The Dinner Plans: A Review

You guys!  After Chiconky raved about The Dinner Plans and how they made meal planning and grocery shopping easier, I really wanted to try them.  And then like magic, I got an email offering me a free month of dinner ideas if I would write a review on the blog. It was kismet.

But that was May, and I am just now writing a review in August.  This is partially because, as we have discussed, I have been a terrible blogger this summer.  But, also, we have had a crazy summer of dinner plans of our own, so it has taken me 2 months to make a month's worth of dinners!  I KNOW. Between 2 kids in Little League, another in tee-ball, twice a week hockey, and a threenager who would only take evening swim lessons for a few weeks because her beloved babysitter was teaching them, we have had a lot of pool snack bar dinners, late night nachos, and Culver's.  It has not been the most nutritious summer of our lives.

But!  I have adored not having to have an original answer to the dread "What's for dinner" question.  I alluded to this a little bit in my Madison Mom's blog post, but man that question gets under my skin.  Thank goodness for Becca's genius What's For Dinner Facebook group and for The Dinner Plans.

We LOVED the overnight French toast, and Harry liked the chili cheeseburger bake a lot.  Ben and I used fresh garden bail for the margherita pizza before we cut carbs, and Jack could not stop eating the crockpot chicken and stuffing.  Breakfast for dinner is always a hit for the little kids, who are fans of chocolate chip pancakes anytime, and we made the crockpot chicken tacos for our whole fam to celebrate Harry's birthday.


For me, a lot of the crockpot meals were good but not the best for summer.  I do look forward to revisiting them in the fall, though.

I was also not organized enough to get it together and shop from the master list, despite my new penchant for online shopping.  I will be better at this, too, when school starts in the fall because September is my New Year. The  Dinner Plans lays everything out for you, so you can just add the ingredients to an online shopping cart, even separating out the stuff that needs to be fresh.  I can see where this would be a huge cost saving perk.  I will have to sit down when gymnastics, Boy Scouts, football, dance, hockey, and fall baseball (OMG) starts and plan what meal will go with what ridiculous night of our overbooked lives, but even this task will be monumentally easier than coming up with a darn meal idea.

So, TR;DR version:  The Dinner Plans are easy and delicious, and I highly recommend them!

 Way better than the snack shack, that's for darn sure.