Ever sit in front of the computer with a blank stare, kids yelling "What's for Dinner"? Ever been bored and typed in to google or yahoo "Whats 4 Dinner"?

I find myself goofing around time and time again typing just that. Sometimes it's Whats for Dinner, other times, What is there to Do Today, or maybe, What should I eat.

Sitting here I have decided to help you make up your mind (even if I can't make up my own), so I will hit google, yahoo, and msn to find out Whats for Dinner.

I’m curious: How do you go about deciding whats to eat for dinner?

I have been cooking at home more and more. Sometimes there is no dinner plan until one of us comes home. Other times, I have planned out what to make for dinner every night of the week, and I even go to the grocery store on Saturday or Sunday to pick up the ingredients for at least the first few days of the week (when buying meat, I prefer to buy it the day of, or at most, one day prior to eating).

I used to use only foodtv.com and my Food & Wine magazines for recipe ideas. I don’t like the search feature of foodtv.com, but if you have an idea of what you want, it works pretty well. Tommy and I are always able to find tasty recipes (and some not so tasty) on the website. Lately I feel as if the site has failed us. I haven’t been able to find many recipes that I am interested in making. So last weekend I stumbled across Epicurious. I have known about epicurious for a very long time, but have never made an effort to really poke around the website. I like the site a lot. The three things that I like most about it are: 1. It has recipes that are available from Gourmet and Bon Apetit Magazines, providing a nice alternative to the Food & Wine recipes that I have available. 2. Users can post their own recipes… most of which seam reasonable and easy to sort through. 3. You can review or read reviews of all recipes that are posted. This is the one thing that foodtv.com does not have. I like browsing through the reviews of a recipe to see if there are other things I can add or things I should leave out of the recipe. Are there any other good places to go to look for recipe ideas?

I very rarely plan ahead in the sense of figuring out what to make for a whole week. However, sometimes I feel like making a certain dish or trying something new, and I’ll plan around that when I grocery shop.

Epicurious, for the past few years, has been my go-to site for recipes. If that does work, I’ll hit up foodtv and then Google. I also leaf through my Joy of Cooking for ideas every so often, and I’ll go there first if I’m looking for a really basic recipe.

My method for recipes is usually to find base recipes for what I’m making and then work around that based on what I’m looking for and what I have in the kitchen. For example, when I was learning to make risotto, I read a bunch of recipes and settled on the basic proportions, and I made a plain risotto a couple times to figure it out. Now, I basically use that recipe and tweak it everytime i make the dish. When I want variations, I’ll just make changes to the recipe based on what’s in my kitchen, or I check Epicurious for ideas, but I usually just end up incorporating them into my own recipe instead of using the one on the site. I try to do that for most everything I cook because I’m more likely to get good results with recipes I know, and it just makes life easy for me.

The first question to answer in our household is "Who will cook?" and "What's for Dinner". I realized that deciding the answer to that question the night of dinner would probably mean that we were

(a) eating cereal for dinner,

(b) going out to eat, or

(c) not getting dinner until 10 or so.

So, I started "assigning" mealtimes for the week on Sundays, based on how busy we each are and what else is going on. For example, last week, Brian made dinner Monday and Wednesday, and I made dinner Tuesday and Friday, while Thursday we went to a friend's house for dinner. Since Brian will be pretty busy with a paper this week, I'll be cooking some days, and we'll probably go out to eat and eat leftovers as well. We've talked about planning meals on Sundays, but neither of us feels inspired enough to do that, so we each plan our meals separately.

Ok, then what? In my parents house, there weren't many "new" things for dinner - there was more a rotation of meals that my mom pulled from. And can you blame her? With kids, job, dog, husband, who wants to think of new things to cook, especially if you don't know how they'll turn out? Here, we're still building the rotation - that is, thing we're willing to cook over and over and have. In fact, the only things I can think of that's in our rotation are beef stroganoff (for wintertime) and turkey meatballs (in summertime).

What's for Dinner? Chipotle Pork Sandwiches

Whats for Dinner? Oh, it's that time of the day to try to decide what to make for dinner. Sometimes I am looking for something that is new to add to my collection. I am one who loves to get a great, kid tested, mother approved, time saver recipe. So to help those of us who have this daily task I have started a blog of some of my families and friends favorite recipes.

If you have one you would like to share send it my way and I will make sure you get credit for the great cook you are.

What's for dinner? Week 21

I haven't posted one of these since December, and that just may be the last time I made an actual meal plan and went with it. Poor Matt. Now that I don't feel so terrible after work, my goal is to make dinner every night again. You'll notice some of these are pretty simple. That accomplished my two-fold goal -- saving money on our grocery bill and not having to slave away in the kitchen when I finally get home from a stressful day at work.

Sunday: angel chicken and steamed broccoli

Monday: rice casserole and corn

Tuesday: italian baked chicken and cheddar bay biscuits

Wednesday: homemade pizza and fruit salad

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: dinner with friends

Saturday: italian chicken chili with homemade croutons and parmesan popovers

I'm also making these for my class today and want to make these sometime this week too.

OK....After going through dozens of blogs, websites, and articles, I have chosen Whats for Dinner.....PANCAKES....Thats right, you wanna know What's 4 Dinner...it's PANCAKES.