Your days are so inundated with responsibilities for your kids, house, and career, that by the time you get home you’re exhausted. You don’t have time let alone the energy to give your kids a proper meal, so you opt for takeout or quick-fix microwave meals. Though this can be okay sometimes, you and your children need nutritious foods regularly for optimum physical and mental health.
How in the world are you supposed to find the time and energy to get to preparing nutritious meals for your family? The below ideas will take the frustration out of preparing dinner while saving you time and money in the process.
Set it and Forget It
Whether it’s the winter, summer, spring, or fall, the crockpot is a busy mom’s best friend (or at least it should be). These beautiful inventions take the frustration out of cooking for sure. There are a ton of crockpot recipes out there you can try or just get creative and start throwing ingredients in the pot to see what the end result is. All you need is a liquid-like stock or broth, some veggies, and a protein or two. Set the timer and temperature on the pot and you’re good to go. When you get home from work, the house smells like you’ve been slaving at the stove all day and the food tastes delicious. You can make anything from chicken to pasta dishes in a crockpot and dinner is served!
Diet Meal Plans
Some moms find it easy to heat up some chicken nuggets or make a small pizza with an English muffin, some sauce, and cheese for their kids to have a quick-fix dinner, but what about mom? If you need something healthy to eat there’s always the option to look into weight loss meal plans for women. You can choose from an array of healthy items and have them shipped to your door. Everything is already prepared and all it takes is a quick heat-up to dig in.
Meal Delivery Services
For busy moms who really hate the idea of meal planning here’s an easy fix, meal delivery services. You can spend a few minutes on the internet browsing through selections of recipes you would love to try for dinner. After selecting the recipes you’re most interested in, the site will send you all the ingredients to create the dishes at home. Everything has already been measured and portioned properly so it saves you a bunch of time. With most recipes taking under an hour you can save a lot of time in the kitchen as well. You can make it even more fun by allowing the kids to pitch in and help out.
Repurpose Food
When you’re making food for the week, cook in larger batches and repurpose the main ingredients. For instance, let’s say you cook a ton of chicken breasts. You can have them baked one day, then chop up the chicken and use it for tacos another day, and finally add some celery, mustard, and mayonnaise and create a chicken salad. That’s three meals with just one protein which can save you a bunch of time and energy throughout the week.
Keep it Simple
You’re a working mom with a lot on her plate. Don’t stress yourself out trying to plan some elaborate meal for your family to eat. As long as it includes fruit, veggie, grain, and protein you’re good to go. You can have a create your own pizza night but using English muffins instead of pizza dough which takes longer. You can have a simple soup and sandwich day. You might also decide to make breakfast for dinner simply because it’s a quick meal. You really don’t have to overdo it. Then, when you have some spare time or on the weekend you can step outside of the box and learn some more detailed recipes and try them when you have more time.
If you’re trying to do a better job of making sure you and your family get a nutritious dinner each night, you should be commended for it. Be that as it may, with limited time and energy, sometimes it can prove more difficult than not. The best thing you can do is find ways to simplify the meal prep process by using suggestions such as those provided above.
