keep dinnertime simple

In the past few weeks I have revolutionized dinners for our family. Actually, scratch that. Revolutionized is way too strong of a word. I have changed the way we do dinner at our house, and it has led to a less frazzled mom, less time spent at the grocery store and in the kitchen, a bit more money left over in the wallet, and our tummies are still just as full and satisfied. This is going to be lengthy, but I thought I would share what is working for me.

I love to cook. It is truly one of my hobbies--I enjoy trying out new recipes, creating my own recipes, and just spending time in my kitchen creating. But let's be real here: I have two young kids who fall apart toward the end of the day just like most kids tend to do, and 5:30 pm is pretty much the worst possible time for me to be indulging one of my hobbies in order to feed my family each night. That's exactly what I was trying to do before, though. Each evening I would attempt to make some awesome new recipe I found on Pinterest or a blog somewhere. As the clock ticked closer to Josh's arrival time of 6:20ish pm. I would be running around the kitchen with at least 3 pots going on the stove, a total mess covering the kitchen counter, kids whining and crying at my feet because they were hungry (and, honestly, a little neglected by their crazily cooking mom), with the laptop sitting dangerously close to the stove so I could see my recipes. By the time Josh walked in the door the kids would be crying, I would be in a horrible mood (or crying myself, sometimes), the kitchen would be a total disaster, and dinner still wasn't on the table. Craziness. And on top of all that, it would take us all of 10 minutes, if that, to eat the creation I had just slaved over and then it took me at least 30 minutes to clean up the kitchen afterward--all while Josh & the boys were playing in the other room.

My hobby was not at all fun under these conditions. And really, who gets to enjoy a hobby every single day anyway? If you sew I doubt that you sit at your sewing machine every day. Josh doesn't play golf every day. So I came to the realization that I was making dinnertime waaaaay more complicated than it had to be, and I wasn't even enjoying cooking the way I normally would. I decided that nightly family dinners are a time to keep it simple.

Keeping dinnertime simple breaks down into 3 categories for me: meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking. Here's a breakdown of how it works for me:Meal planning was a big stress-inducer for me before. We have SO many meal options available to us through Pinterest, blogs, recipe sites, cookbooks, etc. that trying to settle on meals for the week can be a kind of daunting! So I simplified my meal planning. My goals are for our meals to be healthy & nutritious, tasty, and easy. Our family doesn't follow any set diet plan (ie vegan, Paleo, etc). but we have always tended to eat mostly protein and veggies. We also don't eat fruit at dinner, which might be weird? I love fruit but for some reason I only like it with breakfast, lunch, or as a snack. Anyway, since that is the way we eat anyway I just sort of set it in stone and said that from now on every meal will consist of:
1) chicken (or occasionally another meat) with two veggies
2) chicken (or occasionally another meat) with one veggie and quinoa
3) chicken (or occasionally another meat) with one veggie and a side salad
4) A salad topped with chicken
That's IT! That may be totally boring to you and your family would never go for that. Thankfully, everyone here is great with it. Also, once a week we have omelets for dinner, though not always on the same night. Omelets are such an easy, filling, yummy, and cheap dinner! This could all look totally different for you, but having a standard plan that applies to every single week is what makes it easy--maybe each week you have a casserole one night, tacos one night, grill out one night, and have a meatless meal one night, whatever. (I personally will probably add a soup night once a week when the weather cools off. Bonus: most soup recipes feed our family for two nights). So anyway I cook 4 nights a week: omelets one night, and one of these other meals 3 other nights. On Fridays we like to eat with one of our families, get pizza, or occasionally go out to eat. It is so, so nice just to have a basic plan like this! I know the basics of what I need to prepare for each week, and before grocery shopping I just have to fill in the details. I made a list in my phone of all our favorite vegetable dishes, quinoa recipes, and chicken marinades or toppings and I just look over the list each week and plan what we'll have each night. We have really basic things--like, I don't make squash casserole, I just make sauteed squash. Or whatever. That makes for a short and inexpensive trip to the grocery store, and makes dinner prep quick and easy. Plus it's healthy!

Ok so my meals are planned and now I need to make a grocery list and head to the store. The Cozi app helps me so, so much!

The calendar alone is great, but I love the lists feature too and I keep my grocery list in there. Like any other family, we have things that we need from the store each and every week: eggs, milk, romaine lettuce, waffles, etc. Those stay on my list permanently. Then throughout the week as we run out of something or realize we will need something on the next grocery trip, I just go into Cozi and add it. (Another thing: Cozi uses a shared account for the entire family, so if Josh thinks of something we need he can add it to the list from his phone and it updates it on mine too). Once I plan the details for the meals of the week, I add the veggies or other ingredients that we need to the Cozi list. Lastly, I have a running list on my phone of items that we don't necessarily need to buy weekly, but that we never want to run out of: natural peanut butter, quinoa, honey, chicken broth, rolled oats, olive oil, etc. I check the pantry and fridge before shopping each week to be sure we aren't running low on those items. You could do all this with a pen and paper list, too, of course. I do think though that having your standard weekly purchases always on the list helps so much--it keeps you from forgetting things and having to go back to the store. For me, that inevitably leads to buying more things I don't really need. Doing it this way makes grocery shopping at least 10 times more quick and easy than before. I have never been a no-list shopper, but I would definitely forget to put something on my list before I was more organized about it. One last thing about shopping--I go to Sam's every two weeks for certain things: boneless skinless chicken breasts, apples, bread, and bananas. One package of chicken breasts will feed us 5 meals so between omelets and one meal with a different meat, I only have to buy chicken every two weeks. I freeze two breasts together in plastic baggies.

Cooking each night is the easiest part of all this! In the morning I put a baggie of chicken in the sink to thaw. Around lunchtime/naptime I throw the marinade in the bag or prepare the other ingredients for the chicken dish I am making, plus I chop whatever veggies we are having. Then about an hour before dinnertime I just have to preheat the oven, put everything in the proper dish, stick it in, and go play with the kids til Josh gets home (OR I even have time to bathe the kids before dinner, making bedtime easier!) If I am making something on the stovetop, it usually just takes a couple minutes so that is easy. I am much, much, much less frazzled now. The kitchen isn't a complete and total disaster at the end of the day when I am so tired. Clean-up is fast and I have more time to enjoy some family playtime before we tackle the bedtime routine. Ahhhhh.

Since cooking is something I do enjoy so much, I will always save special or more complicated recipes for special weekend meals, or times that we are having company over. And when our kiddos are grown, I can make gourmet meals every night if I want to :) But for now it is so much better for our family if I just keep it simple!

Here are a handful of my recent favorite chicken and veggie recipes. (The way I cook chicken 80% of the time though is just marinating it in store-bought salad dressing and baking. I do a lot of homemade marinades but not as often as a should. A $1 Kroger brand bottle of salad dressing is enough for at least 4-5 meals, so that's hard to pass up)

"Dump" Chicken  

(a million recipes on this one link! These are all perfect for this simplified style of cooking)

Chicken Florentine

Quinoa with Corn & Scallions 

Roasted Zucchini & Carrots

Grilled Sweet Potato Skewers:

Garlic Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Roasted Green Beans (I use frozen beans)