Meal Planning for Working Moms
Truth be told, Matt and I tend to like to eat the same things. Now that we are feeding Finley primarily table food, we have to be mindful that we are making things that can be easily adapted for her young taste buds. So far, knock on wood and cross all phalanges, Finley has been a zealous and adventurous eater. So much zealous that she will turn her nose at scrambled eggs, but inhale a quiche. She will scowl at grilled chicken, but slurp butter chicken off her fingers with ecstasy. I’m often left wondering, is this normal!?
Since the dawn of time, or whenever we started living together, our weekly rotation has always featured curry and pasta, thankfully now two of Finley’s favourites. When its summer, we sometimes lighten it up a bit with zucchini noodles, which she also thankfully eats with just as much gusto. We also like to have a big salad every week, usually the more ingredients the better. No limp lettuce and dressing sad salads here. For a one-year-old, salad might be a bit of a struggle, but hopefully the ‘accessories’ will be enough to keep her interested.
In the spirit of simplifying our lives/maintaining my sanity during my return to work, I decided to make a weekly meal rotation to save me the hassle of coming up with what to make for dinner. I used our usual favourites and scheduled them on a weekly rotation. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The weekly rotation looks like this
Monday Meatballs
Tuesday Tacos
Wednesday Trashed up Hump Day Salad
Thursday Curry
Friday Pizza or Date Night
After a few mindless bathtub hours, I had a Weeknight Cooking Pinterest board, full of recipes in each category. I tried extra hard to find recipes that were on the easy-ish end of the scale, since I don’t imagine I will want to cook for hours when I get home. I also paid special attention to things that can be doubled for freezing, made in the crock-pot, and reheat well for lunches the next day. It’s a bonus when we have lunch leftovers *also adds Tupperware to list* because its healthy and easy on the wallet!
Usually on a Sunday, pen and paper in hand, I make my schedule for the week, followed by my grocery list, and off I go to Costco and usually our local grocery store. Crucial for this task is leaving baby at home, for a few focused hours at the store. Once I get everything home, I prep as much as possible -- washing and cutting fruits and veg, pre-cooking any grains that we might need, and trimming up any of the meat. This effort up front helps when the dinner time hustle comes around. In our house, 5:00 is a bit of a witching hour, add in a hungry baby, and a freshly home from work mom, and this is a recipe for meltdown/wine chugging.
This is all fine and well in theory, but stay tuned to see how it works in practice!
How do you meal prep for your busy family?
