew what was for dinner Monday through Thursday for the next three months. We also gathered up enough casserole dishes and plastic bowls to go around.

Make sense? I hope so. If not, just ask.

Here is an example of what a week looks like for our group…
Monday – Chicken Cordon Bleu
Tuesday – Pot Roast
Wednesday – Italian Subs
Thursday – Taco Salad

Joining a dinner group has brought consistency and stability to our week. It has saved us a lot of time, money and energy. Still not convinced? Let me make a list for you…

1. For about $30.00 I can make enough food for 16 people, and my family gets four healthy meals a week. That averages out to be $7.50 per night. If I cooked four different meals for my family it would cost anywhere from $50-$60. That is a big difference.

2. I only have to cook one night a week. It only takes about 30 minutes more to cook for four families than it takes to cook for one family. If you compare that to spending about 45 minutes each night in the kitchen, I have an extra hour and a half or more to spend on other activities throughout the week.

3. Our eating habits are much healthier now that we are part of a dinner group. Because we know that a home cooked meal will be delivered, we are not tempted to stop for fast food on the way home. This saves us a lot of empty calories, as well as a lot of money.

4. Instead of being stuck in a food rut, my family has been able to eat something different four nights out of the week for seven weeks straight. Not a single dish has been repeated so far.

5. I have been able to try out a lot of new recipes and learn new cooking techniques. Cooking is something that I really enjoy doing (you might call it one of my passions), but it has been difficult to make it a priority with such a hectic schedule. Food group has given me motivation to expand my cooking knowledge, and given me an excuse to spend time doing something I enjoy.

6.  I really like having menus planned out in advance; maybe it’s the event planner and catering manager coming out in me. You know how exciting it is to plan for Thanksgiving? You spend time writing lists and looking up recipes, and then you anticipate how delicious it’s going to be. It’s kind of the same feeling (on a smaller scale of course). You know that on Tuesday, you’re having Chicken Parmesan, and you look foward to it all day on Tuesday. You imagine gathering your family together, saying a prayer, eating and spending time together. It makes every night feel like a celebration.

7. It makes grocery shopping much easier. If I know what we are having for dinner every week, I can plan my grocery shopping accordingly. I can plan on what to buy for lunches and what to buy for the weekend, so that there are no overlaps. Also, if I know that I am making pork in the coming weeks, I can watch the grocery ads for when pork goes on sale. I can buy the pork on sale, and freeze it until I need it.

If you think that your family could benefit from a group like this, I strongly encourage you to join forces with neighbors and friends. Dinner doesn’t get much easier than answering the door, and you don’t even have to tip the driver.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Me, Myself and Mommy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.