sunday - chinese takeout
monday - spaghetti, cheese sticks, salad w/homemade croutons
tuesday - meatloaf, mashed potatoes, salad
wednesday - chicken and cheese nachos
thursday - leftovers
friday - takeout
saturday - grilled bbq chicken, sweet potatoes, salad
Do you have small kids and have a hard time getting dinner on the table every night? Here are a few things that I have started doing that make dinner time easier.
My husband gets home from work at a different time each night, and when he does get home he has to get showered before he is going to eat. {he works outside}This means that I don't know what time I need to start dinner until he calls me and says, "I'll be home at such and such time." This makes for a chaotic "dinner time" if I'm not prepared. Most of the time he is calling me or getting home around 6(ish). This is the same time that baby needs to be fed and little man is already hungry. I can't wait until then to get dinner going for it to be hot when he gets here. Baby is ready to eat at 6. I repeat baby is ready to eat. He doesn't care that you need to be cooking dinner. Both boys go to bed at 7.
This is what I will do this week to make my life a little easier.
The spaghetti gets cooked during the day {during nap time} and put in the crock pot on low. It keeps things simple. Once my husband is home and showered I just have to put together our salad, and put the cheese sticks in the oven while he is in the shower. The main part of the meal is already done, and the mess has already been cleaned up.
The meatloaf will get assembled during the day and put in the fridge until it's time to put it in the oven. The potatoes will be cleaned and cut early in the day so that all I really have to do is boiled them an mash them.
The chicken for the nachos will be put in the crock pot with seasoning early in the day. Once it is done I shred it and it is ready so that once my husband is home I just put the nachos together and they cook for a few minutes in the oven. The hardest part of the meal was done earlier in the day.
What do you do to make meal time easier at your house?
One thing I do to make things faster for dinners that need shredded chicken is to already have the chicken shredded and waiting in my freezer. Once every few months I will buy big packages of bone-in, skin on chicken breast and cook it all at one time. I shred it all at one time and put it into freezer bags (in meal size portions). It is ready for me at all times that way!
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