Next Week’s Meal Plan: 5 Great Family Dinners for Summer

We have officially reached the last week of summer; back to school is just 10 days away for our family. While I’m looking forward to getting back to our school-year routine, these last few days of summer break are still going to be fun and tasty.

This week, I’m checking a few dinners off my summer bucket list (hello, tomato toast), but also trying some new-to-us recipes that I hope to repeat as school starts. Here are the five dinners I’m cooking for the last week of summer.

I believe meal planning is the secret to stress-free weeknight dinners. Since I’m frequently asked by friends and family what I’m cooking for dinner each week, I share my weekly meal plan here. Whether you’re just learning to meal plan and looking for a real-life example of how this works or you’re an old pro on the hunt for inspiration, here’s a peek at how I’m feeding my family this week.

• The Beginner’s Guide to Meal Planning: What to Know, How to Succeed, and What to Skip
• The Best Way to Use a Weekend for Meal Planning Success
• Ask Yourself These 5 Questions Before You Start Meal Planning
• 5 Strategies for Picking Recipes for a Week of Meal Planning

We recently ate paella at a local Basque festival and both my kids devoured it. I’m hoping that this much quicker, easier, orzo-based version gets them as excited — especially since it can made with staples like canned tomatoes, frozen shrimp, and peas.

This recipe is perfect to serve on taco Tuesday as a breakfast-for-dinner option. It’ll also be a test to see if the kids like it enough to put in the school-day breakfast rotation in the coming weeks. We’ll be serving this with tortillas and lots of avocado and salsa for the grown-ups.

This very quick and flavorful stir-fry is one of my favorite ways to use up zucchini, as it is so plentiful this time of year. We will leave out the spicy chili sauce for the whole pot but serve it on the side for those of us who love it. Brown rice and watermelon on the side will round out dinner.

I can’t believe I’ve made it halfway through August without eating a tomato and mayo sandwich, so we are having tomato toasts on the busiest evening of our week before we head off to a back-to-school event where there will be more fun foods like popcorn and ice cream.

In the spirit of honesty, we are riding our bikes to our favorite pizza joint after work on Friday and eating slices (and the adults are drinking cold beers) on the patio before getting ice cream and playing in a water fountain before heading home. Sure, we have the weekend before school starts, but this is our last family dinner before the back-to-school routine hits hard.