Actual home-cooked meals

As previously mentioned here, I haven't wanted to cook since, oh, maybe August? July? So we've been limping along in the nutritional dinner area this whole time. Clearly I'm going to have to bootstrap myself up into Cooking Woman mode.

It did occur to me a few days ago, as the boys were begging for this or that fast food, that... we could make fancy tacos (etc.) at home really easily. And we could have breaded fish and fries and coleslaw at home, too, for a lot less money than a fast food meal. Finally, Son2 was talking about how much he used to love that red soup we used to eat... Oh, you mean tomato soup? with grilled cheese sandwiches? Right there we have three EASY meals I can actually make without having to be creative if I don't want to (I think the creativity thing is my problem right now; my creative energy is really tapped out. Note to self: explore that thought later.)

Yesterday I actually wrote out a menu list -- meals to have before Christmas. Here it is.

- Beef stew and homemade bread (we have all of the fixings, and making homemade bread means we stay home all morning or all afternoon, which is a good thing right now)
- Ground beef and lentil soup (have all fixings except beef stock, but I have turkey stock -- and beef bones so I COULD make beef stock some evening)
- Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (we got the ingredients last night, woohoo!)
- Spaghetti squash and regular spaghetti, red sauce, and bread (homemade or not) (we have everything but the tomato sauce and the regular spaghetti, which is a fallback in case the kids hate the squash version)
- Small steaks, roasted vegetables, homemade rolls (using our freezer stash of meat)
- Chinese-style noodles with vegetables and chicken-or-beef on the side or mixed in (dear husband does these Chinese-style inventions and we forget how much the boys LOVE the flavors! we need noodles, though)
- Waffles-or-pancakes and scrambled eggs (this was last night's dinner, with waffles)

Actual home-cooked meals and real planning, oh my!

UPDATE. Of course the plan has changed already! We had waffles and scrambled eggs the first night. Then last night we were going to have leftover soups from Wednesday night's Advent supper at church -- beef and mushroom soup, tomato vegetable soup, and for the kids canned tomato soup -- but we went out and got our Christmas tree and picked up a couple of pizzas. On our way home we passed our bicycle-commuter neighbor and invited him to dinner, so he kept dear husband company while DH prepped the tree for an overnight in a bucket of water, and then joined us for the most casual of dinners and a viewing of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." I think tonight will be soup night, but we'll need to get more bread for grilled cheese sandwiches since the current loaf has disappeared into hungry boys and man as cinnamon-sugar toast over the last few days.