Originally Posted by Marie Monday

OK so here's the deal. There is one independent quantity you don't know (number of second courses) and a second unknown quantity (first courses) but this one depends on the second courses. So basically you have only one unknown quantity, because if you know the number of second courses you know the number of firsts too. So you need to solve for the number of second courses, we'll call it x. Then we have:
Number of first courses: 2*x
Number of second courses: x
Number of desserts: 3
Now by the laws of statistics, if you want the total number of combinations (= number of different meals) in this case you multiply these:
2x*x*3 = 6x^2
This has to be equal to 365 if you want a different meal every day, so you solve 6x^2 = 365 for x.
Hope that helps, let me know if something about it isn't clear yet!