One of my new favorite things (and you will never believe)

is cooking dinner!!! Shocker, I know, those of you who know me well are laughing or screaming (the horror, the horror!) unless you have talked me to in the last three weeks and already know I have truly been converted into a domestic cooking goddess, thanks to The Six O'Clock Scramble. I just had to pass it on because I kind of feel like I discovered one of the secrets of life!!


This is a meal planning service (recommended by Oprah among others, started by cookbook author and food columnist Aviva Goldfarb) that emails you a list of 5 nutritious, tasty and FAST (30 minute) meals per week plus a shopping list. The dish above is just one meal I made last week from the plan: Shrimp Pilaf with Asian Cucumber Salad and it looked so pretty and colorful on my plate I had to take a pic for you! My family is trying SO many new foods and I love the variety of what we are eating, that is one of the main reasons I like to go out to eat , to have something different or I am craving a certain ethnic food, and if you know me, I like "different"! One of my favorite (of many awesome features!) features of the service is you can substitute different recipes for any of the days and it will UPDATE your shopping list with the NEW menu ingredients for the week, how cool is that?? They only send 5 since you might want to go out the other night or have leftovers, but you could easily grab two more recipes to have something for every night!

Meals are rated by customers so you can search the highest rated recipes or you can also search by ingredient if there is something you are in the mood for or want to use up. I am lovin how easy the meals are to assemble (and it is "cooking for dummies", let me tell you, the recipe for the optional side is right below the entree and the directions tell you things like while this is cooking, go chop the cucumbers! etc) AND how I only have to go to the store ONCE per week and know I come home with everything I need for dinners. Feeling confident about no fancy techniques and knowing it will come out well makes it really fun, and the kids can help me, too. It has eliminated so much stress of figuring out what to make, and we are saving money not needing to go out at the last minute or buying food we end up not using that goes bad. I am sure we'll be losing weight as another benefit, the nutritional info is at the bottom of each page and I am amazed at how sometimes the entire meal has the caloric content of what I sometimes consider a snack! I feel great my picky eaters are eating so well, Jonathan remarked the other day, "Mom we have had a different dinner every night for weeks!" and has already requested that I make one of them again. Some meals I will say they are more suspicious of trying than others, but they are eating tofu (my husband, too!), lentils, quinoa just to name a few, and that is far from the old macaroni and chicken nugget days*...


Here is what we will be having this week to give you an idea:

Herbed Chicken Roll Ups with Dijon and Mozzarella
Chili Rubbed Salmon
Taco Chili with Cilantro Sour Cream
Pan Fried Polenta with Sauteed Vegetables
Pad Thai

YUM!!

And here is a coupon code they gave me for friends that you can use if you want to try it out for $3 off a subscription
GLMEL14975

They have plans anywhere from 3 months to two years, and there is a 30 day money back guarantee so I really recommend trying it out. I just went for the two year plan since it is the cheapest and they have the moneyback guarantee, and it comes out to about 50 cents a week! Also, to give you an idea, while I don't have to buy ALL the staples each week (like olive oil, lots of the spices, etc) I have only been spending around $50 per week for my five meals! not bad, not bad at all!

Have I convinced The Scramble will you save you time you could be stamping and money you could use for more stamps yet?? LOL! ;) Any other questions you may have about the plan are covered on the site, so you really just have to see for yourself, I could go on and on about it but right now I REALLY need to go stamp for our release sneak peeks tomorrow! :)


*nights that I cooked, not nights my husband cooked, he is a fantastic in the kitchen!