Ideas for foods

What should we eat?  What should we have for dinner?  What should we have at a party?  What should we eat?  There are lots of different types of foods, and lots of different resources.  There are lots of different ways to plan meals.

For dinners, you may plan a month in advance, a week in advance, or just make whatever sounds good.  In any case, you will need to have the ingredients, and the recipes.  Where can you get recipes?  You can buy cook books, either actual books, or eBooks.  You can get recipes from family and friends.  If you have or had something that tasted good, ask them for a recipe.  You can also find many recipes online.  http://allrecipes.com/ is a good site, and there are many others you can find with a quick Google search.  If you register with these, which are usually free, you can do things like bookmark your favorite recipes, or supply ingredients you have, and be given a list of recipes that you could make.

Making dinner for the family?  You can ask family members what their favorites are, and add it to the calendar.  You can also add days where you try new dishes, and see which ones stick and which do not.  You can have the kids join in.  Have different kids cook on different days.  Pick the meals based on their abilities.

So you tried these options, and are still stumped...  Think about different types of meals, then branch out from there.  There are types of dishes from different regions, like Mexican, Italian, Greek, Sea foods, Texan, South cooking, Cajun, French (you know, French Toast, and French Fries... ;-> ), Thai, Indian, Canadian, Oriental, Japanese, English (fish and chips, English muffins), German, even Ethiopian.

You can also try different types of foods.  There are pastas, BBQ's, sea foods, breads, meats, salads, vegetables, fruits, desserts, dessert type salads, jellos, sides, rices, beans, and different combinations of them.  You can add an appetizer.  You can add multiple courses.  You can add a dessert, or dessert salad.

There are breakfast foods, lunch foods, and dinner foods.  Sometimes you may even want to mix these up.  Some dinners, try having breakfast for dinner, such as scrambled eggs, waffles, french toast, etc.  You may even come up with your own recipes by combining ingredients.  You may get ideas from multiple recipes and make your own recipe up.  Oh, and smoothies are fun, too!

What are some of your favorite foods?  How do you get inspired with different food ideas?