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How Do You Simplify Meals?!
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I am wondering what you all do to slimplify meals. If I am going to be able to homeschool I need to get this nailed down and soon! I think that meals could take 40 hours a week if you count the planning, shopping, putting groceries away, preparing meals, eating them, and cleaning up afterwards. How discouraging! I want protein-packed breakfasts, no-sandwich lunches (at least my kids would prefer that), healthy snacks, dinners that we look forward to eating again (why are they so hard to find?!), plus our Sunday lunch needs to be cooked in the crockpot. We have some complications as well, such as peanut allergies, and my kids won’t eat almond butter or hummus, my oldest HATES cheese. Sigh. Anyone have this figured out? Advice? I am looking forward to your responses! Maybe I should look into once-a-month cooking again, I read about it a few years ago.
I think it’s easiest to do a two week rotation. Then you have some variety but it doesn’t leave you scrambling.
I like the 2 week rotation. Also, I think we moms over think the simplest things. I always think we need different foods all the time, but my dh (after asking) said he’d be very happy with a few staples and then maybe 1 or 2 different ones a week. Oh, my I was trying to do something different every day and every week. Breakfast we have the same 7 meals and a few we swap in from time to time. Also, holidays get different things thrown in but otherwise it’s the basics same things.
My suggestion is this make it simple. Find 10 dinners your family loves and make them over the course of 2 weeks and fill in the other days with something new or different. Then the next 2 weeks do the same and then rotate back the next 2 weeks. They will be happy! Good luck momma so hard to make everyone happy.
I need to do the rotation thing, as well. That’s if I can’t have a private chef, which would be my first choice
.I do meal plan for lunches and dinner based on what we already have at home in the cupboards/freezer, etc. We always have breakfast items, but my biggest downfall is not having enough healthy snacks. Gotta work on that.
I can do the cooking if I have to, but I LOATHE planning, shopping, prepping. Sorry I’m not helpful.
Haha! I want a private chef too!!! The two-week rotation sounds like a good idea. I’m just so intimidated by the thought of 21 meals per week, plus a snack each day. That’s a LOT! And yes, snacks are a necessity in this house! Anytime I forget to give a snack, I PAY THE PRICE, lol!
Better get started on my 2-week rotation…
Oh and I try to keep it simple for breakfast and lunch but when it comes those two meals I just come up blank.
missceegee – no apology necessary. And I totally agree, I loathe the planning, shopping, prepping too!
I’m just trying to nail this down. It goes well when I actually do it! I have a list in my recipe book of our families favorite dinners. Next to each meal I typed the ingredients I don’t always have on hand. My goal is every 2 weeks before a shopping trip to plan 2 weeks of meals by just glancing at my list and shopping for those ingredients. I write the planned meals in my daytimer, along with a note for which day to thaw meats for upcoming meals.
I’m very boring with lunches and always used to hate using dinner leftovers for lunch because I wanted a night not to cook:) But I think it’s actually better for us to use leftovers for lunch or else lunches are very dull and repetitive here:) And at least I don’t have to plan lunch!
I cook simple meals with fresh fruits and veggies/salad for most meals. So I’m not really planning sides much….always have fresh produce on hand.
Couple favorite quick meals:
Chicken and BBQ sauce in crockpot til pulls apart, on WW buns
Turkey meatballs w/1 jar grape jelly and 1/2 jar BBQ sauce in crockpot on high 2 hours over WW noodles
Freeze ahead beef and chicken with taco seasoning for quick tacos
One pot spinach spaghetti. I lb WW noodles cooked. One lb beef cooked, add jar spaghetti sauce, and 10 oz or so frozen spinach (cooked) and mix with noodles.
Hope that made sense and is helpful:) I’m still a work in progress on this! Gina
I would like more ideas on this, but a few of my simpler meals are as follows:
black beans (made in the crockpot with a jar of healthy salsa and water or homemade chicken broth for the liquid). I wash and soak the beans after the kids go to bed, rinse them in the morning, and cook on low in the crockpot all day. I make a pot big enough for a few meals and freeze half for another week. We eat these with rice, in burritos, mix them into a quinoa with sautéed veggies dish, or as our base for taco salad (using more lettuce and less chips in the taco salad) .
I like to get organic whole chickens, but cheat quite a bit and get a $5 already cooked rotessori chicken from Costco instead. I also get the prewashed salad mix from Costco and we have a huge salad with the chopped cooked chicken and whatever fresh produce i have on hand. A healthy muffin or healthy bread on the side. If you have cooked chicken chopped on hand, adding that to taco salad or pesto pasta is great.
Frittata-eggs cooked with a variety of chopped veggies. Bacon or Canadian ham if desired. If you have time, a side of potatoes or a healthy muffin.
Chili is very easy and can be as healthy or as unhealthy as you want it to be. I add lots of veggies and make double recipes in the winter since it freezes well. It is also good on baked potatoes.
Green smoothies are great for breakfast, snacks, or as a side dish. It helps if you have a high powered blender for this. Any leftovers can be frozen into Popsicle molds for snacks later on.
For breakfast we eat plain yogurt sweetened with honey and frozen blueberries quite a bit.
Homemade granola with honey and coconut oil made with lots of slivered almonds, pepitas, and sunflower seeds is very filling and goes along way if you make a big batch. I add raisins for added sweetness at the end. I’m thinking about doing this for my kids’ cooking lesson soon. It is easy to make.
Baked fish in corn tortillas tacos with toppings.
I’m sorry your dc don’t like hummus. My ds doesn’t either but my dd loves it. It is easy to make, nutritious, and good protein source that goes great with so many things. I’m trying to brain wash my son into liking it, I’ll let you know if I succeed.
Given the chance, I’d eat rice and beans with sauteed greens as a side 5x/wk like I did for 6 months as a missionary before I married, but can’t convince my dh to be happy with that. Meals can be so very simple outside of the Western culture.
I used to do a meal trade with a neighbor once a week. I cooked for her Monday nights, she cooked for me Wednesday nights, we usually had enough for leftovers on the day after, throw in a pizza night and there ya go! That was the best eating our family has ever done. Unfortunatley, that friend moved away ; ( We are particular about we eat and it’s been hard to find someone else who cooks similarly, and her son had allergies, but I was able to adapt meals for them.
another idea about snacks. I try to buy some snacks, some for pantry and some for fridge and I bag them up into snack sized ziplock bags, it makes them easy to grab and go already portioned out.
I saw a blog where a mom made a bunch of breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos, then froze them…I’d love to do something like this, but we don’t have a large freezer. My mom cooks a large batch of waffles and freezes them.
Our lunches (they don’t like sandwiches either):
–grilled cheese & tomato soup
–pizzas with tortilla crusts
–chicken quesadillas
–chicken or black bean & corn burritos
–PB&J (they will eat these)
–tuna salad on crackers
–chicken nuggets (I dip 1″ chicken pieces in ranch dressing, then bread crumbs, then bake for 20-25 min.)
–pasta with pre-cooked shrimp & veggies
–ham & potato soup
–hot dog (I splurge on the all-beef, nitrate-free ones)
–leftovers
–sides/snacks are usually applesauce, fruits, veggies, yogurt, cheese sticks, salsa/guacamole & chips, salad
frequent dinners: Chilli, spaghetti, tacos, roast beef, baked chicken w/ BBQ sauce, baked fish, pork chops, hamburgers, salad w/ chicken, various pastas, stir fry, individual foil dinners (meat, veggies, & seasoning wrapped in foil then baked)
*a few of my lunch suggestions have cheese, I try to go light on the cheese for those that don’t like it. I’ll put extra meat & veggies on the pizzas or quesadillas and just enough cheese to hold it together.
*instead of the crockpot, I sometimes put a roast in our oven on Sunday mornings. I can’t stand cleaning out the crockpot.
This blog has ideas for crock-pot freezer meals: http://www.six-cents.com/*I like to shop at Aldi since there isn’t a huge selection. I don’t have to pick which brand I want to buy and they just carry the basic foods. It goes much quicker than shopping at a regular grocery store (and costs way less)!
This is an area I have struggled with a long time. I am finally getting a handle on it. I made a 28 day meal plan trying to use same ingredients that week. Here is what I fixed this week:
I had cooked a whole chicken in the oven last week so Sunday night I made easy chicken pot pie with leftover chicken. This has been a favourite for years and calls for cream of chicken and cream of mushroom canned soup and drop bisquick biscuits on top with two bags of frozen mixed veg. I have recently modified it to use my homemade cream of whatever sauce. This goes in a 9×12 and the 4 of us eat half.
Monday I bought meat. I made hamburgers and vegetables for sides. I cooked another pound of hamburger at the same time to use Wednesday.
Tuesday I cook 2 pounds sirloin steak on the stove covered on low in water to slow cook. I make enough mashed potatoes to use for 3 meals in a stainless 5 qt pot and use the hand mixer right in it after cooking and draining. We eat 1/3 of the meat. Freeze 1/3 as bite-size to use Sunday for soup. Save 1/3 for Friday in freezer.
Wednesday I use that hamburger I cooked Monday to make Tater Tot casserole, as my modified version. We eat half of the 9×12.
Thursday I serve leftover chicken pot pie and mashed potatoes.
Friday I use 1/3 the beef I cooked to make beef and noodles. Veg. Sides.
Saturday is leftover tater tot casserole and veg. Side
Sunday I use the other 1/3 of the beef to make a pot of veg. Beef soup. We will have enough leftover to eat one or two lunches.
I have also tried freezing the other 1/2 meals instead of eating it leftover that week. You could double up with the purpose to make freezer meals.
It also helps to designate certain nights for your dc to be “kitchen helper” to help get ingredients and help with clean up and setting the table.
I hate the shopping but use a list and try to go 2-3 weeks and use the freezer. Dh picks up milk and bread during the week. I would like to go a month but I am not yet that organized. I was inspired by pianogirl363 on this forum. Her blog has once a month grocery shopping.
Loathing here also!
For us snacks are simple – fruit or veggie. That’s it one or the other. If we are going to be gone we’ll do something special like home made granola bars, nuts and cheese, cheese sticks etc. This is our AM snack at 10. We do breakfast, snack, lunch, dinner and dessert. Dessert is all from my Trim Healthy Momma book and my family loves them and they are simple and fun – cheesecake, pudding, skinny chocolate, fudge, brownies, chunky cream cheese pops, ice cream, strawberry short cake, muffin in a mug… well you get the idea it’s all worth the wait.
Loveing some of the meal idea’s will be making notes.
Also loved the idea of the 1 meal night off a week by swapping with someone.. hmm who could I convince to do this? I use a list also and follow it. We also use the local food distrubution programs. Some here might say how could you do this with eating healthy but it works. We only take what we’ll eat. The produce, meat and glueten free items and yes they have those. I have got cases of greek fat free yogurt before because no one in line that night wanted it because it wasn’t flavored. I have got cases of spotty bananas which we use for making home made ice cream (our families favorite by far). We figure it’s there it’s free and some nights it’s great some nights it’s not but any little bit helps.
Great ideas here!!
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This blog has ideas for crock-pot freezer meals: 
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