kitchen tip: keep a dinner diary

I love Dinner: A Love Story’s cookbook (and blog for that matter). I first read about the idea of a dinner diary in her cookbook and have been mostly keeping one ever since. Grant was complaining that I make something that he loves and then never make it again, so we came up with a little rating system to help me remember what he and the kids really like. I love to cook new things, so I tend to favor being adventurous versus making something over again. But the dinner diary has helped me to remember to go back to things that were big hits the first time around.

I just picked up a little notebook at Target, and I keep it right next to the stove. I try to write down every dinner, even if it’s totally mundane (i.e. leftovers), because it is fun to go back and look at what we ate. I also write down who joined us and for what occasion if we’re hosting people. For now, this is just for me, but I think it will be fun to share with the kids as they get older too.

So go ahead and start a dinner diary today – it’s much less work than committing to an actual diary/journal, which I can only seem to do for about three days in a row!