One time, years ago when I still had really little kiddos and we went to the library every week, I found a cookbook that was full of tips and plans for making the dinners for an entire month in one day. I was intrigued because, even then, with maybe two kiddos in school and some minor activities, I realized the difficulty of getting dinner to the table on time. I sort of liked the idea, but I realized that it wouldn’t work in my scenario.
One thing I did come away with, however, was the idea that portions of dinner can be handled in advance to help alleviate the stress of leaving everything to prepare within the hour prior to eating. This scenario may work sometimes, but what happens when you get interrupted by a little crisis or distraction and forget to start dinner on time? What happens is dinner that is late and, if you have kiddos, perhaps some hangry-related behavior. It’s a good thing to avoid.
So, it can be helpful to take care of portions of the dinner prep in advance when you have the opportunity. Here’s how it shook out for us this week:
First, the menu:
- Monday: Homemade mac & cheese with baked squash
- Tuesday: Berbere chickpea stew with rice and spinach
- Wednesday: Baked potato bar
- Thursday: Tacos
- Friday: Crepes
- Saturday: Refrigerator dinner (leftovers, reimagined)
- Sunday: Chicken and Waffles
So, ideally, I go grocery shopping on Monday morning and then do some preparation when I get home. This is what it looked like this week.
- Mac & cheese–make the sauce base (the thickened milk flavored with garlic and onion) up to the point of adding the cheese. Get the squash in the oven before leaving for practice. Upon returning from baseball practice, I heat the sauce and add the cheese while the pasta cooks and we can eat within 20-ish minutes of arriving home.
- Berbere chickpeas–Like many bean dishes, to be really good, you should cook your own chickpeas for this. Also, if you soak them with salt, they will be even better. So, start this in advance. You can also make the spice and onion base for the stew in advance. If this is done, all you have to do to finish the dish is to combine the sauce and soaked beans in a slow cooker or instant pot and remember to cook the rice.
- Baked potato bar–this one is busier and messier than one might think because the result is so simple. You can avoid stress related to this by cooking the bacon in the oven while you do some other prep work on the stove top, and by getting the cheese shredded. You can also cut the broccoli into florets if you have time and want to avoid even more mess on the day of the dinner.
- Tacos–fry up the taco meat in advance to avoid this mess and time consumption on the night of dinner. It does take some time to get everything chopped and all of the spices out, so this really quick dinner can take more time than you think if you aren’t using a seasoning packet. You can also make guacamole and shred cheese in advance.
- Crepes–I wanted to serve these this week with homemade lox, so I got that going in advance, since it needs a few days to cure. Also, TJ’s was out of their Nutella-like almond chocolate butter, so I just picked up some hazelnuts and dark chocolate chips and decided to make my own. This was easy to do in advance. The only trick is to hide it so it will last until Friday.
By doing these things in advance I was able to streamline preparation on nights that I knew would be busy. As a seriously added bonus, I made the big messes on one day and then avoided a lot of the extra dishes related to chopping on subsequent nights when I was tired. I shredded cheeses for multiple dinners and put them in separate containers. I used the same cutting board and knife to prepare onions and garlic for multiple dinners. I pulled jars out of my spice cupboard to find the jar I needed on this one day, rather than on every day of the week. It was also great to get the meat cooked that didn’t need to be done at the last minute. All of these things really cut down on mess and preparation time during the rest of the week.
What dishes would you like to see if you could streamline by preparing part of them in advance?
