Episode 89 When Dinner Flops

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Have you ever had a dinner disaster? It happens to all of us. There are three main ways dinner can fall apart and I have some suggestions to help you rescue a dinner disaster.

1-    You start making dinner and you are missing an ingredient or you forgot to thaw the meat.

• Cook the meal without the ingredient
• Make a simple substitution
• Use the microwave or instant pot to thaw the meat.
• Make one of your backup meals

2- Your family won’t eat the dinner you made.

• Rinse the sauce off the meat and veggies and serve to the family plain.
• Add an extra side dish like bread, noodles, or a salad.
• Disguise the dinner in a wrap with a sauce like mayo or ranch
• Add some cheese to the top

When this happens be a detective to find out what they don’t like about the meal. Does it have flavors they do not prefer? Does it have a weird mix of textures?

-This is why I recommend serving a meal to your family three times with relative success before adding it to the Master Meal Planning Sheet.

3- Dinner is a total disaster. You may have burnt it, added way too much salt, or too much spice or maybe you forgot to gut the fish like Betsy.

• Pick off the burnt part and eat the rest.
• Rinse off the salty or spicy sauce and serve the meat and veggies plain.
• Add a potato to the sauce to soak up the salt (more tips on salt in this episode.)
• Dilute the soup or sauce with more broth or tomatoes. (I like to pull out half of the offending broth or sauce, add the fresh broth or sauce, and then adjust the taste by adding back some of the salty or spicy sauce.)
• If it is too spicy, add some sugar or fat like sour cream or heavy cream.

Marie Fiebach is a married mother of four active kids. She helps busy families plan and execute weeknight dinner so they can recapture a little calm in the crazy. You can see her every week on KAKE TV’s Good Morning Kakeland or listen to the Feed Your Family Tonight Podcast.