What I Made for Dinner as a Mother Who Cooks By the Season

As winter approaches and we’re faced with another year of determining what's for dinner, we're sharing a glimpse at how BHG readers gather for a meal. Welcome to our new series, Dinner Diaries, where we're asking readers to anonymously share how they get dinner on the table including grocery shopping, budgeting, cooking, and their favorite family recipes. Here, a family of four in the Midwest enjoys eating seasonally. Right now, the menu includes hearty casseroles, soups, and homemade bread.

I do a full grocery run at least once a week but we always will do extra runs to the store for anything I forgot or we run out of.

I really try to stick to about $120-$130. That amount goes up when we need more household items like shampoo, laundry detergent, and cleaning supplies.

Illustration: Grace Canaan

Yes! I make a list of dinners I'd like to cook for the week, check my pantry, and fill out my list with the items I don't have. Of course there are the weekly staples that never change: milk, eggs, butter, bread, bananas, apples, and tortilla chips.

I love the online pick up from Walmart. It makes my life so much easier to grocery shop on the app and then simply drive to pick up my purchases. The app also keeps me on budget because there is no chance for splurges. I also shop at Fareway, which is my go-to for quickly picking up the items we need or forgot.

I usually cook dinner for the entire family. But with two teenage daughters who come and go during the week, my husband and I subscribe to a meal kit twice a week. We always cook that together.

My pantry always has baking supplies, especially items for bread and cookies, rice, beans, lentils, peanut butter, ramen noodles, boxes of macaroni and cheese, and always coffee!

Illustra