Fortunately we live less than a mile from our best friends. It has been great for impromptu play dates, grabbing dinner together, borrowing this or that, and even keeping each other’s kids while in labor. This has recently become even more wonderful because we’ve started a Thursday night dinner swap! Our plan is simple. We alternate every Thursday hosting each other for dinner. It is so nice because every other week I don’t have to cook on Thursdays and my kitchen stays clean at least for one evening.
We know each others’ likes and dislikes so it makes it fairly easy to pick out a dish to serve. We usually let the kids play for a while after dinner and we get to enjoy adult conversation for at least a few minutes.
A few weeks ago I made these for our dinner swap. They were fabulous and so easy!
Picture via The Pioneer Woman.
By the way, if you haven’t started throwing in Pioneer Woman recipes to your weekly menu planning, you need to start! A few that make it to our dinner table on a regular basis are her Blue Cheese Pasta, Beef with Snow Peas, and homemade pizza dough.
My best friend and I have also started swapping freezer meals once a month. Kali wrote about this on DMB a few weeks ago. To make it work for us, we each make two recipes that can be split, and we end up with four freezer meals each. I cannot tell you how nice it is to grab something out of the freezer when I don’t have time or don’t feel like cooking!
Do you swap cooking with friends? What about swapping freezer meals? If you have friends that live close, it’s a great way to change up your normal dinner routine. And the best part is not having to cook every night of the week!
