Dinner Planning For School Days
Another summer has quickly passed us by. The kids have reluctantly
gone back to school. It stands to reason that life should be a
little less hectic, right? Unfortunately, that’s usually not the
case. Between all of your daily ‘Mom obligations’, helping with
homework and providing transportation to every extra-curricular
activity under the sun, you probably have little time to devote to
dinner planning.
Many times busy parents resort to hot dogs and macaroni and
cheese, frozen pizza or frequent trips to a fast-food restaurant.
That’s not healthy for you or the kids – not to mention its pretty
rough on the family grocery budget.
Kitchen time savers
There are things you can do to cut down on time spent in the
kitchen. Pick one day a week and prepare several freezer friendly
meals. You can even go the extra mile and package them in
individual serving size containers. Doing so will provide your
family with a larger variety of entrée choices, on any given day.
Do you have friends that are intrigued with the idea of a one-day
a week cooking spree or a meal planning service? Get together with
2 or 3 of them. Each of you decides on 2 main dishes you want to
prepare. Buy enough ingredients to make the entrees for each
family.
You need to plan ahead
One simple thing that you can do is keep an ample supply of fresh
fruits, salad ingredients, soups and fresh sandwich fixings, on
hand. Quick meals such as this are nutritious and don’t require a
great deal of preparation time.
If you take on the task of meal planning and want to get in the
habit of consistently putting together weekly menus yourself, you
may be surprised at how much time it involves. Did you know that
the typical family meal planner spends roughly 3 hours per week
combing through cookbooks, choosing recipes and compiling a
grocery list? That translates into 156 hours, per year. Yikes!
A menu service can help
You can say goodbye to last minute thrown together meals and
eliminate the stress of dinner planning for your family by
subscribing to a meal planning service. This type of service is
very affordable, usually costing only a few cents per day. Menus
are often designed to be family friendly and easily adaptable.
When you purchase a subscription to a service such as this, your
membership will typically feature a weekly menu emailed right to
your inbox. This includes seven main dish recipes, side dish
suggestions and dessert ideas. As an added benefit, you receive a
detailed shopping list, categorized by aisle, which makes your
trip to the grocery store that much easier. Simply cross off items
already in your pantry, add any other products you may be in need
of and you’re off!
If you enjoy planning your own menu, you may want to consider a
dinner planning service, in addition to your own choices. Why? It
will still save you time, in the long run. Use the membership menu
as a base. Then, search for recipes that will deliciously
compliment that weekly plan.
Remember, nothing is more important than family time. Don’t let
dinner planning get you down. Consider the suggestions we’ve made
and you’ll spend less time
slaving over hot stove and more time with the people you love.
