Cook dinner at lunch
I love cooking from scratch. I love that it saves us money. I love that I know what ingredients go into our food. I love that it tastes so much better than processed meals. But the constant preparing and cleaning up wears on me.
My biggest problem is dinner. Dinner is usually our meal that requires the most preparation and time. The rub here is that by dinner I am wiped out. There also always seems to be a time crunch at this time of the day to get all the days projects wrapped up and cleaned up.
At the end of the day I find myself trying to take laundry off the line, feed the animals, get the kids to clear the table so we have a place to eat, and prepare dinner while at least two little ones are attempting to help me. This is often done while yelling at children to stop bickering and constant glances out the window praying that I see Tim coming soon to rescue me from our children. I'm not exactly at my best this time of day. The mess of the kitchen after all of this is just downright depressing to me.
Then I remember something a friend of mine used to do. She prepared her dinner at lunch time. I decided to give it a try.
Lunch time is a much better time of the day for me. Lunch often is leftovers, and there is not a lot of preparation or mess. I have more energy. One child naps after lunch. We are usually done with school, or at least to a point that they can finish on their own. If they are done, they generally use their TV time after lunch. It is a very quiet time in my house. It is a perfect time to prepare dinner.
After lunch, I will do as much of the prep work for dinner as I can. Obviously what can be done, depends on the meal, but somethings that can be done at lunch time are baking quick breads like cornbread, chopping any vegetables that will be used for salad or stir fry, scrubbing or peeling potatoes (if potatoes are cut keep them in water so they don't turn brown,) assembling a casserole, putting a roast in the slow cooker and soups can be made and left in the crockpot or put away to reheat at dinner time. Then I clean up the mess from lunch and the dinner prep in wonderful peace and quiet.
If you are not home at lunch time, what may work is to do tomorrow's dinner prep after dinner tonight. Doing the prep tonight will still leave you with a lot of clean up at the end of the day, but it would help with the dinner crunch time of trying to get food on the table after a long day of work or other activities.
Making dinner at lunch doesn't really change the amount of prep or cleaning up that needs done, but it does move much of the work to a better time of the day for me. This makes for a happier mommy and a happier family.
Works for Me Wednesday.
6 comments:
This is a great tip! Since I'm not home at lunchtime, I've started making parts of dinner the night before, as you said. I'll brown taco meat ahead of time, or make rice for fried rice, or pizza dough to rise in the fridge. The clean-up from making pieces of tomorrow's dinner is just combined with dishes from tonight's dinner, so it's not too big a deal.
Oh what a great tip! I am just shot by the time 4:30 or 5 rolls around. I'm going to start doing this! Thanks!
Kristina
Great tip!
I like to get things ready the day before, too. Sometimes it is just getting something seasoned to stick in the crockpot the next morning, but I often will forget that I even put anything in the crockpot until I walk in and smell it cooking. What a comforting feeling to know that supper is at least half-way there!
My husband works the evening shift so lunch is our supper. I fought it for a long time because for years he worked days and I always had a meal on the table when he got home. It has taken 5 years to finally get the hang of it, but now we've resolved ourselves to that fact. And guess what...he may be going to a day shift soon. LOL
I started prepping or making a couple meals on the weekend. We both work long hours and neither one of us is up for cooking a whole meal every night so this made it much easier to eat home cooked meals every night.
That's exactly what I do! When my son is resting in the afternoon, which is right after lunch, I get dinner put together. It makes the evening much easier! Thanks for sharing your ideas :)
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