Ask the Readers: How do I get dinner on the table if I work full-time?
On my last What I Spent, What We Ate post, reader Susan left the following question:
Do you have many full time working mom who follow your blog? Are they cooking every night? By the time I get home, I’m exhausted. I do cook on the weekend, simple stuff like making hard boiled eggs to last for the week, making yogurt (thanks to Kristen!), making and freezing oatmeal in individual containers so I can take it to work during the week. I still do a lot of take out during the week, which I'd like to reduce. Am I the only mom out there who doesn’t make homemade food every night?
I have a few suggestions for Susan, but I can only be so helpful, given that I'm a work-at-home/homeschooling mom, and the challenges I face are different than the challenges a work-outside-the-home mom faces!
So, I'm going to throw my ideas out there, and then I'm going to ask you experienced working moms to leave your thoughts for Susan in the comments.
Buy some grocery store convenience foods.
Since takeout is pretty expensive per person, you can buy some convenience foods from the grocery store and still be money ahead.
For instance, you could buy a bag of Asian stir-fry with sauce (just throw it into a pan and you've got dinner).
You could buy a rotisserie chicken and add some super easy sides.
Or what about the pre-marinated pork tenderloins/chicken breasts that most grocery stores carry? Those would cook up quickly once you get home.
Frozen pizza works too!
Buy some quick-to-cook foods.
Fish, shrimp, chicken breasts, kielbasa/bratwurst...all of those can be quickly cooked, and with the exception of the chicken breasts, they don't need a lot of extra fancy-ing up.
If you want to add a sauce or marinade, buy some bottles at the grocery store.
(It's not exactly hard to make marinades at home, but if you can just open a bottled one when you get home, you'll be more likely to skip takeout.)
When you do cook, double it if it's freezeable.
If you're making something like pulled pork, taco meat, lasagna, or any other freezable food, make double and put one in the freezer.
Many foods aren't very time-consuming to double, and the small extra effort would be worth it to have a backup in the freezer.
Think outside the dinner box.
As long as no one in your family is seriously opposed, you don't have to serve a traditional meat, potatoes, and vegetable sort of meal.
If you're pressed for time, try something like breakfast for dinner, sandwiches, or quesadillas.
Along the same lines, you can always opt to make something super-duper simple...pasta with jarred sauce, mac and cheese with veggies on the side, and so on.
Dinner doesn't have to be fancy; it just needs to be done.
Try Dinnerly or PrepDish
I reviewed Dinnerly here, but Cliff's Notes: it's a much cheaper version of Blue Apron, and while it's more expensive than from-scratch cooking, it's cheaper than takeout.
Or maybe try PrepDish. It's a service that gives you a make-ahead meal plan, so, you do pretty much all the prep on one weekend day, and then your dinners are mostly ready to go for the week.
I've never tried it myself, but I can so see the appeal for working parents.
Consider using your weekend time to plan/prep main dishes.
It's awesome to prep some breakfasts and lunches ahead of time, but I do generally find that dinner is the most expensive meal to eat out.
So, if you have to choose between working ahead of just one meal, I'd always choose dinner you're likely to save the most money that way.
Give yourself grace and a takeout budget.
Cooking at home doesn't have to be all or none. Could you budget in money for a guilt-free takeout night once a week? or twice?
It's hard to keep making dinner each night, and knowing you can grab takeout one night might help you to hang in there with cooking on the other nights of the week.
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Use your cock pot- after you've had dinner, get it ready with vegetables, meat, etc, refrigerate and the next morning, just plug it in. I do that often when I know I will be gone most of the day. I make my own work schedule but travel some days.
Hmm... a cock pot?? Aha
I saw that!!! I have no idea where the r disappeared to! It looks like CROCK POT is a popular reply though. Maybe that new instant pot also but I have 2 crock pots and was never fond of the pressure cooker in the day. I saved the heavy pan though and use it with another lid to pop popcorn.
Yes! Everyone recommends a crock pot whenever I hint at the fact that cooking is so time-consuming, and that I'm not a big fan of cooking. It's easy and fast. And the food can be super delicious too!
Crockpot dump meals. Got can prep a bunch on the weekends and freeze in gallon zip lock bags. Pull one out the night before and dump in the crockpot before you leave in the morning.
I love Crockpot for having a meal ready when I get home. I HATE cleaning my Crockpot. I'm not a fan of using plastic liners to cook in...so any advice for other liner options or for easier cleaning? I'd definitely use it more if there was an easier way to clean it.
Spray it with nonstick spray, thoroughly and higher than you think the food will go because splashes happen.
Try not to let it sit on "warm" for too long. I find that makes stuff stick worse.
Try to get the leftovers out and put away before you eat so you can soak the bowl in hot water and soap while eating. If that's not possible, make that the first step in your clean up so by the time the rest of the dishes are done, it's soaked a little. And one of those scrubby sponges (sponge on one side, scouring pad on the other) is great for getting the soaked bits off.
And no one says you can't leave it soaking overnight if you've got truly stuck on food. You can always wash it first thing if you're using it again. But soak it with lots and lots of hot water and good dish soap.
But seriously, spray it before you put anything in. That will save a lot of scrubbing.
One word: CROCKPOT ☺ maybe not for every meal, but in combination with some of the convenience foods along with great recipes that are out there, you could have a hot meal on the table when you walk in. My hours are shifting in a couple weeks to later, so I am planning on weekend cooking and crockpot; and my 12y old son to start ball rolling if it isn't a crock pot night.
Guess I should look at the other responses before I write; but glad we have the crock pot subject thoroughly covered!
I'm a full-time working mom. Most days I get home between 5 and 6, and my kids want to eat at 6.30 - 6.45 because bedtime is at 8 pm, so what I mainly do is cook double or do super quick things I can cook in 30 minutes.
more on my blog here 🙂
http://www.marciafrancois.com/blog/2017/09/14/how-i-do-menu-planning/
http://www.marciafrancois.com/blog/2017/09/11/why-you-should-menu-plan/
I bought a soup maker last week. I have my vegetables chopped so when I get home I put them in the soup maker, add stock and it's cooked and blended in 21 minutes. So quick and easy ... if your family like soup that is. I absolutely love it!
I'm a work at home, homeschooling mom like Kristen. But I struggle with the cooking myself. I find it best if I do a few of the things Kristen mentioned. Definitely buy some of the packaged goods to make meal time quicker and easier. I do quick meals alot, like breakfast, pigs in a blanket, pan fried kielbasa and potatoes. So good.
My family also enjoys eating out, which is something everyone wants to kick. But we have just learned ways to eat cheaper out but still get to do that. This is helpful because I don't enjoy all the cooking and at least one night a week we end up going out to eat.
I think the key is to give yourself grace, and to realize that you don't have to have the perfect meals. You're doing a great job and your best for your family and that's all that matters.
We have a water rule when eating out, you would be surprised how much beverages add to a takeout bill. We also have our 2 young boys share an adult meal vs two kids meals. Better food and sometimes there is a little left over for one of the boys to eat for lunch the next day.
Yes! Both of those are things we do too!! And we also pack a meal for our kids alot of times, since you never know if they're going to eat it or not. The older they get, we have done this a bit less. But we still choose frugal ways to enjoy our eating out 🙂
Yes, I was also thinking the crock pot! Especially with the weather becoming cooler now. Have a soup or chili night.
I worked 30 years, full-time with kids at home for 25 of those years. Planning is key. We have the tradition of Sunday supper, an occasion when I cook a larger meat meal such as a roast turkey breast. Monday easily becomes "planned overs" (I made a turkey pot pie). Tues and Th were Crockpot meals, Wed was pasta night (make sauce on weekend if needed, or use CP), and Fri was a quick and easy meal, sometimes a soup and sandwich night. Sat continues to be soup/sandwich night (weather dependent) as an opportunity to clean out the fridge and avoid food waste, as well as to free up my time for running errands, catching up on household chores. I continue to keep "emergency meals" on hand such as a jar of pasta sauce to top whatever pasta I grab, canned/fzn veg,, my premade lasagna (fzn), homemade fzn meatballs, etc. For health and economy reasons, I scratch cook daily for the most part. The aforementioned tricks are what I have done. Many of my co-workers also spend the weekend cooking ahead to make the upcoming week go smoother. HTH
GREAT ADVICE!! I was going to share something similar.
My family all lived on the same street growing up so sometimes they'd rotate who cooked dinner that night. My single mom + aunt whose husband worked out of town worked it out so they might only cook 2-3 nights each week instead of every night. I could totally see this working with neighbors or friends too!
Also--would just like to add that as moms we often stress about dinner and making sure all of the food groups are accounted for, but there is no shame at all in sandwiches + microwaved veggies/fruit if the day has been tough. Your kids will probably love it more than a dinner you worked on for hours. 🙂
I totally agree with Carol and Becky. Planning is key and not over stressing things. I think all of us working moms/folks who make dinner every night use a crock pot at some point during the week. I also only go to the grocery store one day a week. Stopping in to pick something up after work is the biggest time suck ever.
The other thing that has helped make things easier is that I do all the prep the night before. So, if I am planning on having pan fried burgers with fried onions, I pre-chop the onions and have a bag of frozen veggies planned for. If I am doing anti-pasta platter for dinner, I have the lettuce pre-washed and the other stuff all ready for assembly. I even have a little area on my counter and in my fridge so that I put the prep'd stuff. No thinking required.
Taking a few minutes the night before so that when you get home things are ready to hit the pan makes all the difference. It's hard when you're tired to think about lunch packing and dinner prep for the next day but for me, taking an extra twenty minutes to do this is the difference between a crazy day or a day when I have conquered parenting and dinner.
YES. you roast or grill a whole chicken (or two) on sunday, and use the leftovers for sandwiches or tacos or salad or a pot of soup later in the week. this way you're not "cooking" every night, and the nights when you do cook, you make it count. you can also cook two whole chickens in different ways or chicken breasts where half are plain and half have jerk sauce or asian marinade on them. a little new bread and/or new salad go a long way in making the whole dinner feel new.
some nights we also prep the next night's dinner after bedtime - chop some things up, or prep a pan that just needs to get shoved in the oven the next day.
there is *zero* shame in sandwiches for dinner. we do that one night a week and eat all kinds of pickles and olives and lupini beans with them — all things that live in jars in the fridge.
good luck!
I was a full time traveling mommy of 2 babies... here’s what worked for me.
1. Make a schedule. Making dinner is so much harder if you have to plan when you get home. Know you are making burgers with corn before you leave for work.
2. Prep as much as you can. I always would chop veggies when I got home from shopping or in the morning before work. Making fajitas is painless when you can just dump meat and veggies in the pan.
3. Loosen your expectations for dinner. I grew up in a house with a stay at home mom who made a protein, a starch and a veggie every night for dinner. It’s ok to say Monday is panini night and that be it. (There were 2 years where my kids had cereal for dinner on Tuesdays.)
Our current plan:
Monday - pasta
Tuesday - tacos
Wednesday - traditional dinner
Thursday - paninis
Friday - pizza
I like how your simple meal plan takes most of the thought out of it! Easy decisions take away the effort. Also I think we should think about how much you personally ENJOY cooking bc that is a factor. Not everyone likes to cook! Great suggestions in this post!
I HAVE THOUGHTS ON THIS SUBJECT!
I am a long-time reader of Kristen's, and I have had a high-pressure, typically long-hours job the whole time. I also have a spouse who doesn't cook at all, so the cooking for the family falls exclusively to me. I also really care about scratch cooking, so convenience foods are largely (but not entirely) out.
1) take a hard look at your daily schedule and see where you can find 20 minutes. It will really depend on your individual schedule. I used to do split it between 10 minutes the night before and ten minutes during breakfast prep, now with an earlier end to my day, I have twenty minutes before daycare pickup.
That twenty minutes is your prep time. That's the time to cube the squash, slice the onions, tak rout meat to thaw (if necessary), etc. In the fridge they go! That way everything should be ready for you when you come home and the kids are whining that they are hungryyyyyyyyy.
2) keep it relatively simple. In winter, I save the fancier meals for the weekends when I have more time. Mondays are soup and grilled cheese, Tuesdays are pasta, Wednesday is a sheet pan dinner, and Thursday is tacos. In summer, we use the grill a lot more, and it becomes whatever meat we are grilling (burgers, chicken sausages, skewers, or Miami ribs) plus a quick veg (typically corn on the cob or whatever can be tossed on the grill at the same time as the meat) plus either a fruit or veggie salad. That's as complicated as I get with meal planning because I am finicky about meal planning.
3) Double up if you can. After a "fancier" meal on the weekend, I make a pot of stock overnight in the slow cooker Sunday night. It becomes Monday night's soup with grilled cheese. Thursday night is taco night simply because you can put pretty much anything in a tortilla and call it a taco, so it clear south the leftovers before the weekend.
4) you will need 'emergency' dinners in your back pocket for those days when it is just not happening. Breakfast for dinner is ours, plus I always keep aside some extra soup from those giant slow cookers-full in a Tupperware in the freezer.
5) meat is our house is either quick cooking (chicken sausages!) or long cooking (beef ribs and the like). There is no middle ground. One gets on the table fast, the other can handle the long, slow times of the slow cooker. Anything in between gets eaten out somewhere other than my kitchen 🙂
6) Kristen's blog was actually really helpful in reminding me to keep it simple. There is nothing wrong with having cut-up fruit or veggies and dip as your side dish!
One last thought on eating out: we definitely do it. It's one of my favourite things to do. But. With little kids, if we eat out, we typically eat out for breakfast or brunch, not dinner. It's typically cheaper than dinner, and we have a better chance of good behaviour in the morning when everybody is fresh for the day rather than cranky and tired.
This is great, thanks!
Great ideas. I'm also a long hours worker trying to avoid convenience foods (more expensive & isn't that why I'm working long hours?). I've got about 30 minutes to get food on the table. I prep some on weekends (chopping) and if I'm making lasagna or enchiladas, I always make 2 and freeze one. The one night a week that my husband cooks, he either grills burgers and bakes homemade fries, or he makes pasta. Our regular rotation also includes stir-fry, burrito bowls, baked potato bar, chili, soup, and something with quinoa.
Cut up fruit & veggies with dip is a new addition at my table and now it is much better.
I will also chime in with learn to use your crock pot to help you! If you are gone for a long day invest in one with a timer! Once you get into the routine you will find you save so much time! Buy that LARGE beef roast.. divide the meat and serve 1 night with instant or microwaved store bought mashed tater and a side of veg... turn some of the juices into gravy.. Either freeze the leftovers for a future pot roast meal or make over... you can use some for beef and cheese paninis... or beef and noodles... toss leftover juices, canned tomatos.. bag of frozen mixed veg and seasonings and you have a crock pot of soup the next night.. freeze half of that for another night!
On weekends when you have a little more time to cook.. roast 2 chickens instead of one.. have chicken for supper, make a pot pie or a prep a pot of chicken and dumplings... ( just reheat and add bisquik dumplings that night, make chicken salad for a sandwich night.. boil down bones and then you have the start of a chicken a veg stew or soup for the crock one day..
I make homemade meat balls in bulk and flash freeze them and bag up..( use lean beef).. I toss them into my crock pot frozen.. cover in my favorite jarred sauce..add any extra seasonings.. and cook on low ( timer would be great here)... serve on buns, or with your pasta of choice...
New slow cookers can come with a timer built in, but I have a Christmas tree timer, and it works great. Random advice 😉
This is amazing!!! My crockpot works fine but I really wanted a timer. You just saved me a new crockpot bc I totally have a timer in the attic for lights!
Ah!!! Never thought of that, thanks!
Question: How does the timer work? Can I put cold food in the crockpot at 7AM before I leave for work & I can set it to turn on at noon (so the food will be ready when we get home at 6PM?) Are there any food safety issues here? Is it ok to leave cold food in the crockpot that long, just standing on the counter? I am worried about food poisoning with a crockpot...
ServSafe certified here- your safe window is maximum 4 hours in the temperature danger zone; 40-140 degrees Fahrenheit. So usually, if you're just delaying a couple hours, you'll be fine. Plus, if you're cooking it up to a temperature of 165F before serving, that's hot enough to kill off the vast majority of food-borne bacteria and viruses. I'd be more worried about it shutting off early than I ever would be about setting it to start later.
I don't think you should leave the food in the crock pot for more than two hours before the timer turns it on. That's a long time for it to cook, but maybe on low it would work, especially if it switches to warm for a few hours after the time is up.
Get an instant pot. Godsend. Keeps food safe up to 10hours after cooking. Also great for quick homemade weeknight meals.
I work full time and find its important to plan out dinners during the weekend and have the ingredients on hand. I also meal prep to reduce the time/effort during the week. Meal prep for me is: make a big batch of some kind of grain (rice, quinoa, buckwheat) so I only need to reheat during the week. Wash and cut up veggies (some veggies such as red bell pepper or zucchinis I might cook ahead of time and then its super easy to add them to frittatas or fajitas or salads), roast chicken for weekend dinner and make enough to have for leftover (chicken is super easy to add diff flavors to and change up). As Kristen mentioned, its also important to have emergency options (for me that would be frozen burritos or frozen flatbread pizza) and pantry staples (tortillas keep forever in the fridge, I always have a backup package of cheese, canned tomatoes and broth, etc).
I also recommend the crock pot - I work part-time and it's my go-to on the days I work. I also plan my meals a week in advance so I know exactly 1. what needs to be bought at the store and 2. Exactly what needs to be done when it's time to cook. If it's not a crock pot night then it's usually a grill meal, something I've tossed in a marinade that morning or burgers. I also do a "find your own food night" once a week or so; my daughter is young so it's not fully implemented but basically means leftovers or whatever you put together yourself. Good luck!
I think the single biggest thing you can do (coming from a SAHM), is find time to plan your meals. Look at your weekly schedule and pick meals that will realistically work for the time you have.
As a full-time-working-and-single mom, I have found that planning is the key. I tend to rebel against myself if I decide ahead of time that "tonight is tacos" or whatever. So I do a loose plan of 5 or so meals that we will have in the week before I go to the grocery and shop for those things. Then, I know I have what I need to make the meals we picked and can decide when I get home what we "feel like" eating.
On the one evening with fewest commitments I will cook 2 meals or all of my meats so that it is easy to just reheat and add a side on a busy night. Sometimes this is Sunday afternoon, sometimes it's a week night. I usually plan when this will be when I'm looking at the week. Sunday is family time and I hate to fill it with cooking if I don't have to.
I also keep meals really simple & clean. I don't use bottle sauces or pre-packed foods because I don't find the ingredients appropriate for me or my family (too much sugar, msg, partially hydrogenated something or other). So dinner is usually something like a chicken breast or pork chop that is salt & peppered and seared in a pan then stuck in the oven to finish up with some sauteed green beans or snap peas and a cut up apple. Less prep and clean up that way as well. We vary the taste a little with adding spices before I cook the meat.
I'm a 50-55 hour/week working mama, plus my school, plus one of my kids is in club soccer, so we're ALL of the busy all the time... Meal planning is my saving grace, and I realized a long time ago that I have to get rid of the mindset of having to have "perfect" dinners or whatever for the family every night. It doesn't have to be perfect to be good enough, and sometimes when we're at our wits end and exhausted, good enough IS perfect. I try to cook most nights, but don't beat myself up if there's not a homecooked, from scratch meal on the table on the night. Sometimes you just CAN'T.
I make a point to plan for easier/faster things on nights when we have soccer and have to be out in a rush, also things that can be repurposed into multiple meals. For example, I'll buy one of those giant packages of chicken breasts, throw it in the crockpot on Sunday with some basic seasonings, and it will be chicken tacos one night, BBQ chicken sandwiches/salad another night, tossed in some pasta or to make some chicken fried rice, then I just have to worry about side dishes, which is usually either fresh raw fruit or veggies, or whatever frozen/fresh veggies I have tossed in the toaster oven to roast.
Keep stuff on hand for quick easy dinners that can be thrown together on the fly- a can of beans, tortillas, cheese and some leftover rice from earlier in the week become a burrito or quesadilla, cheese and bread for grilled cheese sandwiches, etc and then applesauce or whatever on the side that I have laying around.
I also keep some snacky convenience food type things for when there is simply no time or energy to actually cook- my kids are fond of frozen mini tacos or freezer pizzas, so I always have those on hand- they can toss those in the toaster oven if I'm caught up working- those and an apple make a perfectly acceptable dinner, and they're not dying of malnutrition any time soon. And sometimes, we just have "pick pick" dinners, where everyone just kind of fends for themselves, be it leftovers from earlier in the week, frozen waffles and an egg, pb&j, etc.
My toaster oven is a lifesaver- hardly any preheating time, as is my crockpot.
I agree that meal planning is a major help with getting dinner made every night so you can avoid take out. I also try to keep things simple during the week - coney dogs, spaghetti w/italian sausage, tacos, burgers, salads, tuna casserole, breakfast for dinner, etc. I make sure I write my menu down in my planner so I know what I'm doing before I leave work - we also have the menu on a dry erase board in the kitchen so my family knows what to expect (and aren't asking if we can get pizza!)
I don't tend to do a lot of prep work for dinner. I use my crock pot for roasts during the week & will buy pre-made mashed potatoes to save time. I'll grill a bunch of chicken all at once & will account for it in my menu - for example, chicken breasts w/salad on Tuesday & then Thursday chicken quesadillas to use up the stuff I already cooked. "Homemade" pizza means I buy pre-made crust at the store & let the kids top with cheese & sauce.
I save big dinners for the weekend when I have more time. I like homemade bread but I use my bread machine to do all the hard work. I will also run home on my lunch break to prep stuff since I only work a short distance away.
Our family does best with avoiding take out when we plan our meals on the weekend. I really love the Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook that Kristen has mentioned before as well at the 30 minute meal paper inserts in Cook's Country. They are super great for during the week. The Test Kitchen Pasta Revolution book also has lots of quick recipes. I also find the Instant Pot helpful!
I want to second the ATK Quick family Cookbook. I bought it back when Kristen mentioned it. It has a variety of really tasty meals (a number of them our family favourites now). What I like most is that it has a variety of methods to save time during dinner prep. Crock pot is one, but things like batch cooking, big weekend roasts with uses for leftovers, ready to serve entrees straight from fridge, oven ready casseroles and make ahead and reheat ideas.
Ooops, I just pulled the book out and it's actually ATK The Make-Ahead Cook.
1. Crockpot!!
2. Prepare the night before, after the kids are in bed. Pop in oven when you get home.
3. Eat simply. Bread+cheese+cut veggies+fruit = meal
4. Make big batchs (spaghetti sauce, meatballs...) during the week-end and freeze
The Instapot or Pressure Cooker has helped me so much! Chicken from frozen in 10 minutes! It’s unreal and the meat is soooo juicy! That and microwave vegetables from the freezer aisle. The pressure cooker I have is a three in one that is a pressure cooker, slow cooker and rice cooker. I highly recommend the rice cooker function as well, perfect rice every time. You u can even get a second pot to put in it so you can do the rice and the meat without having to wash dishes. It will seriously save time and keep you from take out. If your whole meal is from the pressure cooker, your hands on time is less than 10 minutes. The rest is just waiting.
I'd love to hear more about the brand you bought. This sounds ideal for us.
Patti,
I am interested in hearing more about the Instapot (Is that a pressure cooker?) You can put frozen meat in it and it gets cooked in 10-15 minutes?
How sad and antiquated that this question (and answer) assumes the mom should do all the cooking. One way for working parents to get dinner on the table is for dad to do half (or more!) of the work. And older kids can do it too.
Second, dinners need not be fancy. Scramble a couple eggs or fry/sauté a piece of chicken plus some steamed veggies and you have dinner in 10-15 minutes. Or sandwiches with healthy fillings is dinner in 10 minutes. Or make 1 or two big dishes on the weekend (lasagne, any casserole, stew, soup, stir fries) and eat that for dinner all week. Hummus plus veggies and fruit are a healthy dinner in under 5 minutes. No need to be gourmet. No need to eat out.
It may be antiquated by the world still isn't perfect. We're all just trying to do th best for our families with what we have
I agree that it's disappointing that many people are still assuming that meal planning/prep/cooking is all a woman's job only, but thankfully at least there is definitely nothing stopping anyone (man or woman) from reading this helpful post and gleaning some great tips from the post and comments! And, I like your point that both partners, as well as any kids can also be put to work in the rotation of helping prepare meals. In our family of 4 kids (growing up in the late 80's/early 90's), that's something we kids each had to do once we reached our pre-teen/teen years. Each of us was assigned a certain night where the meal would be our responsibility to prepare and serve.
I can't speak for everyone else, but I didn't want to assume that Susan had a significant other, or children (her question wasn't clear about her family situation). I just answered based on the information that I had.
At my house, I do most of the cooking, but here Mr. FG has a full-time outside-the-home job and I do not. So it makes sense for me to cook because I'm here at the house more of the time. If I was out of the house as many hours as Mr. FG is, we might arrange things differently.
(I say "might" because I think it's quite possible to split work up without splitting each task 50/50. Like, one person could do 100% of the cleaning and one person could do 100% of the cooking, for example.)
Funny, my response was going to be, share the task! My husband used to work in a restaurant when he was young, so he is experienced with cooking under pressure and producing a fabulous meal in no time with few ingredients. As he clearly enjoys cooking more than I do, I started doing other things around the house or taking the kids to their hobbies while he whips up a fabulous dinner from scratch.
We do keep it simple by having some quality ingredients always in the pantry (olive oil, Parmesan, nuts, sea salt, crushed tomatoes) and growing our own herbs. Then, we rotate the starches like pasta, rice, potatoes, and tortillas, oven roast veggies in season to go with it (any veggie tastes great with sea salt and olive oil!), and cook up a source of protein that doesn't always have to be meat.
My Dad who will soon be 93 always has done all of the cooking including grocery shopping and cleaning up the kitchen afterward. My Mom has always done the laundry and cleaning the rest of the house. They both worked full time while I was growing up, and I guess I never really thought about the fact that my Dad cooked instead of my Mom. 🙂
In our home, I do not work full time so I cook most of the meals although my husband grills for us.
Thanks for all the great responses. Yes, I do have a husband but he doesn't participate in any of the cooking or dinner preparations. I also have a 16 year old varsity long distance runner who is starving when he gets home (and has to immediately start on homework for all his AP classes...which can take until Midnight to finish) My husband's response to dinner issues is "let's get take out, delivery or go out to eat." I'm lucky my teenager has so much homework & doesn't have time for the more expensive "eating out."
I am still trying to find out the answer to food safety issues with crockpots. Is it safe to leave cold food in the crockpot for 4-5 hours before the crockpot turns on & cooks food which will be ready at 6PM? I can't turn it on low and cook it for 11-12 hours, right?
You could do a really enormous cut of beef for 11 to 12 hours. I've always heard you cannot let the food sit out for 4 or 5 hours without cooking. I'm enjoying this thread even though I am a WAHM. I have 6 kids and we homeschool. Fancy meals are not happening.
Keep it simple during the week. Tacos, pasta, sandwhiches, crockpot meals are some examples. Frozen veggies heated in the microwave make a quick side dish. Prep what you can on the weekend. I like to brown ground beef and freeze it, you can get tacos on the table in minutes doing that.
If you are married team up with your husband. He will supervise homework while I cook dinner for example, or I will do dishes while
He takes the kid to sports practice. Keeps things from being so busy in the evenings
Where does your spouse/significant other fit into this (if you have one)? Could you split the task of making supper? Both my husband and I work full time but he works from home and finishes at 4:15-4:30 so he does supper. As he is not a morning person, I do the morning routine and make the kids lunches. If we had to wait for me to get home to cook, it would not be pretty (hangry children are the worst).
I know it might not work in your situation but there is no reason that the meal prep needs to fall entirely on you.
I meal plan by the week, but don't assign days as I'm likely to switch things around.
A typical week has a few more time consuming meals and a bunch of quick ones.
We eat late. Our kids take baths before dinner (while it's cooking) so we'all often eat at 7:00. I put out sliced raw veggies and fruit starting at 5:00 so they graze on those pre-dinner.
We have a bunch of low involvement meals in our rotation:
-Indian food (sauce premade from Costco and frozen until used) add sautéed veggies and leftover meat from the grill.
-Marcela Hazan's butter and tomato onion sauce with pasta (google this one it's awesome)
-Roasted veggies with Parmesan polenta (using quick cooking Italian polenta - cooks in 2 minutes!), salami
-Big salads: whatever greens we have on hand, hard boiled eggs, garlic bread, blue cheese, apples, etc.
-Soups and grilled sandwiches. We own one of those crazy panini presses and I swear it's a godsend when you have four hungry people. I can get four sandwiches cooked in about three minutes. Our fave weeknight store bought soup is Pacific's Tomato Pepper.
Not everyone has this luxury, but my life got easier when I let my husband in the kitchen! He now cooks at least 2 nights a week and I am saner because of it!
Me too...but I had to get very needy before I wanted anyone else in there.
Seconding all the meal planning comments. I have a really solid rotation of meals, so I can walk in the door and start cooking right away when I come home. I also double up and freeze the extras and have meals that use something from a previous night--I can stop at Costco to get groceries on the way home and we'll have a rotisserie chicken for dinner that night and chicken pot pie the next. Or pulled pork sandwiches one night and nachos another. I also package frozen things ready to go--so I freeze one pound of ground beef, a chopped onion and two cloves of garlic together, because that's my base for chili (and I measure the spices twice when I make chili, so the next time I can just dump the container in). Aldi's pork tenderloin is a favorite quick meal, along with a veggie and boxed cous cous or rice blend.
Even if you don't have "Wednesday taco night", have a list of options--when you're feeling stuck in your plans you can look at your list. Mine is: 2 fish, 1 vegetarian, 1 beef, 1 pork, 1 chicken, 1 (chicken) sausage in a week. Crockpot/oven/stove/grill.
If I don't have a plan I can't get dinner on the table--I end up pulling something random out.
I have a full-time (and more) job, but no kids, and what works for me is doing most of my cooking on the weekend. I will cook two or three things that can last the week, and then I either eat the same things all week, or I freeze some of it and swap it for previously cooked meals from the freezer for variety. I usually plan to get some takeout or go out for dinner towards the end of the week, which gives me a break from meal planning and eating the same thing! If I don't cook on weekends, then I will either hate weeknights or eat takeout every night.
I also agree with getting your partner to contribute to the cooking (and also the mental effort of meal planning/shopping). As women, we're conditioned to take on all of the household responsibilities, which makes zero sense when both partners are working full-time. Men need to step up!
Also, if your kids are old enough, consider giving them one evening each week when they are responsible for planning/cooking dinner. My Mom did this when she went back to work (my brother and I were in our early teens), and it gave her two nights off from cooking while also teaching my brother and I to cook and plan.
I work full time and have a 12 year old son who plays soccer year-round. I try and cook extra on weekends, or make sure the meals I cook on the weekends yield a lot of left overs. I also keep things like cheese, bread, lunch meat, soups and other "snacky" foods on hands for quicker meals. Thankfully my family is ok with "winging" it on occasion and isn't super picky about what is for dinner. I don't cook full course meals during the week and sometimes there isn't fruit or veg (gasp) with every meal. Everyone seems to be well fed and happy, and that makes it a win for me.
I'm a huge fan of freezer meals. I'm part of a freezer meal exchange. I also look for meats on sale and make several of one item to stock my freezer. My meal planning on the weekend then consists of taking a few items from the freezer and allowing them to thaw. I'm then able to plan the meals around our schedule. Early practice time for the kids might mean tacos or carnitas. An hour or so I'm not at home might mean baking a pasta casserole. My sides are typically a frozen vegetable. I find the quality of Costco's frozen organic broccoli to be fantastic. My exchange group also does items for the grill where everyone marinates a meat. The prep is already done for you!
I work full time and have for 23 years. SUNDAY IS THE DAY to prepare.
Crock pot meal every Monday....I hate Mondays...I come home and dinner is done.
I keep it simple the other days.
Breakfast for dinner
Sandwiches and fruit
Pasta night
I use my crock pot , george foreman grill and rice cooker a lot.
etc
We do not eat out but twice a month. Once will be Subway and once will be local delicious mexican joint.
I didn't see it mentioned in the other comments, but if there's room in the budget you should consider investing in an InstantPot. They are AMAZING. I have the 7-in-1, and I use it for so many things! I make big batches of brown rice on Sundays, to keep in the fridge for meals during the week. I also use it to make beans (black beans are so easy and fuss-free in there!), hard-boiled eggs (you can peel them with one hand - no joke), yogurt, cook whole chickens (20min on high pressure), and pot roasts. I also use it as a slow-cooker, especially for things that require sauteeing or browning ingredients first, since you can do that right in the InstantPot and then add the remaining ingredients and set it to slow cook.
Note- cooking times are not necessarily faster than stovetop or oven, since you have to let it get up to pressure and then let the pressure come back down after your dish is finished cooking, and that adds a bit of time (~10min or so, usually). But I've had zero cooking fails in the InstantPot and my success rate on the stove and in the oven is good but not THAT good. I also appreciate that I can just put everything in, seal it up, set it and walk away, and I don't have to worry about something cooking for too long or not getting stirred frequently enough.
Yes! I have the 7 in 1 six quart Instant Pot and my whole family loves that thing. My son-in-law bought one after he asked if he could borrow mine and I started growling at him like a rabid dog, lol! He and my daughter both work full-time, demanding jobs and have a five year old who gets hangry if dinner is a second past 6:30. My son-in-law is usually home first so he sits my granddaughter down with some carrot sticks and spends about ten minutes putting together a meal in the IP, sets it to cook and then helps the child with homework, starts some laundry or some other chore. Twenty to thirty minutes later, dinner is ready and there's only one pot to clean. I wish I'd had an Instant Pot when I was working while my children were still at home. I had a slow cooker but I was never a big fan of them. Food always seemed overcooked, mushy and..... I don't know.....just didn't taste right. I have none of those issues with the IP. My whole family is very into cooking/eating non processed foods and the IP makes it very easy for us to not rely on packaged foods when we're too tired to cook and want to whip up a quick, satisfying meal.
Thanks. I'm going to buy one. Clark Howard has a link to one on sale on Amazon!
The most significant thing I have learned is you cannot decide what you're cooking AFTER arriving home that night. Awesome if you have already planned the weekend prior or the night before. Even if you decide what you're eating on the drive home, you're light years ahead, because then you can start preparing the moment you walk in the door, rather than staring in the fridge while kids are whining for a snack.
Also, not every meal needs to be instagrammed. Not every meal is going to hit every nutritional box. Just so long as something makes it to the table, you're good to go.
lots of good ideas - so i won't repeat. but in brief, i like to use my crockpot on the weekend to make some sort of cooked meat that can be repurposed during the week for tacos, wraps, on rice, etc. i also like to prep a casserole on sunday that i can bake on monday... some sort of baked pasta, chicken, etc. i also cook things in big batches that can be frozen, like soups, meatloaf "muffins", breakfast casseroles, etc. then i can defrost and have dinner ready quickly! aside from that, my biggest hurdle is a side dish. i do try to give myself grace over what a meal is, but i like to eat veggies too! so these days, with a toddler and a FT job, i am in love with bagged salads and frozen veggies. not glamorous but it gets the job done!
Absolutely agree on bagged salad and frozen veggies! Last night, I made a thai noodle dish and all the veggies were pre-cut/shredded. It was the only way it was going to get done last night. I paid extra for the convenience, but it was far less than it would have been to eat out.
I work from home but have 3 teenagers with busy schedules. Some weeks are better than others. I use a lot of the strategies mentioned above but have a few additions. For crock pot meals, I like to do stuff that is either a beef roast or lands on a bun. italian beef, pulled pork are great and some raw veggies + chips are good enough for sides. I occasionally do chicken breasts in the crock pot with a pack of taco seasoning and salsa and make burrito bowls. For stuff like that, the bags of 90 second rice finish things off quickly. rice+chicken+cheese+can of corn+fresh salsa from the deli counter+ cheese+shreds lettuce is really quick and the kids can pick and choose their toppings.
Meals with ground meat are the quickest/easiest for me. Tacos, sloppy joes, chili, pasta with meat sauce. I sub in ground turkey for the ground beef often.
A few times a winter I do a big batch of meatballs and put them in the freezer. They take awhile to cook, but I can have one of the kids throw them in the oven if needed a little earlier.
Shrimp cooks super fast if you can get your kids to eat it. I am not so lucky!
Good luck mama. It is hard to balance it all, and I don't feel bad about chinese takeout, Subway or ordering a pizza here or there. Sometimes somethings got to give!
Lots of great suggestions! One thing that helped me tremendously was identifying the areas where I needed actual skills, and then doing something about it. I was very weak at knife skills. Chopping veggies took forever, and I dreaded it so much. Several years ago I took an online knife skills class (through Craftsy...it was free) and then I practiced and cut up all my veggies on Sunday afternoon for the week. Now I can chop everything up much faster and I'm not a menace to myself. That also led me to learn more about cooking in general, and I have far fewer cooking fails and can make a lot of things from scratch in less time than convenience foods. Plus feeling competent in the kitchen makes it much more enjoyable (to me anyway).
I mentioned frozen veggies that you can microwave earlier but I just thought about the chopped ones I get frozen too. I can either buy an onion and chop it - I save 50ish cents and spend 5 minutes chopping (give or take) or I can spend 50 cents more and avoid a step. The prechopped veggies in the deli are VERY expensive but the freezer ones - especially store brand - aren’t much more, are just as nutritious and save LOTS of time.
I also had a high pressure 50 plus hour a week job when my kids were little. I was the primary breadwinner. My husband was an elementary school teacher so he was home with the kids after school. He cooked dinner at least 4 nights a week and fed the kids. I cooked on the weekends and for the holiday meals. I just didn't get home until 7 ish. Then the kids wanted my time - to help with homework, to take a walk or just to talk. My husband needed that time to grade papers. The meals were very easy to prepare - what you have talked about such as pasta, chicken fingers, hamburgers, scrambled eggs and so on. The small town (outer, outer, outer suburb) we lived in didn't have much in the way of take out food. I think the long commute/work times are a commonplace if you live in an expensive urban area (and have to commute for affordable housing.)
Now with an empty nest my husband and I both have much more time to prepare time intensive meals, to bake bread, to try new recipes, etc. Also we now live in a small town and my job requires a reasonable 40 hours with a 7 minute commute.
I work full time as well. When I search for recipes I always use the "quick and easy" or "30 minutes or less" options.
Some go-tos in our house are
1. Rotisserie Chicken ($4.99 at Costco!) We get 2 meals. 1 plain chicken and the 2nd shredded in something like tacos or with bbq sauce.
2. Giant bag of frozen veggies. 3 minutes in the micro and you have a healthy side to go with protein
3. Frozen meatballs. With pasta, on subs, or with greek seasoning (they taste like Gyros!).
Also, I look at my week. On particularly busy or scheduled days we can do take-out or pbj sandwiches and fruit.
I save the complex cooking for the weekend. Sunday afternoon I made a meatloaf and 2 quiches that we will eat on all week.
I totally feel Susan's pain. I work full time, blog in my spare time and have 2 kids under 5. Here is what works for me:
1. I cook large batches of food on the weekend - usually 2 - 3 recipes and we eat that for the rest of the week. I usually double or triple the recipes so we have enough.
2. When I make something (muffins, waffles, etc.), I always double or triple the recipe so we have extras. Sometimes I'll freeze the surplus but it doesn't usually last more than a few days at my house so that's rare.
3. When I know I'll be short on time, I pick a couple of recipes and prep the ingredients in small pockets of time usually on Friday evening or Saturday morning. I'll chop the veggies, defrost the meat and put everything in containers in the fridge. That way when I have a bigger pocket of time, say 20-30 minutes, I can quickly put together the meal and shove it in the oven or let it simmer while I do something else with the kids. Having everything already prepped is a huge timesaver.
4. I'll prep and freeze some ingredients. For example, I'll cook several pounds of ground beef and freeze them in 2 cup containers so I can pull to defrost for a quick meal. I also chop up and freeze things like onions, peppers, etc. that I tend to use frequently for meals. That way I can just quickly pull them out and use them to cook. Often times, I don't even need to defrost since the pan does that for me.
5. We have theme nights for a couple of nights to keep things flexible. Fridays are pizza nights and Saturdays are usually take out nights for us. We do the same with weekend lunches. Weekend lunches are usually sandwiches (tuna, salami, PB&J) with veggies and fruit to keep things simple.
6. I have some convenient foods on hand or buy some to save time. I usually keep tamales on hand for busy nights. You can serve those with a salad and sides (rice & beans). I also buy a rotisserie chicken about once a month and we have it for dinner. The rest can be used to make chicken noodle soup or chicken tortilla soup and the bones can be thrown in the crockpot for chicken broth.
7. I've been experimenting with freezer cooking a bit lately as well. I'll prep everything for a crockpot meal and freeze it in a gallon bag then thaw and throw it in the crockpot on weekends when I'm short on time.
Sorry for all of the info. I hope some of this is helpful!
very helpful! I love the idea about cooking the ground beef ahead of time and freezing it in two cup containers!
I work outside of the home 40 hours a week, and they are almost opposite what Hubby works. So here's my plan:
I shop on Mondays for the week, and that night we have sammies that I pre-make and set in a container in the fridge. Tuesday is a crock pot night, Wednesday is a salad night and I pre-make those and set in individual tubs in the fridge. Thursday is a "Heat and Eat" plate or skillet meal that they can re-heat. Friday is another crock pot night. On crock pot nights there is usually a side for them to heat up. I have designated a shelf in the fridge for that night's meal. Most dinners require that I prep it as I get ready for work. The salad night is most labor intensive but not terribly so. And I usually pack my "lunch" with whatever they are having that night for dinner, too. Usually on Fridays I buy groceries we need for the weekend and that involves us grilling. My overall goal is that no one has to destroy my kitchen after they've been at work or school all day so I don't come home to a mess at 11 p.m. and they have a nice meal. It's been working really well!
Full time working mom of two teenage boys here, Single Mother by Choice so I am the only adult in the picture. My frugal nature won't let me do take out or buy very much prepared food, so my go to meals are:
1. Pasta - such a variety of types that can all be ready in less than 30 minutes! Some examples - spaghetti with meatballs (frozen or homemade then frozen) and red sauce, pasta with pesto, pasta with olive oil and parmesan cheese (with or without frozen peas thrown for the last 30 seconds), ravioli (Store brand frozen), lemon pasta (olive oil, lemon juice and parmesan cheese with mint or basil in the summer!) Torteillini (Barilla or Trader Joes Shelf Stable) with red sauce or oil and cheese. We probably have pasta at least twice a week. I use Trader Joes Canned Sauce (surprisingly good and very affordable) or I make it myself on weekends and freeze it. I am a vegetarian but do cook meat for my boys - that said we have lots of meatless pasta meals.
2. Summer grill time we have burgers (veggie and regular) or grilled sausage or hot dogs once a week or so. I also grill all meat in the summer - nothing takes longer than 15 minutes. Examples are chicken thighs or breasts, steak, pork chops, 1 pounds pork loins. I generally think about what will be cooked the night before while cleaning up the current dinner, and take it from freezer and may add marinade, and let it thaw in fridge till next night.
3. Winter time these same meats can be prepped in 30 min or less on the stove or in the oven.
4. I use frozen vegetables quite often- they are ready in a minute or two in the microwave, and are actually better for you than much of the produce in grocery stores because they are frozen immediately after picking so loose less nutrients. In the summer I do focus on fresh produce from the farmers market. Corn on the cob cooks in 4 minutes, but most summer vegetable we just cut up and eat raw (cucumbers, carrots, celery, peppers, tomatoes with basil and motzerella). I find that my kids just don't care if the vegetable is cooked or not, so why bother!
5. Mexican food is just about a weekly favorite for my boys - when I prep the meat and the beans for tacos/burritos I alway make at least double and freeze half. Alway have tortillas on hand for this purpose!
For some reason I have never been converted to the crock pot- I have tried, but just find I like other ways of prep better.
Good Luck!
1. Plan, plan, plan.
2. Supper doesn't have to be fancy. You just have to get people fed.
3. About a dozen easy-to-make recipes will carry you a long way.
A few of our ideas: We do breakfast one night a week. Tacos are usually one night a week, and I cook 3 lbs of taco meat at a time and freeze the extra. Grilled sandwiches (insert whatever ingredients are handy) with fries and cut up veggies are a quick favorite. Stir-fry made from frozen stir-fry veggies, some meat, and rice are super fast. Some nights I just let people eat what will fill the pit. Last night I made casserole. The kids didn't like it (major eyeroll; they've had it before) so they had cereal. No one went to bed hungry so I call it a win.
Oh yes...dinner everyday...breakfast and lunches to...
Agree with all suggestions here ( I love my crock pots...yes, I have more than one)
Planning is key...Prepping ahead of time....Cooking once, eating twice (or more) ect, ect...
Also,
Got friends in the same boat??? One word....pot lucks. Buffet style...everybody brings something to share (hello fusion food) Takes some organization but at the end of the day its nice to share with friends while the kiddos hang out, husbands doing guy stuff, gals enjoying catching up while maybe sipping some vino...
In all things I find that keeping things as simple as possible is key
Good luck and know that were all right there with you figuring all this kitchen warrior stuff out
Hugs to all those who need one in this world gone mad...
Let the world keep kicking you around...just don't ever back down
Love this- thanks! And everyone who commented above, too.
Tom petty......xxxxx
These are all wonderful ideas, and well worth trying to see what works for you. On that front, I have nothing to add.
I wanted to address the question at the end: "Am I the only mom out there who doesn’t make homemade food every night?" No, you're not. 🙂 I worked full-time after my daughter was 3, and I can tell you that I did not make homemade food nearly as much as I would have liked to. Some weeks were better than others, but I think we did take-out at least two nights a week on average.
Obviously, making home-cooked meals is the ideal for many people, but don't let the internet's rosy effect make you think everyone is doing it every night.
Our family is just myself and my husband (only for ~7 more weeks!), but we frequently host my in-laws (there are a lot of them) or friends, so we still cook for more than two of us. Also, my husband is super helpful in the kitchen. We recently moved and our space lends itself more to being domestic so I don't rely on him as much, but I am considering discussing a husband cooks dinner once a week plan with him so that he still gets to play around with meals too.
I like to plan to cook when I get home only 1 or 2 nights a week, and I base that on both the weight of my day job (even though the timing is always the same, the mental capacity changes drastically!) and what we have going on in the evening.
The rest of the week I utilize the slow cooker, leftovers, or easy meal items that I always keep on-hand. The last option is still technically cooking after work, but it's rarely ever planned ahead and instead pulled together when my husband and I feel we would like to eat in about half an hour. These are things like frozen fish fillets (Costco sized bags that last months), frozen veggies, and rice (or pasta if we're even more short on time) - I actually only recently realized just how fast this meal comes together because each time I make it, it's ready much faster than my husband and I were anticipating or even ready for haha.
Freezer meals are a favourite of mine too! We only recently moved into our house and finally have a deep freeze, so I'm just starting to experience this wonderful convenience. I've been adding a few to my freezer each week in anticipation of baby's arrival, but I want to do a freezer meal marathon (perhaps with a friend) sometime soon to just stock up the freezer.
Finally, I have a handful of meals that are simple (to me) and are definite household favourites. It's important to be creative sometimes to avoid meal ruts, but it's also good to have old faithfuls available that cause less stress. These are meals that I don't have to follow a recipe for and that find themselves in our meal rotation ~every two weeks, sometimes more frequently.
Full time working mom and wife here. I'm out of the house from 6:30 am until 5:30 pm, my husband works 60 hours per week (6 days), and my husband and I also run a business from home. Dinner in our house is SIMPLE. Ain't nobody in my house got time to freshly grate ginger or assemble 34 ingredients. We work off of a basic schedule that is something like this: Sundays are the day I will cook a more elaborate dinner (I'm sure my definition elaborate is way different than others!) Dinner leftovers are almost always lunch the next day for my husband and I. We are farmers as well as hunters so we have all freshly hunted or butchered meat in our freezers which is amazing. Monday = breakfast, Tuesday = pasta, Wednesday = casserole, Thursday = steak/chop/chicken breast, Friday = pizza (take out, homemade, frozen, whatever tickles my fancy), Saturday is a crock pot day.
I know I'm going to draw gasps...but I am not in love with my crockpot. 1. My dog is a jerk and will yank it from the counter depending on his mood. 2. I'm only good at making soups, roasts, and pork loins in the crockpot.
In conclusion, I don't think there's any cure-all for working moms getting dinner on the table. I made the conscious decision that when I became a mother and planned to continue working, there would be sacrifices and compromises. My daughter, husband, and I are healthy, and we eat local/mostly non-processed foods. Also, having a compassionate and willing spouse is the KEY to surviving life as a working mother. If my husband didn't do dishes and clean the kitchen after dinner, I would lose my mommy mind 🙂 I feel for single moms...you are SAINTS!
Haha- dog is a jerk- lol. The rest is inspiring but that is just funny right now to me. Guess I needed to laugh.
I feel the same way about our crockpot--I've just never really gotten in to using it very much or found it to be a convenient solution for me. The one we have is not the largest size crockpot available by any means, but even so with only 2 of us adults eating, the amount of food I need to make for the crockpot recipe and also so that the crockpot heats the food through evenly/cooks properly means we wind up with a TON of leftovers! We do get tired of eating the same thing day after day . . .
We're all so different. I use my crockpot especially to GET leftovers! I usually make something like chili or pulled chicken or barbacoa beef. The goal to is make a ton and then portion it into meal-size bags. Then I freeze it for future meals. It's the main way it works for me 'cause we'd get tired of eating the same thing day after day as well.
Not a fan of the crock pot either...I have a few things that I think are good in it, fewer that the everyone likes, but most of the time, stuff just isn't that tasty. My husband is on a very restricted diet, so a lot of the things that might make crock pot meals palatable he can't have. That's the excuse I am going to give, anyway....
Agreed on the crock pot: TBH it requires more prep/planning that I'm willing to commit. And I'm ok with that.
Is your dog yanking the crock pot to eat the contents, or simply to be a jerk? I mean either reason is still jerky, I just find it odd that he'd do it for no reason. Maybe he's extremely safety conscious. 😛
Not a crock-pot fan here either!
I've switched to using my dutch oven mostly, but I can do that since I work from home. It is possible for me to throw something in at noon, but for people working out of the house, that is usually not an option. I do think roasts, soups/chili and stuff that ends up as a sandwich (italian beef, pulled pork, etc.) comes out fine in the crock pot.
I think the key is finding recipes that work well in the slow cooker and that you like to eat. One of my favourite is to slow cook a pork shoulder with a can of cola or root beer poured on top. I cook it on slow all day, and it makes really tender pulled pork. I can then add it to any recipe or mix it with BBQ sauce and eat it as is.
But I have definitely made some awful things in the slow cooker (I am not a fan of slow cooker chicken, for example), so not every recipe is a keeper.
I swear he has the typical cat attitude. He gives you the, "are you talking to me, peasant?" looks. He is just generally unimpressed. He does things just to be a jerk. He will drag bags of chips out of the cupboard (yes, he opens them!) and just drags them through the house. He doesn't rip them open or anything, just scatters the different containers. I swear it's like a warning, be nice to me or you know I can do worse!
Love these suggestions! I'm not a mom yet, but it's still a struggle to make sure Mr. Picky Pincher and myself stay well-fed every day. I have a unique situation in that I work from home, so I can defrost or prep foods easily during my breaks or my lunch break. It's been awesome.
When I worked at an office, I did have to rely A LOT on pre-cooking and freezer meals. I make next week's menu each week on Thursday to plan our grocery list. Then I list all of the dinner components that I can possibly cook ahead of time.
For example, if we're having sausage biscuits for breakfast, I'll pre-cook my own sausage patties and a big batch of homemade biscuits. If we're eating spaghetti, I pre-cook the bolognese sauce. I carve out 2-3 hours of my weekend to pre-cooking and it's made weekday meals so much easier.
The big upside is that I spend less of my evenings cooking, so we can eat earlier and I have more time. 🙂
The thing that I find helps the most is to pre-cook meats. On the weekends I will cook 5 or 6 lbs of found beef or chicken breasts and freeze them in Ziploc bags. That makes week night meals a lot faster!
*ground beef. Sorry - smartphone isn't so smart today!!
Yeah, "found beef" doesn't sound very good. Kind of like "road kill" or something. I think I'm just slap-happy today.
Hi! I'm a working (single) mom and a crock-pot hater, so there's that. It makes matters slightly easier that my child likes most foods... I don't cook every night, but here is my mealplan for this week and how I managed it.
-Sunday: mussels (they cook up super fast after a soccer game and are not very expensive as far as fish goes) with french fries to make a "moule frites" and I also cut up a cucumber. The french fries, I had in my freezer. Usually I serve mussels with french bread (and I buy the half-baked kind that you just put in the oven and it bakes up. Delicious.)
-Monday: Chicken sausage with peppers and onions in store-bought marinara sauce (I made this on Sunday) over gnocci (I bought packaged gnocci that cooks in literally 3 minutes)
-Tuesday: Hot dogs with zucchini with red onions, which I roasted on Sunday [have a meeting tonight so we need to eat quickly]
-Wednesday: Spaghetti and meatballs & salad [The spaghetti and meatballs I cooked double last week & froze.]
-Thursday: Chicken Drumsticks in BBQ sauce, cucumber, fruit. [I am working from home Thursday and so will make this then.]
-Friday: TBD - probably out as we have company
I do a lot of fish, because it cooks really quickly, and meatballs or chicken sausage because they can be done on the weekend before and freeze well.
Oo, I LOVE your chicken sausage with gnocchi menu idea. Will have to add to our menu plan!
The crockpot and the gas grill are my saving grace!! Sides are a no brainer. The convenience of frozen steam bag veggies cook up in no time. I am a mother of 4 and work full time and the kids have after school activities. Some nights call for a hotdog or a bowl of cereal. We practice 80/20 in our house because its not always home cooked and healthy.
Eggs. If I am coming home and can't be bothered to make a "real meal" eggs it is. I scramble them with some spinach - no time wasted chopping - and parmesan cheese; add toast and fruit and dinner is done.
Jar salad - make it up on Sunday and then through the week, you have a side salad already done. Just open, dump and add dressing. If you are chopping it up for one, why not do a few more? These are also awesome lunches - I like strawberry with chicken and a balsamic vinaigrette, or chicken, blueberry, walnut and feta salad lettuce salads.
If I have chili in the freezer, chili mac is a good way to go. I've also been known to freeze single serving sizes to perfectly top a baked potato.
I love the idea of meal planning. I love cooking and freezing meals - especially soups and enchiladas, but sometimes, especially when I was ill, that was not happening. I need things that were fast and I could make quickly or in bulk one day.
Best of luck to you~
Crockpots are a lifesaver! Also, prepping and cooking on weekends help so you can just heat it up when you get home. When my kids were in scouts, we had the same dinner every week - soup & grilled cheese. Quick & easy.
When my kids were older (high school age), I had them start dinner a lot of times so it could be ready quickly when we got home from work.
When I worked outside the house, I used to do a few things:
1) make liberal use of a crock pot (marinara sauce I could use all week, chicken dishes)
2) soup and one-pan meals. I would make a vat of beans (ten beans) that lasted for a week, served as a side dish, chili, Mexican dishes, and bean soup), or lasagna or a chile relleno casserole
3) on the weekend I made a vat of brown rice and put it in smaller bags for easy use during the week
4) on non-Thanksgiving, I sometimes cook a turkey and then use it for sandwiches, over mashed potatoes, soups all week
As a full time working mom, I second all of Kristen's ideas. Especially keeping things simple. I always have a pasta and sauce in the pantry so that if nothing else I can have a simple pasta on the table in ten minutes. I throw in whatever vegetable and protein I have in the fridge/freezer. My only other thought is that if you have a partner to enlist his help. My husband and I both work full time, so we tend to split stuff. He picks up the kids while I get supper started. One of us does dishes while the other bathes the kids. Having kids whether you work full time or not is exhausting!
There are some awesome ideas here and I think everyone has covered just about everything. I am a full time WOTH mom and I usually don't get home until 6:00 p.m. So here's what helps me:
Definitely PLAN AHEAD. It's the only way it works for me.
A later dinner is fine--like a previous poster wrote, it's great to set out veggies/fruit/cheese & crackers when you get home (I often buy the small pre-cut veggies platters at the grocery store) to help get through the witching hour. Sometimes this backfires, as the kids fill up too much, but it's healthy!)
Have those back-up meals on hand for when the monkey wrench inevitably blows up said plan. For me, I keep frozen ravioli, dried tortellini, soft tortillas, canned soups, mac-n-cheese, frozen chicken nuggets (you can make these from scratch, btw!), and frozen veggies always on hand. (I definitely agree with previous poster who mentioned frozen veggies and bagged salads. We would never eat veggies otherwise!)
Thin cuts of meat thaw and cook very quickly. So do individually frozen hamburgers and ground beef pressed flat into ziplock bags. When I buy fresh meat from the grocery store, I prepare it for quick prep and then throw it in the freezer. So if I get pork chops, I cut them in half and pound them thin. Same thing for chicken breasts. (You can also throw some marinade in with the meat and freeze that, too!) If I get ground beef, I will make hamburger patties and wrap them in foil and freeze in a ziplock. Sometimes, if I have a lot of ground beef, I'll go ahead and make taco filling and then I'll freeze that.
Look online and through ATK's make ahead cookbook for meals that you can make on Sunday and stretch the leftovers for another meal or two during the week. These require prep-ahead, though, which can be a challenge when you're already exhausted on weeknights. Many weeks, my best-laid-plans have been waylaid because I was too dang tired at 9:00 p.m. to go downstairs and chop/mix/prep for the next night's dinner!
Casseroles are great--if your family will eat them. I have two members of my family who do not like casseroles or crockpot style meals so that kind of stinks!
Good luck! It takes practice, patience, and commitment, but it gets easier and more rote and will make a huge difference in your day-to-day life!
Hello - full time working mom to two here. I definitely practice all of the things that Kristen mentioned in her post, and what I'm seeing here in the comments. When I shop, I try to buy ingredients for at least 5 dinners for the week. Nothing I cook takes longer than 30 minutes to prep, cook and get on the table during the week. It's important to me that our meals are generally healthy and I'm grateful that my family likes almost every kind of veg, fruit and salads. That being said, I usually can cook 3 solid dinners in a row before I start to fall apart. I've mentally given myself permission to "phone it in" with a frozen pizza and salad, good quality fishsticks w/steamed veggies or takeout whenever I need a break.
Here are some of our regular dishes:
Stuffed bell peppers - ground beef, rice and egg stuffed inside a bell pepper and steamed (my kids drown it in ketchup)
Pasta w/meat sauce - I switch up the meat. Sometimes it is Italian sausage, Italian ground turkey or ground beef. (My family would eat this every day if I let them)
Marinated chicken, green beans and rice pilaf
Lemon Garlic Shrimp w/ angel hair (This is the fastest meal by far and everyone loves it!)
Chili in the crockpot or 30 min on the stove (brown the meat, dump the cans of tomatoes, beans and spices and let it simmer while we do homework)
Burrito night (I brown the ground beef and then serve diced tomatoes, onion, olives, cheese and avocado - heat refried beans. Everyone makes their own with their favorite ingredients.)
Quick and simple soups like - The chicken tortilla soup from Weelicious, homemade vegetable beef (precut sirloin tips browned in the pan, add onion and a bag of frozen mixed veggies, simmer in beef broth.)
I hope this helps!
Fun to read all the suggestions.
First: breathe!
Second: keep staples on hand that make easy, quick dinners regardless of your source of protein--pasta, rice, potatoes, taco shells, buns, frozen veggies, baby carrots ...
Third: spouse/kids help (my son makes pancakes on Saturday while I STAY IN BED ... husband cooks dinner Saturday and Sunday)
Fourth: haven't seen this suggestion yet--when my husband grills, he grills enough for 2-3 meals, then we freeze them--reheated burgers/pork chops/whatever on the grill tastes almost as good as the original and it's as simple as adding a veggie/starch to complete the meal
One of my favorite cooking/baking sites is averiecooks.com--most of her meals can be completed in less than 1/2 an hour and are tasty. Also, in the past year I have discovered the joy of crockpot baked potatoes--5 hours on low or 8 hours on high, then top with whatever meat/cheese/veggie you have on hand--heck, I've used it when I've had guests--who doesn't love adding toppings to something to eat? Another food I haven't seen mentioned (granted, I skimmed the comments!) is pre-cooked rope sausages--my family LOVES these, there are a million options (or you can just slice and serve!) for recipes--we get the lower fat ones--Johnsonville and Eckrich are both good. Oh, and if you like it, tuna can be your friend! Egg dishes, too--frittatas, etc.
Your sanity is more important than a fancy meal!
I precook hamburg and freeze in Ziploc bags. I cook plain, meatballs and sliders & freeze. Some nights I cook during dinner for the following nights meal, like mac and cheese -we like it fried the next night so it saves me time the following night.
I also bought an Instant pot, while it still takes time to come to pressure you put your food in it and you do not have to watch it so you can be busy doing other things while it cooks. Love it!
I also think planing the meals is half the battle. I painted my dishwasher with chalk paint -that is where I mark meals and grocery list items too.
So many good suggestions, but I'll leave a few!
Crockpot meals are great--you can try a few to see what your family loves.
Go simple. It may just be chilidogs and carrot sticks, but it does the job!
Try to prep meals that can be varied--taco meat and refried beans. Make a lot on the weekend, and have tacos on Monday and quesadillas on Wednesday.
Plan your sides to do double-duty. Make extra veggies and serve them 2 nights.
Use those extra sides to supplement take-out. Occasionally, my husband (who gets home last) will pick up fried chicken (the chicken only). When he gets home, I have the veggies --usually last nights leftovers heated up and ready to eat. Even though it is take-out, we save a LOT by not ordering the sides.
Have some quick "fall-back" meals. I always have a can of tamales, can of chili, and shredded cheddar. If all else fails, I put it in a casserole pan and heat it up. Served with corn chips and salsa, my family gobbles it up!
Get rid of the idea that your family must eat all the of food group in one meal. Perhaps they have fruit for a snack, and as juice for breakfast. They don't "have" to have it at dinner.
If your kids can help, get them involved. Setting and clearing the table, pouring drinks, or just serving the meals out of the pan over the stove.
Don't try to incorporate these ideas for everyone all at once. Try the ones that fit your life the easiest, and add from there. You can do it! 🙂
I’m a mom of 2, and both my husband and I work full-time outside the home.
I make a menu for the week on Fridays, plus a grocery list (shared on our iPhones). One of us does the shopping on Saturdays, whoever has time.
I generally make dinner, as I’m home first, but we work together when necessary. My menu:
Saturday: something quick or made ahead like soup or chili
Sunday - either “snack dinner” while playing board games or a more extensive Sunday dinner like roast chicken
Monday - soup or chili with grilled sandwiches
Tuesday - tacos, fajitas, or nachos
Wednesday - pasta
Thursday - leftover night
Friday - pizza (usually homemade)
Occasionally we do breakfast for dinner or boxed mac and cheese with chicken and broccoli.
I love the idea of game night with snack dinner! Can't wait to try that when ours is older!
I am a full time working mom, with a full time working husband and an 8 month old. I have a husband who does like to cook but wither it is him cooking or me, my husband is looking for hearty meat meals every night. All of the comments are correct- planning is the key. We make a dinner schedule each night and factor in the weeks events. If I know I am working late- then it is something quick and easy like pasta or quick fried up chicken. After grocery shopping I do any meal prep that I can over the weekend, I also make sure to look the night ahead so that the meat is defrosted and prepped so that by the time we get home so we don't have to worry.
But I will mention- it is tiring and fairly time consuming. Take for example last night- I was home around 5:30, I cooked chicken that I had marinated the day before, fed the baby, played with the baby, bathed the baby, and put him to bed at 7:30, showered myself, meal prepped and marinated tonight's dinner, packed lunches, got bottles ready and I finally sat down on the couch at 9:15. Is it worth it? Yes, Could I probably make easier meals? Yes, Could I maybe do more over the weekend? Maybe but I try to balance my time when the baby is awake but mommas gotta rest too
I would like to recommend a cookbook called Desperation Dinners by Alicia Ross and Beverly Mills. This was written by two working moms and is filled with recipes that are designed to be made in 20-30 minutes after you arrive home from work. It does involve convenience foods such as jarred ginger, packages of grated cheese, bags of lettuce ect. but it is still healthier and less expensive than take-out food.
This is such a great topic to post on--I'm loving reading all the terrific reader-tested tips in the comments! Thanks so much, everyone.
When I worked full time I used my pressure cooker a lot. Key was knowing that morning what I would be having for dinner. A little prep the night before or in the morning was a big help. I had dinner on the table most of the time within the hour of getting home. I rarely used convenience foods.
These are such great ideas! When my mother-in-law wasn't staying with us to help with the cooking, Mr. FAF and I usually set out 3-4 hours on the weekend to cook for the whole week.
We would make 4-5 main dishes. During the week, we will just cook simple soup or dishes such as stir-fried veggies. Cooking on the weekend saves us a ton of time during the week. We try to finish all the leftovers on Friday night or Saturday and start the cooking routine again on Sunday! 😀
I agree with everyone else... crock pot! Plan ahead what you can. Don't try to make every meal a gourmet meal. Simple is best.
If you feel you need to eat out, be picky in your choices. A friend of mine with 3 small kids keeps menus in her car and will call in food to go from various restaurants (avoiding fast food) which does keep the cost down by not ordering sodas, appetizers, desserts, etc. If they want to eat out, they choose a restaurant that is having a kids under 10-12 eat free night. Her and her husband may split a large entree or both have an appetizer for dinner. She figures every bit helps!
I'm a full time working mom of a 6 month old and Hubs also works full time (he's self-employed though, so his hours are pretty flexible, just for full disclosure). Kristen touched on all my suggestions: breakfast for dinner, easy frozen meals, boring old chicken, having a small takeout budget. What we normally do is one of us (ok, really just Hubs) will prep and cook meat and veggies in the oven while the other person is playing with baby, feeding him and getting him ready for bed. This allows us to discuss our day together sometimes too. Then we eat after baby goes to bed (usually around 7:30 or 8). Sometimes we just make eggs and beans if we're feeling lazy or have somewhere to be and need a quick bite. I'd like to eat earlier, an occasionally have something a little more exotic, but this is the healthiest, quickest, least-expensive option for us right now. When baby is older, I imagine he'll either eat what we eat or I'll make him something quick (chicken nuggets) to eat with us. Good luck!
I try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Most nights it's a frenzy, and it's hard work for sure, but I prioritize healthy meals because I know it's good for all of our bodies (and wallets). A lot of people are chiming in about having a crock pot, I don't have one but I do have a rice cooker. It's been a game changer for me. In addition to rice, I cook grains like oatmeal, millet, barley, etc. I also hard boil eggs and cook frozen Asian dumplings in the steamer basket. On the weekends I try to do some prep work. I also try to cook things each week around a similar theme so that I can reuse a lot of ingredients. For example, cooking a big batch of sweet potatoes and then using them in different ways throughout the week.
I think pre-planning is key also even though I hate it. Last night I sliced up some tomatoes and put on a cookie sheet and then drizzled with olive oil, sea salt and basil. I cooked them in the oven all night on 100 degrees. This morning, I put them in the frig. Tonight when I get home I will cook up some pasta, add the tomatoes and some grated cheese and maybe add a green salad and dinner is ready.
What kind of oven do you have that goes to 100 degrees? Does it seem like it is safe from a microbiology/food poisoning standpoint? Are they kind of like sun-dried tomatoes texture or what? Just curious.
I plan my meals. Looking at the calendar I know what nights we are going to be busy and need a meal that is ready when we walk in the door (crock-pot); what night my teenage son is going to beat me home and he can start dinner (meal I prep on the weekends and he just needs to put it in the oven).
I grocery shop accordingly and then prep whatever I need to prep as soon as I get home from the grocery store.
Last week menu:
Monday was pizza bread (french loaf was on sale) we already had the pizza sauce and the mozzarella cheese. Just needed the french bread and pepperoni.
Tuesday - Speghetti. Made the sauce on Sunday and put that in the crock-pot all my son had to do was cook the noodles.
Wednesday - I was working late. My son had baseball practice. We did crock-pot
Thursday - Tacos - browned and seasoned the hamburger on Sunday. Placed in crock-pot in the morning. Shredded the lettuce and it was make your own tacos.
Friday - General Tso Chicken - Prepped the chicken on Sunday and mixed the sauce. Started the crockpot with the sauce in the morning and my son preheated the oven when he got home. When I got home I placed the chicken in the oven and within 30min we were eating.
Disclaimer: Married but no kids yet! Lots of my ideas have already been discussed, but here my top 3.
3. Meal planning so that I always have the groceries on hand for the dishes I want to make. (Unless my husband gets into it as a late night snack - I always have to hide the cottage cheese when I have lasagna on the meal plan haha).
2. Prep the night before. Pull meat out of the freezer to defrost in the fridge since I forget most mornings. I try to keep weekday meals to 5 ingredients so there isn't a lot of prep needed.
and the #1 thing that keeps me cooking supper is starting with a clean kitchen. If my kitchen is dirty when I get home from work- i.e. last nights supper dishes are soaking in the sink or worse yet, still 'cooling off' on the stove top - then I'm way more likely to say "NOPE!" and pick up the phone and order a pizza.
Crock Pot Question:
I do own a crock pot and use it occasionally. My crock pot has settings for 4 hours (fast cooking) & slow cooking is 6-8 hours. I leave my house every morning at 7AM & don't return until 6-7PM. Is it safe to leave the crock pot cooking for up to 12 hours? What will I find? Will the food be all burnt?
I welcome suggestions! If I could leave the food cooking for up to 12 hours, I would use a crock pot all the time! (Husband will not help with cooking at all & teenager is gone the same hours as I am.)
I have 2 crockpots. One of mine sounds like the same version you are talking about. The one that is similar to yours has a hot spot in it. If I am cooking food with less liquid in it (for example, crockpot lasagna or a teriyaki chicken which is basically chicken thighs in a honey/soy sauce mixture) I have to be mindful of how long they cook and to stick to the recommended cooking time to avoid burning. Soups, however, are more forgiving and I think you would be fine leaving it for 12 hours. I would suggest trying a non-soup food on a day when you are home and can monitor how the crockpot is cooking and turn it off if you notice your food is getting too well done.
I prefer my old 1980s crockpot, which has more even heating, but the newer crockpot's shape is more accommodating to different recipes (and holds more). It might be worth it to read buyer reviews and see if there is a make/model which is more consistent.
The only way to really know is to try it out. My understanding is that each crockpot is different. Good luck!
Mine has a timer that has 4 or 6 hours on high or 8 or 10 hours on low. After it finishes either of those, it goes to "keep warm" which is a little lower temp I think. It work fine for things like chili or soup for sure. Chicken is a bit of a crap shoot for me if I leave it all day. I think thighs work better than breasts so they don't dry out. Bigger roasts hold up pretty well.
All of these ideas are terrific! On the organizedhome.com website, they have a form for "Monthly Menu Planner." Take time next weekend to sit down and write out a list of about 25-30 meals your family enjoys. They can be simple and include repeats - such as "Taco Tuesday" every week, and "Pizza Friday". Then moving forward as you write out your grocery list, look at your "Master Plan" and plan about 4 or 5 meals for the week. Buy those ingredients. Pinterest has LOTS of Crockpot and freezer cooking recipes that are really good. I think eating at home is healthier for our bodies and budgets, allows kids to get their homework done and get to bed early for school, AND really the #1 importance of dinnertime is just that WE BE TOGETHER for a few minutes each day. It can be pancakes made with Bisquick, grilled cheese and Campbell's soup, or a pizza delivered by Dominos. Set the table, light some candles and ENJOY YOUR FAMILY! Tonight at 8pm CST Sally Clarkson is launching her new book - "The Lifegiving Table." Join up on Facebook if you can! #thelifegivingtable
I'm not a mom, I'm a dad, but I'm chiming in. (Love your blog by the way).
We both work full time, my wife is a nurse and does 12 hour shifts so dinner is often left to me. Menu planning is our life saver. But were very flexible on it. It has really helped us though.
On nights we're tempted to eat out, we push the easy button instead. We do a frozen pizza (Digornio's are the best). Or we do something like one of Stouffers lasagna. We let the kids put them in the oven and they love it. Krissi makes an incredible homemade spaghettib sauce, but we always keep a jar sauce or two from the store on hand in case she doesnt feel like making it.
We try to do at least 3 or 4 homecooked meals a week. Other times were tired or at base ball or somerhing so we go quick and easy. On those nights we also try to serve something like a good fruit or a quick salad. And occasionally we will eat out, when theres a cheap deal, like on Taco Tuesday.
You can do it. Good luck!!
And thanks, Frugal Girl. I really enjoy your advice!!
Umm, dads can TOTALLY chime in here. 😉
Excellent ideas here folks! I love my crockpot but admit I use it mostly in the winter making stews, chilies and soups. As usual, nothing works for everyone but planning is a key component to meals and life running smoothly. I love this blog! The help offered by so many is a real joy!
When I was working, with small children, my key was to have a set of recipes that I could make in under 30 minutes. And, to never try something new on a busy weeknight.
I also do occasionally buy pre-made meals from the grocery store that one just needs to heat. For $12-15 they are a huge time saver and can easily be stretched to 4-6 people with a salad or other easy side.
Also, liberal use of thin cut chicken breasts and stir fry.
My go to recipe is nacho chicken:
1) Pan fry the thin cut chicken on both sides in a little oil until cooked through, roughly 3 minutes per side.
2) Top with salsa and shredded cheese. Cover to melt cheese. Serve with green vegetable/salad/etc.
Marinated meats: Buy a big batch of chicken pieces or pork chops or whatever; divide them into meal-size freezer bags; add a different marinade to each bag. You can cook them all at once then freeze or freeze them raw. If the second choice, take a bag out at dinner time one night to thaw in the fridge, then cook just before eating the next night. No more boring chicken. One of our favorite marinades is orange juice, soy sauce, pre-minced garlic and sliced green onions. We also like olive oil, lemon juice, and oregano.
Crock Pot dump meals: 2-3 pounds of meat with different flavorings. Repackage after cooking to eat or freeze. Varieties: 1. boneless chicken with sun-dried tomatoes in oil plus drained artichoke hearts, 2. beef roast with a package of dried onion soup mix and a can of mushroom soup, remove meat and stir remains to make gravy. 3. pork roast with crushed pineapple and ginger. When cooked pull pork and stir back into juices.
Pantry experiments: Our favorite is slice Vienna sausage into a skillet and add green beans, when heated through drain if needed, crack some eggs on top and scramble them into the meat and beans. Add salt and lots of pepper. Quick but tasty.
Well - I'm certain that you'll see Kristen has provided some wonderful ideas/tips. Her blog readers have done so as well. My go-to is the almightly crockpot.... which seems to be a popular idea/tip from the readers. I also use her idea of doubling up and freezing. Find what works for you & put it into action. I'm sure you'll do very well. Happy cooking!
I don't currently work outside the home, and my blog is geared towards stay-at-home moms, but you might find the following useful. I also don't buy into a crock-pot much as a time-saver, because it takes about the same amount of time to prep!
1) Kanban in my pantry. Bet you've never heard of that! 🙂 It's a term from Lean Manufacturing, and is basically a visual cue that something needs to happen. So...I always have 2 supper meals' worth of supplies in my pantry, basically the makings of burritos or spaghetti, separate from my other groceries. They are the LAST things I use - even if we have spaghetti, I use from the 'regular' pantry, not the Kanban zone. But if I HAVE to use from the Kanban zone, I know that within 48 hours I MUST get to the store and come up with some easy meal ideas. If I was working outside the home, I would probably come up with 4 meals' worth for my Kanban zone, so that I have 4 days to get groceries.
2) Our evenings are always very busy, so apart from steak I don't like to prep raw meat at the time. I don't want to be trying to remember if I disinfected the counter from raw chicken, etc. So when boneless skinless chicken breasts go on sale, I buy a pack or two, flatten them with a rolling pin, grill them, and freeze in Ziplocs. Same with ground beef; I don't want to be dealing with the raw meat when I'm in a hurry, so I cook a pack when it's on sale and freeze it in pyrex dishes the right size for our family. Somehow if you have the protein available, you can come up with starch and veggie fairly easily.
You're definitely on the right track, so hang in there!
As in any situation you want to improve, you need to A- face your current reality (which you've done); B- identify how you want it to be (eating at home once a week? 3 times a week? 5 times a week?); and C- make small changes to get there. (So don't try to go from 5 meals of take-out to free-range organic every night!) 🙂 Rather try to have one night a week that is sacred 'homemade' night for the rest of the year, then two nights a week for the first part of next year, then re-assess on how you're finding it and if you move to 3 nights a week.
All the best!!!
1. Double and freeze EVERYTHING you can. Spaghetti, taco meat, soups, and pastas are all easy options.
2. Avoid crockpot meals that require Pre cooking anything. No one has time for that. Plus extra dishes. Boo.
3. Have a leftovers night. Or frozen pizza night. Or takeout night. Just have one midweek night for this---avoid doing it on the weekend and capitalize on making a weeknight easy.
4. On a long weekend, make some freezer meals in advance. I am back to work full time from the summer (a teacher) and currently pregnant. These freezer meals have saved me by being easy to pop in the oven. Use disposable trays for easy clean up.
5. Go meatless one night. Not having to thaw and cook meat saves time. Most meatless meals are pretty fast.
6. Give your family members a night or two to be responsible for dinner. My husband is in charge of Fridays. Something this means just taking us out, but at least I'm not cooking!
So glad to see all the comments. I've been using my Christmas tree timer for years now on crockpot. Works making crockpot breakfast casseroles, too, when having overnight company. It's my go-to for making applesauce (not in freezable quantities though). Family member just burned a crockpot full of chicken tonight (12 hrs.) without a timer feature or tree timer, wants a new crockpot with it built in. Told her to go to hardware store and buy a tree timer, way cheaper. I used to do similar things to all of the above commenters, as a stay-home mom with 3 involved kids--sports, homework, church activities, etc. I had a weekly schedule similar to most, chicken one day, some kind of meat another, meatless another day, fish (fish sticks usually) another, big meal on Sunday. My big timesaver was always frozen pizza on Friday (house cleaning day). It also helped to make my kids each pick 5-6 recipes they liked from my recipe file box, so I only had to think of 5-6 myself. And each child always had at least 5 things they liked in the month. Planned leftovers always part of that equation for a day. Shopped weekly for the perishables and monthly for the rest--commissary, Sam's, etc., in bulk. Thanks for all the great suggestions from all of you. An aside: a Denver friend gave me a copy of "Dinner's in the Freezer" years ago. Some great recipes--especially the one for chicken pot pie. I have started making beef pot pie with it, using leftover pot roast/veggies/gravy,etc., and beef stock instead of chicken stock. Best pot pie ever.
Just another thought on the frozen pizzas. I wish I could be like Kristen and make homemade pizzas, and I do occasionally, but mostly not. I have started buying the inexpensive brands of frozen pizzas and doctoring them up with canned olives, extra cheese, banana peppers, pepperoni, pineapple, ham, etc. or whatever else is hanging around in the fridge and my family LOVES them. It can even be better than takeout. Nothing like a pizza dripping with extra toppings instead of the skimpy ones I have got from some pizza places.
Kristen gave some great ideas! I think livingonadime.com has a lot of good ideas on this topic also. The key for me is keeping it simple. Simple meals like soup & sandwich spaghetti are truly "easier" and "quicker" than going out to eat. No complicated meals for us!
Plan (key) simple meals. When I worked full time, we did rely a lot more on convenience foods which still beats take-out for cost.
So, say ok to the frozen stir fry meals, boxed pilaf, frozen roasted potatoes (add an egg and you are good to go). Squash? Sure - if cubed and found in the frozen food aisle.
You can also prep freezer meals on the weekend or even sauces to help make weekday prep go faster (ie: put all ingredients for sloppy joes minus meat in a baggie). Rotisserie chicken from grocery deli = meal one night and sandwiches or add to soup or tacos the next. Precooked rice + can of refried beans + cheese + tortillas = burritos. Need veg? Throw on some packaged baby spinach and diced tomatoes. Some grocery stores even have prepared meat mixtures in the butcher case. We can get pre-mixed meatloaf mix and more. Just say how much you want, take it home and cook.
I work part-time (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays). The days I work, I'm done when I get home. There's no energy left to cook. So here's what I do:
Mondays I cook a double supper. Tuesday night we eat the leftovers. Wednesdays I cook another double supper. Thursday nights we eat the leftovers. Friday nights if I have energy I make homemade pizza or a scrambled eggs/fruit/toast meal; if I'm too tired, we order pizza.
I'm sure my husband and kids would love to eat something different every night, but they don't complain about eating the same meal two nights in a row (twice a week!). It's better than having to deal with an overtired, crabby, stressed out mom!
Full-time working mom of two here. I do all the cooking as my husband works more hours than I do (50-60 vs my 40). Tons of great ideas already mentioned that I agree with. Particularly: 1.) Plan meals for the week (vitally important!) and do one big shopping trip 2.) cook big main dishes on the weekend to eat during the week 3.) Have easy fall-back meals such as pasta with pesto or red sauce, quesadillas, breakfast for dinner, etc.
I do most of what was mentioned here and got a few great ideas so thanks! Sometimes though, with our crazy schedule we personally can just not cook at home. We figured out some healthier places where we've worked out how to get take in for about the same price per serving as cooking at home. For instance, we have a great Greek restaurant where the salad is huge. If we get an extra side of meat, it serves 6. Or at chicken restaurants, we'll get extra meat as there's always too many sides. Not trying to advocate for eating out, but depending on the restaurants and the competition in your area, sometimes it is doable and comparable to eating home cost wise.
Well, I don't have kids, but I was raised by a single mom, and from about age 9 on, dinner was mostly my responsibility. Perhaps latchkey kids are a thing of the past, but if you have older children, I don't see why you can't enlist their help.
Basically, my mom would call every afternoon when I got home from school and we'd discuss what to have for dinner. I'd get things started - a task which could mean anything from taking meat out of the freezer, to putting something in the oven, to doing other sorts of prep work. Then when she got home she'd finish putting all of the pieces together, and clean up was my job too.
I even had a similar arrangement with my Norwegian host mother when I was an exchange student. In Norway, dinner always revolves around potatoes. So my job was to peel, cut and boil potatoes for dinner every afternoon so she could just toss the rest together when she got home.
I sorta surprised nobody has mentioned anything like this in the comments. Do kids just not have these sorts of responsibilities these days?
This was similar to my setup as a child.
Hi Cat!
I think several of us did mention having the kids help--I know mine do, but a lot of it is based on our schedule. If they have a ton of homework/band practice and have to be out the door for an activity at a certain time, then I feel like the most efficient thing to do is to do all the cooking myself. We don't really have a formal arrangement--I tend to operate on whose need is greatest on a particular day and that person is cut the most slack. Sort of a non-answer, I know!
Hi Kris, Must have missed your comment... there were a lot of them. I guess more than anything, I'm just having a hard time wrapping my brain around how things have changed since I was a kid. I had way more after school activities than most of my friends, but my childhood schedule pales in comparison to today's kids. Add on top of that the fact that stay at home moms are much less common than they were in my youth, and the cultural prohibition against letting kids go places & do things without parental supervision... anyhow, it all just makes me feel exhausted thinking about it. I can't imagine trying to juggle all that AND get dinner on the table all by yourself. Just seems like there must be a better way. I don't mean that as a judgment on parents, it's more a judgment on our crazy society and its unrealistic expectations.
I agree with the simple repeated meal plan to start with. It takes time to develop new routines that become 2nd nature so you can do them quickly.
Be kind to yourself and have a few extra nights of takeaway while you get some other meals made ahead and frozen. Depending on your kids ages try for healthier takeaway - Vietnamese/Thai tend to have a lot of veg and Vietnamese is very healthy. The more tired you are and depending on less healthy meals the more tired you will feel cos your not eating well etc..
-- I find I am much more enthusiastic about chopping veg in the morning or when I get them home from the supermarket. Chop all your veg for the week and put in containers.
- Breakfast for dinner is great
- omelettes with/without vegies
- Butterflied boneless lamb leg/ chicken /chicken pieces cook 30 -45min, prep a trays of roughly chopped vegies in the morning, spray meat and veg with olive oil spray and salt and pepper and bake 180C for 30- 45min. Give the kids vegie sticks with hummus while they wait and if they are not hungry when it's ready it makes great sandwiches, and frittata next days.
-Prep a pile of salad vegies in separate containers the kids will eat to have with something the next 3 days -eg carrot, celery, capsicum, snowpeas, cucumber, lettuce, tomato
Have with - sausages in bread
- minute steaks in a sandwich
- meatballs and hummus
- I make a kinda bolognese my nieces and nephews love and don't know how much veg is in it; in a food processor I whizz up one small onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 pieces celery, one carrot, one zucchini. add to one tbsp olive oil in non-stick deep saucepan over very gentle heat with a lid on for 5-10min (vegies will soften and sweeten), push vegies to around edge and add 500g beef mince and brown all over breaking up with a spoon, add jar of tomato pasta sauce, stir, bring to boil then lower to a simmer and cook about 30min. This freezes and reheats very well, I use it on fresh pasta, tacos (can add hot sauce on the table for those who like spice) and I also use it as a base to make homemade pizza on pita bread, leftover roast cubed pumpkin (1cm pieces) and roast chickpeas with a spinach, capsiucm, red onion and cheese. Pita bread pizza will cook in about 10-15min at 200C.
- Frozen cheese is your friend. Ready grated frozen cheese keeps extremely well and if you divide it up into snaplock bags and spread it flat ie 1cm flat you can break it off easily when frozen and sprinkle on food to bake.
- Canned soup and toasted sandwiches - we love Cheese with a blob of creamed corn - the corn gets VERY hot so you have to let it cool a bit but its awesome. Also sliced zucchini, tomato, with cheese, ham, leftover chicken, leftover roast beef slices.... and for dessert when I was growing up we had toasted banana sandwiches dusted with icing sugar.
- Baked potatoes (A potato takes about 4min in the microwave so you could start them up in that then crisp a bit in the oven but you must prick them first) ready cut coleslaw, baked beans or bacon, sour cream +or - avocado
-in fact baked beans on wholemeal toast is a very good for you - you can add chilli to the canned beans and I even accidentally dropped coriander into my baked beans and it is sensational (if you like coriander)
- I agree the kids should regularly help - even small kids can roll meatballs
-If age appropriate nominate a night of the week to rotate kid's night to cook especially things like meatballs, soup and toasted sandwiches, home-made pizza.
Great ideas! Unfortunately, the "kids night to cook doesn't work." My 16 year old gets home from school (running an average of 8 miles a day after school) and he is starving. He is taking so many advanced classes in school that he has 5-6 hours of homework a night & has to immediately start on homework as soon as he is done eating. We will be doing toasted sandwiches tonight!
Lots of great ideas.
When my kids were young, I used to cook after dinner. Yes, sounds weird, but basically I would cook after dinner and before kid bedtime the dinner for the next day. This was the time I figured I had available but it was obviously inconvenient for same day. So, after putting the kids to bed, the food was usually cooled down and I just put it in containers and put in the fridge and then quickly heat everything up the next day.
I also made huge batches of freezer meals, and freeze them in foil containers so that I could put in the oven to warm up and could use be used to give away to other friends having babies or a hard time. So when I had the time and energy, I would make chili for 20 and separate into 5 meals, and that way we could choose different meals from the freezer as needed.
Cooking after dinner is a great idea I sometimes cook 2 or three meals in one go that use a similar lot of veg and chop them all up in one go but eat a frozen meal first, I feel much more enthusiastic about everything when I've eaten already.
1. Mix Up Day-Have cereal for dinner or the homemade yogurt you made. Add some fruit, heat up a frozen piece of breakfast sausage, scramble an egg and voila'! Dinner is served.
2. Boil up lean beef, turkey, or chicken hot dogs, open a bag of pre-pack salad, a bag of baked chips. Or go crazy and eat the "fat" versions...probably still a better option than fast-food and Cheap!
3. Cheese, whole grain crackers (I also like red wine with this but uh, maybe not for the lil' ones)...and add any random fresh produce (baby carrots dipped in hummus, celery and peanut/almond butter, ranch...go crazy).
4. Grilled cheese, pickles, cucumbers, and apple slices.
5. Make up your own dinner rules. WE enjoy a "junk" night. Eat a healthy breakfast and lunch and then splurge by choosing your own poison for dinner and a movie. I love Friday after work eating chips and ice cream for dinner...it is my guilty pleasure after a long....week.
Another thought: I roast ALL THE VEGETABLES on the weekend. I turn the oven up, and put in pans of cut up zucchini, butternut squash, mushrooms, etc. I then refrigerate them and just add to dishes during the week (e.g. throw mushrooms into quesadillas or onto panninis, serve butternut squash as a side dish, zucchini can go in eggs, etc.) If you are really pressed for time, buy these pre-cut.
When I was working full time and had preemie twins in daycare, the cookbook, Desperation Dinners, was a huge lifesaver. Every recipe can be made in 20 minutes or less with ingredients from a regular grocery store. The recipes we're delicious and hearty. I also liked that they used only a few convenience foods, such as shredded cheese and canned beans. Nothing ever called for canned cream of chicken soup. My boys are 14 now and I still use the cookbook, though I'm no longer desperate:)
Wow, what a lot of comments! So many good ideas, and I especially agree with Kate's 5th point that meat at our house was either quick cook or slow cook, when I had kids at home, and a full-time job (I still work full-time outside the home).
My pressure cooker has made the "in-between" meats available somewhat now, but I still tend to cook fast and easy or long and slow during week days.
A big yes to keeping it simple and planning ahead, too.
I find eating out to be a huge time and financial drain, so I prefer to cook at home. I've always been the chief cook because for many years, my husband didn't get home until well after the kids and I did. Later, he worked out of town for over a decade, and was only home on weekends. He was cooking then, but for himself, while I cooked for the kids and myself at our house. When the kids got old enough, I gave them instructions on how to get supper started, but they usually got home after me due to extra-curricular activities, so that only worked in the summers. We had busy schedules for sure, but I felt eating real food at home was the best thing for us. However, I was once criticized for saying I couldn't attend a weekly church class if it started before 6:30 p.m., because I needed time to get home from work and get some kind of quick dinner on the table. I was told, "That's what the drive-through is for!" Ugh.
I am late to the party but I thought I would mention my best tip. I make sheet pan meals almost every night and they are done in around 20-30 minutes and I just take the pan right to the table. If I am in a hurry, I simply spray the pan with cooking spray, add a frozen meat such as chicken or salmon, then dump a bag of frozen veggies on the pan all around it, add a few spices, then bake on pretty high heat, 450 to 500, till done. I love a little carmelization on the veggies so this works well. This way, we always get a protein and veggies. It can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. All you have to do is make sure the veggies are small so they cook the same time as the meat. For instance, big potatoes take awhile to soften so I often dice or half them, depending on there size. Last night, we had boneless, skinless lemon pepper chicken thighs with piles of broccoli poured around it. I did grate some fresh cheese on top of broccoli while it was still hot and added a splash of lemon juice. I often do chicken breasts with grape tomatoes, peppers, onions, and fingerling potatoes. I make hamburger patties with a few spices added then top with a little ketchup for a quick take on meatloaf then surround them with carrots and frozen peas. The possibilities are endless. Just spray, dump, then bake. So easy, fast, and it's just one pan! I also work everyday and come home and cook. Of course everybody is starving so it is necessary to have something quick so this works for me without having to do much planning.
This is brilliant! Why is this not more of a thing?! I can only ever remember making one sheet pan meal, and it was so good and easy, but then I totally forgot about it. MUST remember this idea!!
It really is an awesome way to get a healthy, quick meal on the table with minimal cleanup. You can put practically any meat and veggie on there. I love the crockpot, too, but this has more of a fresh taste. If you have a large family or guests just do two sheet pans.
I already commented, but I was just reading the Oct. Everyday with Rachel Ray, and the pullout section had a great idea for this reader. It has a recipe to roast 8 lbs. of boneless skinless chicken thighs + 40 plum tomatoes and then process and package for shortcut suppers. There are 6 recipes to use the chicken/tomatoes that are really varied and wouldn't feel like you were eating the same thing every day:
1. Chicken Quesadillas and White Bean Salad
2. Peanutty Noodles w/Chicken
3. 3 Cheese Stuffed Shells
4. Cuban-Style Chicken Picadillo
5. Buffalo Chicken Salad
6. Indiand Grilled Cheese + Tomato Soup
I may give this a whirl myself!
I am a good cook and an accomplished one. I've also not felt like cooking for about a year. Meals these days are "hunk o meat," a fruit, and a veg - usually raw.
Hunk o' meat:
1) Anything I can saute, bake, or broil in 15 min or less. Steak, pre-cooked ham, ham steak, sausage, eggs, chicken parts, shrimp, fish, meatballs, hamburgers, taco meat, bacon.
2) A few things I can make in advance. Simple roasts, whole chickens, meatloaf.
Fruit:
Anything raw. Melon, berries, apples, bananas, plums, ...
Veg:
1) Usually raw. It doesn't have to be the whole salad - one type of veg per meal is fine, as long as you vary it over the week. Carrots, lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, bell peppers, spinach, broccoli, celery. Wash it when you purchase (easier) or the day before/day of (it'll last longer). I finally gave myself a break on the spinach and now buy the pre-washed kind. I also buy salad dressing, even vinaigrette.
2) Occasionally cooked. Right now I have, literally, three cooked veg dishes in my rotation: pan roasted asparagus (particularly after sauteing bacon or burgers); pan-browned cauliflower w bacon bits and panko; and steamed or boiled broccoli.
I also always have emergency meals on hand: a frozen lasagna, frozen pizza, bag o' saute (Contessa, Voila are two brands), frozen dumplings, canned fruit... Enough so that I don't eat out because of no preparation or no energy.
I couldn't quite get through all the lovely comments, so hope fully I'm not repeating:
Gain some time by putting out "crudités" (carrot sticks, cucumber slices, pepper strips) for everyone to snack on away from the kitchen, so you can take 10 minutes to breathe before starting in on the 30-minute meal and have fewer interruptions of "hungry now - need milk/ cheese/ leftovers from fridge to tide me over...". It works surprisingly well, even among carnivores. Plus you can cut up vegetables whenever and just keep a bag handy.
great idea! thanks
I have worked full time outside of the house since 2007. My favorite meal is rice (in the rice cooker of course) salmon filet (purchased on sale only!) wrapped in foil sprinkled with lemon juice, salt, pepper, dill) throw in the oven and cook for an hour at 350. Whole green beans cooked for 3 mins in microwave. Done! I echo the above comment...put out raw veggies for the "starving" crew to munch on.
Slow Cooker | Crock Pot
This made a huge difference to the meals I was able to prepare when out of the house all day - and the meals are frugal, nutritious and generally very tasty. You can prep the night before and load before leaving in the morning. Takes a little fine-tuning to get used to how different ingredients cook - but it's worth the effort.
I think I need to start prepping/cooking the night before. I can actually do this as my teenager no longer needs my assistance with homework. Now I have to start the meal planning!
I enjoyed reading all the comments. The thing I like to do is cook enough for more than one meal. My husband does not mind leftovers at all. I used to despise leftovers and now love them.
I tried freezer meals for awhile after reading a simple way is once a week you cook enough for 3 dinners. . Eat one that night and freeze the other two. You have to do it a few times the first week or two to build up your stock. After that though you can enjoy two nights each week of pulling a meal out of the freezer just by tripling a dinner once a week.
I scanned all these great idea and have one that might not have been mentioned, (other than Beckie saying she doesn't want to cook if the dishes from the day before are still soaking in the sink-- I agree!): Organize your kitchen for your use and convenience!
For instance, we used to keep the pizza pan, used a couple times a week, in the under-stove-oven drawer, because it is where odd-baking things go, and my mother probably did so. Has there ever been a stove made where that drawer doesn't stick? The pan is now in the lower cupboard leaning against the stand mixer and crock pot. We can reach in and grab it in a second, and also sometimes heat things up on it because it is more convenient than digging out a cookie sheet.
Likewise, move the kettles that you use most to the front, where you don't have to dig through the whole graduated stack for the one you want on the bottom. Maybe turn them upside down, smallest on the bottom. Be sure you have good and sharp knives; leave your chopping block sitting out if appropriate; get rid of decorative stuff on your counters; if your crock pot doesn't have a removable liner to be easy to wash, get a new one. Set up your pantry so what you need is most evident. If you don't bake often, stick the flour and sugar up on top and put the canned goods close. Choose how to arrange your refrigerator and freezer for ease of access. Stuff in front gets eaten first.
This time of your life won't last forever, so make it as easy as you can. Use cleaning up or washing dishes or chopping vegetables for tomorrow as a time to talk with your son or husband. Even five or ten minutes is a good contact with them. Make the kitchen and dining areas "no-phone zones." And I love the phrase "Give yourself grace."
I've read most of the comments, but one of my best money saving, easy meal things is to cook chicken breasts (bought on sale) in the crock pot and then use my kitchen aid to shred it. Then, I freeze it in snack size baggies so that I can grab as much as I need for soups, homemade pot pies, bbq shredded chicken,. tacos, etc. I label it and use it as needed. It really helps for meals where I need to cook chicken and don't want to. I don't add any spices and so I can also use it for my dog when she is having stomach issues.
Hi,
I am a working Mom, too. I leave the house at 8am and get back around 7pm 3x a week and 4pm 2x a week. It doesn´t make a big difference though, as the early days are spent on the playground with the kids.
As we live in Italy our schedules are a bit later than in America, dinner hardly is before 7.30, most often around 8.30pm.
I do quick and easy pasta dishes (made from scratch though) which cost me around 20-30min. We hardly do meat+sides, partly because I do not eat meat, partly because the kids+Dad do not eat veggies (I have tried, believe me...). Risotto will not take a lot of time as well.
If I do a fancier dish, I do double portions and just reheat the next evening. And on really chaotic days it´s pasta with a bought sauce like pesto.
To all of you who recommend a Crock Pot: is it useful also for someone who eats mostly vegan? It seems to be mostly for meat-based meals?
I'm a vegan and I use my crockpot a lot. Beans are great cooked in the crockpot, which you can then use in recipes during the week. Hummus, for instance, tastes great using home cooked beans. Also, soups made with beans and vegetables are also tailor-made for the crockpot. There are so many recipes online that you can use. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com has some great crockpot recipes, for instance.
This is a fascinating stream of comments! Most are very similar; plan, use your crockpot, prep on the weekend. But I would take it back a step or two further, asses the situation. Understand your skills as a cook, are you a cold cereal chef? or a main + 2 sides momma? Seriously! Know what you're capable of, or want to be capable of, and then decide if that is going to fulfill yours & your families expectations for dinner.
Just decide on what you can do, will do, and then get about 10 recipes/meals in your arsenal. Things you can make without the card. Get really really comfortable with them and then branch out. Some will be quick and some will be elaborate. But the first step is to gain confidence, and have FUN!