It’s that time of day again.
It comes everyday, rain or shine.
As consistent as taxes.
As ignorable as a splinter stuffed paper cut soaked in lemon juice with rubbed in salt.
Dinner time.
I have 3 children and a hardworking husband, and I might deserve a medal because none of them have starved yet.
Here is a compilation of some of the BEST tips I’ve found here and there and everywhere. Probably from Pinterest.
~ Meal plan for the whole week.
~ Shop all at once with an organized grocery list and meals needed for the week.
~ Right when you get home from shopping: chop, wash, and prepare vegetables how you need them and season, cut or trim, and marinate meat.
~ Keep family favorite recipes easy to access in a handy list so you can remember what you liked and didn’t like, and rotate so you don’t forget them.
~ Have a fridge and freezer inventory ready to save time.
I do some of this SOME of the time and NONE of this some of the time.
Some of us *ahum* ME, vacillate on the organization scale based on what is going on hormonally, environmentally, grammatically, or excuses-ly, so I have compiled REAL LIFE meal planning tips that have been useful in my home.
~ Lower your expectations. First define what a “meal” is in your home. A bowl of lentils can constitute a meal for everyone in my house, but it goes down easier with the anticipation of tortilla chips. Second, keep the meals minimal to your definition.
~ You may never have wanted to EVER be the mom who serves *Insert whatever you swore you WOULD NEVER serve: hot-dogs, macaroni, nuggets…* But life happens. Give yourself room to grow.
~ Sometimes snacks can be turned into meals. For example: a meal for my toddlers could be a cut-up pepper, a scoop of hummus, a bunch of cheese and a handful of tortilla chips. (not always true for husbands, but throw a side salad to this and my husband would call it a meal too.)
~ If healthy is your goal, and there are no real dietary restrictions, let healthy be relative- shoot for healthy-ish.
~ Always keep a few dry good “meals” available. Like a canned soup concoction. Dry tortellini and pasta sauce. Canned sardines and green beans. That way, when your fridge and freezer contents fail, you always have a dry good back up plan.
~ Use Pinterest for recipes, but instead of “looks good,” recipes, or “Yeah, I could probably do that,” have a board dedicated to STUPID easy meals! Meals that only contain ingredients you almost always have in your house. Meals that are definitely in your time, budget and skill level, and most importantly, meals that are SO easy, you could get off the computer and cook it right then!
~ Marry someone with low expectations. I know you can’t plan for this, but it certainly helps. My husband is low maintenance when it comes to what I serve. He will eat almost anything. He is a grateful sort of person who is always allowing for simplicity of food and will often offer a solution to my simple fare. He is the key to most of these simplification tips, and I know it won’t always fly in your home, but if you have it, recognize this as a gift and thank your husband before handing him dinner.
~ If you don’t fit into the above category, change your household’s expectations. Perhaps discuss the meal identification plan so you can decide on the minimum deliverable together. Maybe he doesn’t want salad for dinner, but if you throw on a chicken breast, bacon bits, chopped onion or olives it counts! Work together on this.
~ Keep prepared food that can be “bulked.” Freezer chickens, fridge tamales, frozen salmon- any of these go great with a side of broccoli and rice if you’re feeling ambitious.
~ Set a timer so you solve the dinner problem IN THE MORNING. You can spend 5-10 minutes deciding what to cook, thawing meat, turning on the crock pot, doing whatever you can to make it a cinch in the evening.
~ Have a friend hold you accountable- someone who will meal plan with you, or text you “what’s for dinner” as both inspiration and a reminder that if you haven’t thought of it yet, you should.
~ Cook for others. Often, I get inspired by a church meal train, or neighborhood event, to get it together to prep some freezer meals to motivate me to get ahead.
So, when you slap a paper plates onto tonight’s dinner table, whether they contain oyster saffron caviar in truffle oil, or chicken nuggets and green beans, remember “Fed is best.”