We came across the coolest site from the great culinary photographers at The Still Life With blog site.  If you ever want to see some fantastic food photography and get some great recipes please check out L. 

Tastebook is a new site that lets you build your own cookbook.  It even puts the recipes in categories with tabs.  We have started working on ours and will let everyone know when it is ready.   

And yes we will have a section with our ever famous strict family menu. 

For those of you that don't know about our family menu we originally got the idea from my grandmother GiGi.  Growing up I always heard my uncles and aunts talk about the dinner table rules.  While they probably didn't realize it then the concept of a strict dinner plan is quite important.  With our hectic days and Denise's travel we had to come up with a standard for our kids.  Every night was a challenge to make a good meal they would like and it not take all night to cook.  So I developed a menu specific to their likes, health needs and weekly schedule.  I can just her them now telling people they know what day of the week it is by what they have for dinner. 

Here is the weekly menu:

Sunday:  BBQ Chicken, Mac & Cheese, Broccoli

Monday: Meatloaf, potatoes, salad or green beans

Tuesday: Spaghetti and peas.

Wednesday:  Free night (we usually eat at church or go out to dinner)

Thursday:  Pork Chops (Sorry Daddy Clark) corn, broccoli

Friday:  Fajitas, black beans, salad

Saturday:  Free night or hot dogs

Desert is available only after baths and the choices are Jello or Yogurt

When I came up with the menu I thought about all the things that my grandmother would have had 50 years ago.  There were no microwaves, processed foods or fast food joints so we tried to keep everything simple.  The best thing to do is stay on the outside isles of the store.  This way you only get whole food that is healthy and easy to cook.  You would be surprised at how easy these meals are.  Each one only takes about 30 to 45 minutes to get done and there is plenty of time to play with the kids.  The other thing we found was that sticking to the menu reduced our weekly grocery bill to about 50 dollars a week.  You would be surprised how much you spend on crap at the store. 

The menu was built to carry food over the week.  Sunday's dinner is lunch for Denise and I for a couple days.  Monday's meatloaf actually makes two good size loafs.  We freeze one and only eat half on Monday.  Tuesday's spaghetti has the leftover meatloaf in the sauce.  Pork chops can carry over to Friday's dinner.  The only prepackaged food we purchase is the pre marinated fajita meat. 

Overall the kids love the meals.  James is eating his vegetables and we never get home not knowing what we are having for dinner.  Not every week runs as smoothly but since we started this about 3 months ago we have spent very little time dealing with the problems most people have at dinner.  Probably the best thing is that we make it a house rule that everyone has to sit together at the dinner table.  The kids participate in getting the table set while we cook.  And the time we get to chill with our little munchkins is priceless.

Sometimes all this technology and easy living we have now isn't always the best thing for the family.  Slowing it down and keeping it simple is just as good as buying something to make it easier.  Thanks GiGi for being so awesome!