So we didn’t make the baked orzo with shrimp Wednesday night as planned. It wasn’t a question of motivation, it was just simple math. We both got home from work late, at about 8:45. It usually takes us about 15 minutes to change, wash up, and start cooking. That would have put our cooking start time at 9:00. Dinner, according to the recipe, would have taken 1 hour and 5 minutes. So we asked a simple question: do we want to eat dinner at 10:00 or later? If it was a Friday or a Saturday, we probably would have said: “Sure, why not! Let’s make some cocktails while we’re at it!”, but it being a “school night”, this wasn’t really an option. So we ordered in (Mexican, if you’re wondering) and sat down to dinner within about 20 minutes of ordering.

The picture you see above is our menu for the week. Every week, we list out the days, note the ones where we know we won’t be making dinner (like Sunday, Tuesday, and Saturday this week) and then decide what to make for the rest of the week. When we have a night like last night, we just rearrange the schedule. As you can see, we moved the Baked Orzo with Shrimp, Tomato Sauce, and Feta to Thursday night and the Grilled Fontina, Mushroom, and Sage Sandwiches to Saturday, when we’ll probably have them for lunch (but having them for dinner is an option too). It’s important to stay flexible, because things will come up. Since we really want to make everything on the menu and certainly don’t want to waste anything, it’s not too hard to move things around, usually within the same week. The upside of not making something one week is that you already have one dish ready to go for the next week!