The hour before dinner time used to be a major source of stress in our household. I was busy trying to get everything made so that we could eat on time, the kids were hungry and beginning to get cranky after a long day, and everyone was leaving a mess in their wake. No matter what I did to try to avoid it, this vicious cycle seemed to repeat itself day after day without fail. At the time, I was not yet cooking 100% from scratch. However, that seemed to make no difference in the hurried, frenetic pace of that hour. The realization began to dawn on me that there must be an easier way and that I needed to find it if I had any hopes of maintaining a peaceful pre-dinner routine.

I began to experiment with having dinner fully prepared earlier in the day so that at meal time all I had to do was reheat our plates. This led to a definite improvement in that hour before dinner. But I felt very limited in my choices of what I could make this way without sacrificing on taste. I knew I had hit upon a system that would work well for us, but it wasn’t yet where I needed it to be. So I tweaked the system a bit more with each passing day.

Now this system and I are at a pretty agreeable place. At least 5 days of the week I have all of my cooking done for the day by 1:00 pm. I save meals that are not conducive to being prepared ahead of time for the weekends when my husband is home.

As time as has gone on, I’ve found that there are a surprising number of meals that can be prepared ahead of time. Obviously casseroles work well this way. I do all of the prep and assembly work in the morning, cover and refrigerate the casserole, then just toss it in the oven before dinner. For a meal that consists of a main course with side dishes, I do as much of the cooking and assembly beforehand as possible. As an example, for a taco dinner with sides of skillet corn and refried beans, I will have the meat cooked and seasoned, the cheese shredded, the lettuce and tomatoes diced and put in prep bowls in the fridge, and the side dishes made by 1 pm. Thirty minutes before dinner time, I will begin plating our meal by reheating everything that needs to be warmed up and assembling the tacos and dishing out the sides.

Some days I am able to spend an uninterrupted block of time making dinner in the morning, and other days I split it up into 15 minute increments of stolen time. Both methods work equally well and are only contingent on what else we have going on that day. Because it is my system, I control how it works for me and not the other way around.

I love that dinner time is no longer the hectic mess it used to be, as do my husband and children.

For more Kitchen Tips, please stop in at Tammy’s Recipes.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites