Episode 137 Weeknight Dinner is About Time Management
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
The Feed Your Family Tonight system for planning meals is built on one important concept: weeknight dinners are about time management.
This is the heart of my 3-step process, which is the first thing I teach about meal planning. I call it my weeknight dinner public service announcement or PSA:
P – Plan and prep
When you use my weekly meal plan sheet, you start by looking at your schedule for the week. You write in activities and time commitments so you can see what each day will look like. Based on this schedule, you decide what time dinner will be each night. And even though you have a great strategy for the week, you need to have a few quick meal ideas for the days that don’t go as planned.
As I put this system into practice, I find myself categorizing recipes by how much time they require. These categories are not about ingredients, so they can organize any type of diet. In Episode 131, I identified six types of recipes:
- Long Prep Project Cooking
- Long Prep Bulk or Freezer Prep
- Short Prep Long Hands Off Cooking
- Short Prep Moderate Hands On Cooking
- Short Prep and Short Hands Off Cooking
- Freezer Revival Meals
Weeknight dinners are much more about time management than they are about recipes. Often people think having the right recipes are the key to successful dinners, but if you don’t factor in time, even the best recipe is not going to help you. Be honest with yourself about your time and choose meals that work with your schedule.
Spend some time this week thinking about how your favorite recipes fit into these six categories and how much time you usually have for cooking during the week. I’d love for you to share your thoughts over in the Feed Your Family Tonight Facebook group. Join me there or on Instagram at FeedYourFamilyTonight.
You can find a transcript here.
