In my family, we do a lot of variety in dinner menus, mainly because I like to cook and experiment. I assumed this is a little atypical, but my wife and kids say this is VERY different from all their friends.

They say a lot of families have a very small set of dinner options, and they rotate through those on a regularly-scheduled basis. For example, tacos on Tuesdays, fried chicken on Wednesdays, pot roast on Sundays, etc.

So, I'm curious: how do your families do meals? What kind of variety do you have? Do you rotate between 14 different dinners? Fewer? More? Do you plan your menus for the month, or do you wing it? Or does each night have it's designated meal?

We don't have regularly scheduled meals. I think it would be more cost effective if we planned out the month, or even the whole week, but we're not very good at that. We definitely have our go-to options, but my daughter commented on Sunday when we were talking about this, that if we have that go-to more than once a month, they whine about it. Perhaps a little bit of an exaggeration, but not really that much.

We almost never do boxed or premade meals. I'm not a fan of bottled sauces either, but when we're in a hurry my wife might make spaghetti with a bottled sauce. I think we do spaghetti about twice a month--once with the bottled, and once my from-scratch sauce (sometimes with homemade meatballs). We don't eat out a lot as a family (I have 6 kids and a budget), but we maybe order pizza once a month.