Your mom had meat-loaf Mondays and taco Tuesdays, and after you finished yawning, you laughed at her for her regimented menus.

Of course, now you realize that she might have been on to something: She knew that one of the hardest parts of getting dinner on the table is figuring out what exactly that dinner is going to be.

This system for a month of easy dinners follows her lead. As with Mom's plan, there's a regular schedule. You'll never have to comb through cookbooks looking for dinner ideas, because you'll be using the same six recipes every week.

But unlike Mom's system, this one offers variations on those recipes, which means you'll be eating a different meal every night of the month. Even better, the calendar and shopping list incorporate extra ingredients into side dishes. So all that's left is the cooking and the eating.

And thanks to the recipes on the following pages, that's the easy part.