Does the post-workday conversation with your spouse, partner or kids ever go something like this?

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"What's for dinner?" he or she asks.

"I don't know. What are you making?" you reply. Another great start to a relaxing evening at home has begun.

Even many people who love to cook dread weeknight dinners. In addition to the pressure of feeling as if you must put a respectable meal on the table for your family, there's the added time pressure of doing it before everyone scatters to their respective activities, and the fact that, frankly, all you feel like doing is flopping on the couch and staring at the ceiling. And that's if you already have groceries in the house and a recipe in mind.

So it was with great thankfulness, bordering on tear-filled joy, that I recently discovered a simple, straightforward plan that will, with one three-hour stint in the kitchen a week, plus a few minutes of prep time after work on weeknights, provide you not only with a Norman Rockwell-caliber Sunday dinner, but also dinners and several lunches for most of the rest of the week.

The plan comes in the form of a slim, unassuming book called "Cook Once a Week, Eat Well Every Day," by Toronto-based home cooking-coaching expert Theresa Albert. The book (Marlowe & Co.; $15.95; available through local booksellers or Amazon.com) includes 13 weeks' worth of menus, a work schedule, recipes and an easy-to-photocopy shopping list for that week's ingredients. (Beginning today, we're featuring these meal plans and others like them in On the Go each month.)

By using the meal plans and shopping lists, you buy only what you really need at the grocery store, with an expected cost of about $85 a week for a family of four. You don't have to pore over all your cookbooks and come up with menus of your own, and then distill the recipes into a shopping list -- you just go through the pantry and fridge to see what you have on hand, cross that off the list, and get the remaining items at the grocery. If you do it the morning of the day you'll be cooking, you don't even have to put away those groceries.

Each week, you make or do advance preparation for three main dishes -- Week One, for instance, features Better Spaghetti Sauce, Roasted Chicken to Please Everybody and Pork Roast Dijon with Sweet Potatoes -- beginning with the longest-cooking first. In the first week, for instance, you begin by cooking the spaghetti sauce, which simmers between 20 minutes and 1 1/2 hours. Once you've got that started, you put together the roast chicken and vegetables -- that night's dinner -- and while the chicken and vegetables are roasting, you prepare the simple marinade for the pork roast, which can marinate for up to three days in the refrigerator or can be frozen for up to one month.

Recipes are simple and use fresh ingredients where possible, prepared ingredients where necessary to save time. Leftovers, instead of being served in dreary reheated form, are used as the basis for two simple, slightly different dinners later in the week, and for a few grab-and-go lunches. The pork roast leftovers, for instance, become a dinner of pork and spinach roll-ups for four, prepared in all of five minutes.

When I tried this plan, the roast chicken became the first evening's dinner (it was a Friday, but it would have made a fabulous Sunday dinner for a family of four). After dinner, I threw the leftover bones into a stock pot with a carrot, a stalk of celery, some bay leaves and peppercorns and made chicken stock, then chicken noodle soup.

The spaghetti sauce -- which is great to keep on hand in the freezer -- became the next night's dinner, and, well, we're having the pork roast and sweet potatoes (and snow peas) tonight.

When you have meals like that on hand, you'll know exactly what to say next time your darling husband, wife, partner or child has the nerve to ask, "What's for dinner?"

Menu

Tonight: Roasted Chicken to Please Everybody
With: No extras

2nd night: Better Spaghetti Sauce
With: Salad

3rd night: Pork Roast Dijon with Sweet Potatoes
With: Steamed Snow Peas

4th night: Better Nachos (second supper)
With: Carrots, celery sticks

5th night: Baked Pork & Spinach Roll-ups
With: Cherry tomato salad

Grab & Go Lunch: Beef Burritos

Grab & Go Lunch: Chicken Salad Wrap

Grab & Go Lunch: Chop Suey Chicken Salad