How does it work?

Each week on Saturday we will publish a meal plan for your family. The plan will list six meals with everything needed for a delicious feast of an entrée and at least two side dishes (a starch and a vegetable.)  We also provide you a weekly bonus dessert.  For each meal, we will provide you the recipe to keep as part of your repertoire.

Along with the meal plan, we will simplify your grocery shopping by providing you the shopping list for the week.  We assume you keep on hand a few basic staple ingredients, and we won't add those to the weekly grocery list...you just need to have those on hand at all times.  Find the "must have" list here.

Here are a few more details we consider as we plan the meals:

 Variety – We work to ensure we have good variety in our meals. This means we don’t have the same sides, same type of main dishes (eg. All chicken or all beef) or even the same genre (Italian, Mexican, etc) in a week.

Cost – We have modeled this meal plan after what an average family can afford, and there are a couple of values the Diva holds, so we work to stay close to those values.  Around cost, we believe in being efficient with our money. We also believe in having a "treat" every now and then. So the weekly meal plan will provide a mixture of more affordable meals with splurges, and we work to make sure we do not waste food.  For instance, if we have a recipe that uses a half jar of tomato sauce, we’ll plan a meal later in the week or early the next week to use that tomato sauce. Also, we consider what’s in season and what’s on sale to help reduce costs.

Structure – we construct meals in the following way: one protein, one starch and one vegetable at every meal. Again, we do occasionally supplement and make more, but at a minimum, the meals consist of these components.

Time – I do not have time to spend hours every evening in the kitchen, and I know my clients don't either.  This is a differentiating factor for Dining Diva Dinners. We assume you can do a bit of prep the night before the meal, but that you have 15-30 minutes to get a meal on the table in the evening. So, in every weekly meal plan, we have a "prep" section that tells you what you need to do the night before to ensure the next night's dinner is quick and efficient.

Special Occasions – We know that sometimes you want to impress dinner guests or that other times, you only have ten minutes to get dinner on the table.  So, each week, we offer an "Impress them" meal and a "Quickie meal".