I clearly remember the first meal I ever made for my family.

Maybe it was Mom’s way of preparing me for “wifehood” or “independent living.” Whatever it was, that first meal has remained one of my all-time favorite foods.

It was spaghetti with meat sauce. The recipe came from Kids Cooking: A Very Slightly Messy Manual which – I cannot believe it – I found on Amazon.com.  (Wait a sec… yes I can believe it. It’s freaking Amazon, receptacle of all books young and old.)

So… looking at the book, I have discovered that the recipe for “Ready Spaghetti” is NOTHING like my tried-and-true meat sauce recipe. However, I remember the book fondly, with the adorable cartoon animals and the food-stained pages of simple instructions. I think my mom may have taken a little creative license with the ingredients list, and to that I say “Thank you Mommy!”

Anyway, when Husband and I were first dating, I wanted to impress him with my mad skillz in the kitchen. So every opportunity I got, I cooked… spaghetti. When we took a road trip to his home town and wanted to make a thank you dinner for his family… When we went to a friend’s lake house (twice)… When I invited him out to my parents’ house for a week one summer… You get the picture. I like to think it was my specialty.

Fortunately, Husband loved it. And, once we moved in together, he took it over and made it 10,000 times better.

We’ve been cooking together for nearly eight years, Internet. It’s one of my favorite ways to spend time with him. Plus, I firmly believe that cooking together is a good way to a) save money and b) be healthier.

But I have to say… with both of us working, finding things we both like to eat (I am SUPER PICKY) and things that are easy and quick enough to make after work (we HATE eating later than 8:00 p.m., although it happens more often than not) is becoming more difficult by the day.

One problem we encounter regularly is boredom. With a picky eater and a limited budget to satisfy, we end up eating a lot of the same things. Over and over. And over and over. Blah. Boring. Even my favorite foods (i.e. pizza) get old eventually.

But our biggest problem is laziness, I think. Or over-tiredness. Yes, that sounds better.

You see, we start the week by figuring out what we’ll eat for that week. Usually we go out for dinner one night*. Husband is on call (i.e. overnight at the hospital) one to two nights. So that leaves 4-5 meals (plus lunches) for us to plan. Then we go grocery shopping and buy everything we need for the week.

That’s supposed to be it. No extra trips to the grocery. No takeout meals. No dining out.

But inevitably, something happens. A meal that sounds delicious on Sunday sounds unappealing by the time we get around to it. Or we run out of super quick meals early in the week… and then we don’t get off work until seven when we are hungry and grouchy and don’t want to endure an involved, lengthy meal-making process.

Then we end up going to the grocery and grabbing something unhealthy (i.e. PIZZA)… or going to a restaurant and eating a week’s worth of calories plus spending thirty bucks we shouldn’t have… and usually wasting the perfectly good (and NOT FREE) food that we’d purchased for The Meal That Got Away.

This is not a good plan. For our health or for our finances.

So when The Happy Housewife announced that she is going to write a menu planning series, I decided to jump on board.

The first assignment is to come up with a list of 15 meals.

Sounds simple, right? It was TOUGH**. Husband is a very easy-going eater, but I am not. (See above, RE: me being Super Picky.)

[Slight Digression: I am really, really, really picky. Yes, I try things. But there is a long list of stuff I Will Not Eat. Ever. Like beets. Lamb. Veal. Any kind of game. Any lunch meat besides pepperoni and occasionally salami (you know, the healthy lunch meats). Shellfish. Sushi. Eggplant. It goes on and on and on. There is also a slightly less long list of things that I will eat only in certain permutations. I ONLY eat tomatoes in sauce form, and then only if the sauce is completely smooth. I only eat turkey on Thanksgiving. I only eat chicken if it’s thoroughly saturated with some sort of delicious liquid – i.e., in mulligatawny soup, or chicken paprikas, or coq au vin. I only eat mushrooms and broccoli if they’re cooked. I only eat many vegetables if they are raw or only very slightly stir fried.]

Okay, that’s enough of a peek into my crazy brain for one day.

So, needless to say, this assignment was tough. But in the end I came up with 15 meals we can make on a semi-regular basis (a couple have two permutations):

1. Tacos
2. Black bean burritos
3. Grilled pork chops with asparagus and baked potato
4. Grilled salmon with sautéed squash and rice
5. Stir fry or Fire Fry (vegetarian or with beef)
6. Spaghetti with meat sauce
7. Chili
8. Mushroom pasta/mushroom sandwiches
9. Burgers with corn on the cob
10. Tarragon pork with steamed broccoli and baked potato
11. Tilapia with wine/lemon/butter sauce with steamed broccoli and baked potato
12. Rosemary/garlic crusted pork chops with green beans and roasted baby potatoes
13. Salad with spicy grilled shrimp
14. Soup (black bean or mulligatawny or butternut squash)
15. Chicken paprikas with egg noodles

Let the meal planning magic begin!

* Going out for dinner once a week is something we go back and forth on a lot. It’s something we’ve done since med school, and we’ve decided that the additional cost is worth it. This is our one night to go out with friends, to get out of the house, to “live it up” if you will. We try to never let our very, very pathetic social life suffer because of finances. Maybe not the smartest long-term plan… but it’s something we believe in strongly these days.

** As tough as this assignment was for me, I can’t imagine how tough meal planning is for The Happy Housewife. I only have to feed me and Husband. She has SEVEN kids. Planning meals for yourself, your spouse, and seven kids requires Truly Mad Skillz.