It’s 5:00 & everyone is expecting you to have dinner on the table in the next hour.
And if you’re honest with yourself, you’d rather do anything but go make dinner… but because you are a good mom who feeds her children, you scroll Instagram hoping for a great dinner idea.
Instead of ideas, you get side-tracked and 30 minutes later, you realize you still haven’t thawed meat.
You reach for your phone, make a quick call, & get a less-than-authentic dinner delivered.
For the moment, the problem is taken care of. But when your head finally hits the pillow, you feel guilty for not feeding your family a healthy dinner.
You resolve to do better tomorrow.
Does this sound familiar?😊 You are not alone.
How do I know?
I’ve been there. Plus my email box tells me this.
Many moms are reaching out & asking for help.
“How do I make time to feed my family healthy food?”
After a busy day of work; it’s hard to think of cooking.
For me, I’ve learned dinner plans need to start long before 5:00.
Let me explain.
Menu planning.
It’s really that simple.
This is what I do & it has revolutionized our dinner time.
1. Sit down on Sunday night or Monday morning & write down your family’s fav. 7 meals. A great activity to get your children involved in as well. They always know their favorites. 🥰
Here are our family’s favorite ground beef recipes to get you started brainstorming!
3. Make a grocery list of things you need to finish each meal.
Be sure to make a note or set a reminder to stop at the store on the way home from homeschool coop to get all your ingredients, Monday afternoon.
4. Then, first thing each morning, make sure the meat is thawing that you will need for your next meal(s).
So when 5:00 hits & everyone is hangry, you know you have a plan. Get your little ones (or big ones😉) a glass of fresh milk to tide them over until dinner & start cooking.
Be sure to congratulate yourself for having a dinner plan.
Pro-tip: At the end of the week reevaluate how you felt each evening being able to feed your family the way you’ve always dreamed of.
Accomplished? Excited? Confident? “I can do this!”?
Remember this feeling the next time you make your meal plans & you’ll be excited to do it again.🤩
I’ve come to like my evenings, simply because I took these steps.
Any week I skip this, I’m left hanging & I simply can’t get dinner on the table in time and that of course spirals the whole evening downwards.
In reality, Monday morning us moms are already choosing how our evenings will go.