I have this suspicion that I have pretty close to the same routine as most Americans on a weekday evening. Let me guess you get off work around five o’clock only to have to make a run to daycare to pick up your precious cargo at about five thirty. With the children loaded up, I bet you have to go by the store to pick up a few items you may need for dinner. The grocery store task always seems to take an hour out of your already long day, and you end up getting home at around 7:00. I’m pretty sure that like me you don’t want to put together a dinner that late because it will be 8:30 before everyone is able to eat. The realization of how long it will take to eat hits you in the car and you stop for fast food and disregard any notion you had of cooking. This vicious cycle needs to stop, you need a plan.
The best way to make sure the dinner issue does not happen to you is to come up with a menu of what your going to eat eat for dinner each day of the week. The best way to do this is fill your chart with foods that you can make quickly upon your return to the home in the evening. With this practice you will find that it takes all the guess work out of time consuming task of coming up with dinner.
Since you already should know what you eating for the week, why don’t we get ride of the ultra time consuming task of stopping off at the store before you come home most nights. It makes sense that since you know what you will eat during the week, you should shop accordingly each week end. When you go to the store and pick up only what you need for each dish, it will actually save you money in the long run because it stops you picking up miscellaneous items that you think you may use at some point.
When it comes down to actually making the dinner during the week I find that it is even easier if you prepare the meal the night before. Some people would rather cook the meal and then heat it up the next day, but I find that I prefer to have all the items of the meal ready to go so all you would have to do it cook it. With all the the prep time done in makes the task of starting dinner that much easier when you get off work. If you choose some sort of casserole as your dish then you are even better off those days.
The idea of treating week day meals in this manner does make life a little bit easier when you get off work. The stress associated with a long day of work can be cut in half, because you know there is not as much for you to do when you get home. Just try this for a week and I am sure you will see the benefits.
