Dinner Planning For Busy School Days

If you’ve got little ones in school like me or even older kids sometimes getting dinner ready after picking your kids up from school, getting homework done and everything else you need to get done the last thing you want to think about is dinner right?

Right! Here are some helpful tips to help you with your dinner planning on busy school days.

Dinner Planning For Busy School Days

Another summer has quickly passed us by. The kids have reluctantly gone back to school. It stands to reason that life should be a little less hectic, right? Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case. Between all of your daily ‘Mom obligations’, helping with homework and providing transportation to every extra-curricular activity under the sun, you probably have little time to devote to dinner planning.

Many times busy parents resort to hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, frozen pizza or frequent trips to a fast-food restaurant. That’s not healthy for you or the kids – not to mention its pretty rough on the family grocery budget.

Kitchen time savers

There are things you can do to cut down on time spent in the kitchen. Pick one day a week and prepare several freezer friendly meals. You can even go the extra mile and package them in individual serving size containers. Doing so will provide your family with a larger variety of entrée choices, on any given day.

Do you have friends that are intrigued with the idea of a one-day a week cooking spree or a meal planning service? Get together with 2 or 3 of them. Each of you decides on 2 main dishes you want to prepare. Buy enough ingredients to make the entrees for each family.

You need to plan ahead

One simple thing that you can do is keep an ample supply of fresh fruits, salad ingredients, soups and fresh sandwich fixings, on hand. Quick meals such as this are nutritious and don’t require a great deal of preparation time.

If you take on the task of meal planning and want to get in the habit of consistently putting together weekly menus yourself, you may be surprised at how much time it involves. Did you know that the typical family meal planner spends roughly 3 hours per week combing through cookbooks, choosing recipes and compiling a grocery list? That translates into 156 hours, per year. Yikes!

A menu service can help

You can say goodbye to last minute thrown together meals and eliminate the stress of dinner planning for your family by subscribing to a meal planning service. This type of service is very affordable, usually costing only a few cents per day. Menus are often designed to be family friendly and easily adaptable.

When you purchase a subscription to a service such as this, your membership will typically feature a weekly menu emailed right to your inbox. This includes seven main dish recipes, side dish suggestions and dessert ideas. As an added benefit, you receive a detailed shopping list, categorized by aisle, which makes your trip to the grocery store that much easier. Simply cross off items already in your pantry, add any other products you may be in need of and you’re off!

If you enjoy planning your own menu, you may want to consider a dinner planning service, in addition to your own choices. Why? It will still save you time, in the long run. Use the membership menu as a base. Then, search for recipes that will deliciously compliment that weekly plan.

Remember, nothing is more important than family time. Don’t let dinner planning get you down. Consider the suggestions we’ve made and you’ll spend less time slaving over hot stove and more time with the people you love.

Hope you found some helpful information and did you realize how much work you actually put into meal planning?

You are Serving WHAT for Dinner?

Ever have trouble getting your little ones to eat right. Well, this will sure have them smiling and having fun and hopefully eating healthy food.

Every day is the perfect day to have fun with the meals you serve. Surprise your family with these fun recipe ideas.

Fake Hot Dogs And French Fries

Your kids will love fake hot dogs and French fries for lunch this April fools day. Peel a banana and spread peanut butter all over it to give it the appearance of a hot dog. Serve it in a hot dog bun with some strawberry preserve drizzled over the hotdog to make it look like ketchup.
For the fries, peel some apples and cut them into sticks resembling fresh fries. Roll them in a cinnamon and sugar mixture and bake them for 8 to 10 minutes in a preheated 400 F oven. Serve with a side of strawberry preserve as fake ketchup. What a fun lunch.

Fool everyone in the family with these fun dinner and desert ideas. They won’t believe you are actually serving cake for dinner and spaghetti for dessert.

Cherry Cake Or Meatloaf?

Your Family will be in for a big surprise with this meatloaf cake.

Prepare your favorite meatloaf and bake it in two 9-inch cake pans. Reduce the cooking time from what you would usually cook it since the meatloaf cake is thinner. While the meatloaf cakes are baking, prepare some creamy mashed potatoes. Spread a layer of mashed potatoes on one of the cakes and top it with the second one. Use the remaining mashed potatoes to “frost” your cake. Cut a few cherry tomatoes in half and use them to decorate the top.

Serve Spaghetti As Desert

Since your serving cake for dinner, it only makes sense to eat spaghetti for dessert. Place a slice of pound cake on a plate. Spoon some softened ice cream in a pastry bag with a thin round tip. Pipe the ice cream over the pound cake in a swirly motion to resemble spaghetti noodles. Freeze for about 15-20 minutes to allow the ice cream to harden back up. Top with strawberry jam as tomato sauce and a few coconut flakes to resemble Parmesan cheese.

Don’t Forget The Drinks

Meals like these deserve a fun twist on a beverage as well. Prepare some lemon Jell-o and pour it into glasses. Add a straw and let it set. It will look just like a glass of lemonade. You can even decorate the glass with a slice of lemon.

Want more family friendly recipes? Visit Dine Without Whine for a sample weekly menu plan your entire family will love.  Come on have fun with your food! Your kids will love it!


 

Got a Picky Eater?

I do! In fact, I’ve got two of them and coming up with something they will eat sometimes takes alot of thinking. I feel bad giving them Mac & Cheese over and over again even though I know they like it. They need something different once in awhile.

Now there’s a solution. A new site has just been launched and it’s perfect for moms, daycare providers, homeschoolers anyone whose got little ones to feed. The name pretty much says it all:

Kid Approved Meals Weekly Breakfast and Lunch Menus Moms and Kids Love!

You can get 13 weeks worth of breakfast and lunch menus for kids.

Give your kids the variety they need and rest assured they are kids approved meals

Got a discount code for you!

Do you remember the post, You are Serving What for Dinner? It had some terriffic fun food ideas for April Fool’s Day. Well now you can get great meal ideas for the rest of your life or better yet you can give it as a great unique fun gift to someone special. A new couple (you know with June just about here, weddings abound) or maybe even as a baby shower gift that will last a lifetime

Just use this discount code: 1A46

and you will get a Lifetime Membership to Dine without Whine at the discounted price, saving you $40 off the regular price. But this is a limited time discount so make sure you pick it up quick.

Want a preview?

Check out the previous post: You are Serving What for Dinner? or on the freebies page you can download the Free Sample Menu and Grocery List pdfs.

Well, gotta go my kids want to eat. Gonna go make something fun! Talk to you again soon.