In my house, we have been used to variety for dinner. We don't have the same thing every night. It's not even a standard menu like lunch. For lunch, the standard stuff is rotis, rice, dal and a vegetable. The vegetable keeps changing every day. Sometimes, we would also do a different dal as well, other than the regular toor dal. But dinner was neither the same nor standard. For example, one day we would do Parathas, Paneer Butter Masala, Rasam and rice. Another day, we would do Wada Sambar and Dahi wadas. Most Sundays, my parents and I go out for dinner. On Sundays, we try to have something fancy for lunch.
We have luckily not had much attrition when it comes to cooks. This makes it easier for my mother to teach the various dinner items to the cooks. However, the tough part is deciding what to make for dinner every day. When I switched to a dinner of only soup and salad a couple of years back, things kind of fell apart. Since my parents are not fussy about food, they defaulted to simpler stuff for dinner.
Sadly, my soup-and-salad-for-dinner fascination did not last beyond a few months. When I reverted to normal dinners, somehow the dinner menus became a tad boring. The problem was more around deciding what to make rather than the making itself.
Yesterday, I was feeling a little under the weather. I took the second half of the day off from work. After a two hour nap, I was playing the fool when I suddenly decided to solve this dinner menu problem once and for all.
I opened an Excel file and added a column for days of the week. I filled in about four weeks worth of days. I then started writing different menus for different days. I also put down a separate entry for each Sunday lunch.
In about half an hour, I had come up with a different menu for every night of the month and a different fancy lunch menu for every Sunday of the month!
Looking forward to July like never before!
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