Organizing 3 Suppers in One Hour
The following is a guest post from regular contributor, Angie at Echoes of Laughter.
You know what busy moms everywhere want…supper ideas that don’t take a lot of time. At the end of a busy day, Moms want easy meals that are tasty & nutritious for their families. I have seen a ton of great ideas for planning ‘big cooks’ where lots of frozen casseroles and dishes are made, but guess what….frozen casseroles don’t rock my family’s world. And serving more than 1 casserole a week is a total fail. Recently, I have discovered that doing a ‘big cook’ on Sundays or Mondays works so much better for our family than frozen meals.
Organizing 3 Suppers in One Hour:
Here’s how I do a big cook. I choose a number of things to cook which include a few meat dishes and roasted vegetables. I fill up the oven with everything and take things out as they finish cooking. While things are cooking in the oven, I make up a large side salad {no dressing} and get the rice cooker going with a batch of rice. After an hour, the roasted vegetables and meat/fish are done. The salad is made and the rice is finished. Once cooled, I place everything in the fridge so that I have enough food for 3 nights of dinners. One night will be roasted vegetables and meat. Another night will consist of rice and a fish or meat dish with side salad. And the third night will be to finish up whatever is left. I just reheat things for a few minutes in the oven on a cookie sheet or microwave as needed.
{Pictured below: Roasted potatoes, roasted asparagus, stuffed salmon, plain chicken breasts and bacon-wrapped chicken breasts in barbecue sauce.}
Also, we are in a season of life where some nights a sit-down family dinner is just not feasible. Our teen likes to eat dinner at 3 pm before she leaves for a part-time job after school or to go to the gym to workout. My tween likes to eat at 4 pm before he has hockey practice. My husband eats anytime between 5:30 and 7 pm when he gets home from work. And I eat somewhere in between driving the kids to where they need to be. This system works great for us right now because I know that there is always a healthy meal available in the fridge when needed.
{Pictured below: chicken breasts, salmon, sausages and pork chops. On this particular week I also made potato salad, green salad and coleslaw for sides.}
This works in so many ways…it’s economical, it’s time-efficient and is so practical. And for an hour of my time on Sundays or Mondays, I give myself the gift of having dinner on the table for 3 nights in a row. It’s awesome and my family knows that there is always a hot meal for them at home in the fridge. As winter comes on, I can easily see adding a homemade chili or soup to the lineup as well. This is what I would call meal-planning SUPER-SIZED….3 meals planned and cooked at once! If you would like to learn more about how I organize food for my family for a week, you might enjoy this post where I share a few more ideas.
Thank you so much for joining me here today and see you again in 2 weeks!
Angie’s blog, Echoes of Laughter, is all about filling your home with love and laughter. She loves creative projects, organizing & decorating, cooking, baking, and all things domestic. Angie lives in Alberta, Canada, with her husband and two great kids.
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Interesting post. Do you use a microwave to reheat for each person?
How do you store the food once it’s cooked? In those same containers or do you transfer to tupperware (or similar?) And can fish keep for three days in the fridge?
Hi Jen! If you follow the link in the post to my blog, I talk more about how I store the food in the fridge. I store it in stacking square containers. And we eat the fish early on so it us but in the fridge for more than 2 days. Hope this helps.