3 ways to get dinner served in less time

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” William Penn

If you’re trying to find more time or just simplify dinner planning and shopping, it’s worth the upfront time investment to get your planning and systems in order.

If you want to feed your family healthy meals, be able to prepare dinners while getting kids to evening soccer practices and more, and keep your mind free to attend to a full time job, you know that you’ve got to find systems and invest in planning to get it all done without pulling your hair out each week. After spending two summers on semi-vacation in Costa Rica with the family, I also started realizing how much more fun I could be having if I just simplified some of the things that absorbed my time in a normal week. Coming back from our trip over the last two summers, I’ve made these effective changes that have changed meal planing & shopping to a simple side thought rather than a major regular chore.

Tip 1: Plan Meals Easily with a Digital Recipe Service

If you’re still planning meals each week by cutting out magazine clips, collecting recipe cards and pulling ideas from multiple places, I suggest investing the time to get all your recipes in one place – and make a digital one.

I have long referenced allrecipes.com for new recipes, because I love the user reviews and sheer number of quality recipes on there, and I finally decided last year to give their paid subscription a try, so I could use the meal planning feature that’s part of the paid membership. I realized I needed to go all in to do it right, so I spent a little time each weekend typing in my recipes that weren’t on the site already within my personal recipes list.

Then I thought about how a perfect week of recipes would look like. Was it about types of meat, amount of time to cook meals, or number of healthy meals?

I realized that I’d like about 2 soups or salads for the sake of healthiness, at least 1 crockpot meal for the busiest evening, 1 casserole to cook on Sunday night and have leftovers for lunches, and 1 meal the kids could help me with (I only need about 5 meals per week since we usually eat out once a week, and usually have at least one evening with leftovers or something simple like breakfast for dinner).

With that figured out, I made folders for my recipes and put each recipe in the proper folder – “soups and salads”, “crockpot meals” and so on. Your folders may be different, but the point is to easily allow yourself to pick out the variety of meals you’d like each week.

The organization has paid off. Now, each and every week when it’s time to plan meals (and actually I’ve moved this process to every other week), I simply go to allrecipes.com, and pick out meals in each category to fill up the week.

The lovely part: Once you pick out your meals for the week in Allrecipes.com, you can print out a shopping list and cooking instructions along with your meal plan for each week. I simply go through the list, cross out any items I know I already have in my kitchen, and add the list that I keep on my refrigerator that gets updated throughout the week anytime we run out of something.

Tip 2. Make Shopping Easy with Grocery Delivery

It’s been over a decade since grocery chains and independent servicers began delivering groceries to homes. Yet so few people take advantage of this awesome service. And it saves so much time.

Personally, I had avoided it because I thought it would be costly or not worth the time investment of finding my groceries within a website. But I was wrong on both fronts.

The first time this year that I pulled up a shopping cart at Safeway.com, it took only about 45 minutes to find all my items. Plus delivery was free. This meant, that the next time I needed to shop, all I had to do was go back to my purchase history and re-order the brands and items I wanted.

Plus, you can so easily compare prices, get up and check whether you are actually out of a particular items in your refrigerator, watch the kids play while shopping, and find items on a shelf by just typing it in the “search” box rather than walking back and forth in the store.

Why isn’t everyone doing this?

OK, maybe you like to pick out your fresh fruits and veggies yourself or prefer items from a specialty store. We have a few of those preferences in our house as well. We simply do our main shopping online – and we do it for two weeks at a time – then on the “off” week we get our meats and fruits from the specialty store.

One more unexpected result of ordering online from Safeway.com – so far I haven’t paid for a single delivery – within 2 weeks of each order, they’ve sent me a coupon for free delivery to use for my next trip.  So it hasn’t cost me an extra dime!

And, I’ve noticed my grocery trips are cheaper – perhaps because of the lack of impulse buys that pop up.

Tip 3: Prep Food Once to Use Twice

A last set of changes has really helped decrease time needed in our household for dinner planning.

While in Costa Rica for a month, without many dinner options, we got into the habit of making a huge pot of beans and rice at the beginning of each week. Then, the only food preparation needed was cutting up some pineapple and preparing meat to go with the meal each night. We essentially were re-using side dishes all week long.

When I returned home, I thought, how can I take this concept and apply it to the more complex set of meals that we typically eat? (beans and rice, while easy, can get a little old).

The way to do this can be highly individualized based on what you eat, but a couple things I’ve done have helped immensely. First, making double recipes and freezing half of it is incredibly handy for busy evenings – and rarely takes that much more time upfront. Now, if I don’t have time to cook something healthy, all I have to do is pull something out of the freezer and re-heat it.

I have also begun to plan meals that rely on similar ingredients. For example, I’ll make pulled pork in the crockpot one night, serve it with beans and rice, then make enchiladas with the remaining pork – creating 2 different meals with the same main element. I’ll also shred up 2 meals worth of lettuce (with a plastic knife, so the edges don’t brown) and use half one night and save the other half for later in the week.

Enjoy Your Newfound Time

I am not kidding when I say I’ve been able to do grocery shopping during my daughter’s dance lessons, while getting my hair done and more. I can cook a meal and grocery shop in the same evening and still have energy as well. I wish I had realized this all when my kids were super young and when my husband traveled more regularly, but I certainly have made a lot of use of my newfound time.

I used to spend at least 2-3 hours per week on meal planning and shopping, along with up to an hour about 5 evenings per week cooking. I didn’t think much about it, and just accepted that this time was needed to make sure my family ate healthy.

With these changes over the last 2 years, I have newly found 5 hours more each week with easy meal planning. I am sure, if you’re a busy mom trying to make a difference in the world, that you do too.