We were out on a date night recently, and Nathan brought up meal planning. Mostly, he brought up the fact that he only gets the meals that he really likes once every six months or so. For many, many years, I was building my recipe repertoire. And now, I have a trove of recipes that I know my family loves.

But for some reason, I keep searching for new recipes. So much so that I usually try one new recipe a week.

This conversation coincided with a parallel conversation of “I have too much on my plate right now, and I feel stressed.” Anybody else feel like this conversation is continuous?! Never ending….

So Nathan said, “Listen. All I’m asking is that we get our favorite meals once quarterly.”

That next Monday I sat down and made a list. A winter/fall recipe list, and a summer/spring list. And you know what? I’m taking “trying new recipes” off of my to do list for awhile until I have more capacity. Now, I go to my spreadsheet, pick three random meals from the list, and those are the three meals we have that upcoming week.

I mark them off, and then they are off of the possibilities until we’ve made it all the way through our recipe list.

It sounds so simple…and yet, I spend so much less time meal planning now.

Tell me, do you have a list of go-to recipes and just cook from that list? How often do you try a new recipe?