Dinner is one of the most stressful times for me. I come home after a long day of work and everyone is hungry, including me. Here are some tactics I use to ease the stress:
Meal planning- weekend planning is critical to help the week go smoothly. I will cover this more specifically later, but it entails planning potential meals, creating a shopping list, and shopping before the week and the pandemonium begins.
Crockpots - if you chop veggies and cook meat the night before, you can add it all to the crockpot in the morning and it is warm and simmering when you get home. One caveat is that too many soups and stews in a week can be repetitive for the family. am working on collecting some new recipes so that we do not get sick of vegetable stew.
Frozen veggies - I try to have veggies in every meal, but it is hard to find some seasonal vegetables all year round. Plus there is the extra prep with chopping. Frozen vegetables actually keep a lot of the healthy properties of fresh vegetables and are usually already prepped.
Lunches - I try to plan meals I can make in bulk so we have leftovers for lunch. Pasta and chili are on heavy rotation on my list.
Hand made Frozen meals - on weekends I am really prepared, I sometimes make double meals and freeze one for later. This does not happen ver often, so it is one of my resolutions to do more frequently. There are also businesses where you can pay to prep meals (Dream Dinners). It is nice to have all the ingredients organized and prepped for you and you can decide how much spice and salt you put in.
Healthy pre-dinner snacks- sometimes you just need to settle the troops while you put the finishing touches on a meal. If they can not wait, I try to appease them with healthy appetizers, like milk, yogurt or heated frozen peas.
Bottom line, the more thought and preparation on the weekend or night before helps to smooth the transition from work to dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment