Actually getting dinner planned, shopped for, cooked, and ready to be eaten at the right time is a never-ending struggle. And in some way, no matter how many tips and tricks I share with you, it will never end because we all eat every day! Multiple times a day!
But I have found a way to eat dinner at home 7 days a week nearly every week of the year.
How you ask?!
That is what I am sharing in this post! And in this YouTube video as well.
I refer to these as the 5 guidelines that help me get dinner on the table. Thats all. Just 5. There aren’t 92 steps and 47 methods to make dinner time less stressful. Just a simple 5-piece framework for more dinners in. Ready?
Guideline One: Have a simple method for deciding what dinners will be.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a meal planning person* you do, at some point, have to choose a recipe to make for dinner.
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I am in the middle of relaunching this blog and will have lots more details on my process of this soon. But the short of it is I work from a go-to list of dinners (read about that HERE) and am inspired by my “kitchen stock”. AKA the ingredients I already have in my kitchen light the idea lightbulbs for dinner ideas. I.E. I have half a box of pasta and a pound of ground beef in the freezer? Pasta with meat sauce it is. This is also a big way I save money! When you buy fewer ingredients, you automatically spend less!
Speaking of saving money-
Guideline Two: Find balance between your budget and reality
What on earth does that mean? Well, in a perfect world, I would save oodles of money by making everything from scratch. Or, in a different perfect world, convenience ingredients (things like prechopped vegetables, premade sauces, etc.) wouldn’t cost so much!!
But this is the real world where I have limited time and energy and things that save my time and energy typically cost more.
So a fine balance has to be struck. I plan dinners with convenience- what I typically call “short cut” – ingredients on the nights I know I will be the most tired or the most strapped for time. The rest of the time I try to save money by making as much from scratch as I can, Both are important to me!
Forcing myself to only cook from scratch definitely leads to culinary burnout. And ending up in the drive through line! But saving money on groceries is also important to me. For me this balance currently looks like premade meals on Friday evenings- which I have dubbed Freezer Friday- and just a few shortcut ingredients utilized the rest of the week.
Another key here is to know what shortcut ingredients to use to get the most bang-for-your-buck. I share my preferred ones in my eguide The Simple Dinner Solution. More on that later.
Guideline Three: Put in the work ahead of time
How can you avoid using too many shortcut ingredients and busting your grocery budget but also not have to spend hours in the kitchen each evening? Put in *some* of the work ahead of time. If you read this blog, watch my YouTube channel, or follow me on Instagram long enough you’ll learn that I make up my own names for a lot of things. We’ve already talked about freezer Fridays and shortcut ingredients, what I am talking about now I refer to as “Mini Meal Prep”.
I am certain you are familiar with traditional meal prep; making a large batch of a meal or two and portioning it out for the week.
That’s not my style.
What I mean by mini meal prep is prepping components of meals, rather than the whole meal. So, chopping vegetables, pre-making sauces, marinating meats, etc. You prep pieces of the dinners you have planned for the week so that each night you spend less time working on dinner. BUT ALSO you aren’t repeating the same meal as with traditional meal prep. I also like to do a big-mini-meal-prep in which I prep a large amount of things that can be used in a variety of meals. Meal components such as shredded chicken, chopped onions, sliced bell peppers, etc. This can be personalized for things that your family frequently has!
Guideline Four: Make your meal plan do more work for you than you do for it
Meal planning is definitely work no matter how many shortcuts I may come up with. But when you have the right meal planning method that best fits you and your family’s needs, it can do more work for you than you do in creating it. The number one way to do this already a full post- find the right meal planning method.
The second way to make your meal plan work for you is by making sure the meals on it are simple. I know, this again sounds obvious. But let me lay out the rules I follow when making my menus for the week.
Rule 1- Only one aspect of a meal can be complicated.
If I am making something like chicken parmesan for example, the preparing and cooking of the chicken can take a while. So I am going to go with a premade sauce to go with it!
Rule 2- If a dinner doesn’t follow rule number its either a one pan meal or its made on a weekend night.
Rule 3- no new recipes on weeknights.
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Guideline Five: Have a backup plan
If you are trying to have restaurant, takeout, and fast-food meal less frequently- this is the biggest tip! Always have a backup plan.
Time for another one of Amanda’s vocabulary words- I call these “emergency dinners”. What could the emergency be? You forgot to thaw the meat, got stuck in extra traffic on the way home, or it’s just a day you simply don’t feel like cooking. Grab your handy-dandy emergency dinner!
These are the shelf stable or frozen meals/ super simple ingredients that you ALWAYS keep in stock for the nights the above things happen. Things that are either a complete meal like a frozen lasagna or are shelf stable components of meals you can throw together super fast. Think tomato soup and grilled cheese! My Youtube video with my favorite ideas can be seen here.
Well there you have it! The 5 simple guidelines that help me feed my family with as little stress and fuss as possible. I hope these guidelines help you do so too!
Want more details for how to follow these guidelines? Checkout my Eguide The Simple Dinner Solution. This guide walks you through these 5 guidelines with more details and exercises for each one to help you successfully implement them in your kitchen. Find out more HERE.
