Getting Dinner on the Table Part 2

(in response to a comment about getting dinner to the table when both spouses work all day)

I definitely have more flexibility with cooking, as a stay-at-home. Cooking is no easy task with 3 little tinies, but I can break tasks up throughout the day, if I need to. Here are some tricks that worked for me, when I was working full-time:

• I fixed a lot of crock-pot meals.


• I would try to do prepwork for my meals at night - my husband would wash dishes, make lunches & clear the table, while I cut chicken, mixed spices or chopped veges.


• I tried to 'stack' meals - purposefully planning to use ingredients from one meal in a future meal. For example, if I was grilling chicken with veges on Monday night, I would grill enough chicken to use in a grilled chicken salad on Wednesday night and maybe even chicken burritos on Friday night.


• I tried to always double my cooking - making one meal to eat and freezing a meal to use later.


• I prepared a lot of one-dish meals - with veges, meat & starch all in one dish.


• I used allrecipes.com to find good recipes, and I didn't even look at the recipes that took longer than 20-30 minutes.


• I tried to lower my expectations. It's impossible to cook gourmet meals every night when you're working all day (in the office or with kids!). If all you have time to do is grilled cheese sandwiches & a salad, then that's okay!