Working Parents answer the question: What's for Dinner?

Mealtime is a great opportunity for everyone in the family to play a role when it comes to getting food on the table and cleaning up afterward.

Last week we posted a question asking how working parents manage to get dinner on the table every night. Reddit's workingmoms subreddit came through with a varied collection of great suggestions, insights and encouraging thoughts which are summarized below. The comments have been paraphrased and rearranged. One theme that emerged is that mealtime is a great opportunity for everyone in the family to play a role when it comes to getting food on the table and cleaning up afterward. Hopefully you'll find ideas which helps your family enjoy mealtime more.

​RunningForTheAisle, loves to cook and is a new mom, who is eager to understand how more experienced working parents get dinner on the table. After reading the suggestions below, she wrote, “This info gives me great hope!” and she added that she's eager to have her daughter help with meal prep when she's older.

​Think-Write pointed out that meal prep becomes more manageable as you figure out what works (and doesn't work) for you and your family, and added that once kids are older, you can have them help prepare the meals. When kids do "real" tasks that really contribute to running a household, it builds lasting self-esteem.

​FL_Sunshine advises that there is a key:  Meal planning, meal planning and more meal planning.

• Weekend planning results in cooked breakfasts, packed lunches and cook dinners nearly 100% of the time. (If I skip the planning stage that number plummets quickly and my scale goes up just as quickly.)
• I cook a pot of something on the weekend (like soup or chili), and then small portions of it are eaten of it every day for lunch along with a salad.
• Dinners on week nights are prepped faster, but still tasty.
  --  Ribeyes take less than 20 minutes to prep and cook
  --  Sautéed shrimp & asparagus
  --  Chicken & broccoli stir fry.
• There are plenty of meals that you can throw together in under 30 minutes. Some days we manage to crock pot it and other days we use an Instapot in the evening. 
• It really helps to have a divide and conquer mentality with the other parent. One cooks, while the other manages kids. After dinner, one cleans while the other is on bath duty. We alternate depending on mood and if the kids have a preference for attention.

​DivineMrsM shared her weekly dinner routine:
I cook dinner 4-5 nights/week.  Two of those nights are Saturday and Sunday.

• Over the weekend I make things that take time and energy like ramen from scratch or pot pie.
• Mondays and Wednesdays we usually have things I’ve made a million times so I can have them ready quickly. I keep the ingredients for those meals on hand so I don't have to put a lot of physical or mental effort into them. (e.g. Homemade veggie burgers that I make in batches and freeze once a month and spaghetti sauce that I've made a million times.)
• Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are a mixture; two of those nights are usually takeout like Chinese, sushi or falafel and it's a treat for everyone. Friday is pizza night. If I'm working, we order it. If I'm not working (like now while I’m on maternity leave), I make it from scratch. There's usually one night where I need to clean out the refrigerator, so that's leftover night and it’s usually a night when we get home a touch later than usual.

 
By the time the kids are in elementary school, you figure out a routine. You probably won't make everything from scratch every night, but you fit it in when you can. And chicken nuggets a couple times a month won't kill anyone. Your kids won't starve, and they'll appreciate the work you put in when you can.
 
Another trick I found was to give the kids a very small snack on our way home from school. It keeps the hangry demons at bay to give you a few extra minutes to prepare food. It can be done!

​sandebruin offers a unique perspective; she serves meals the day after she cooks them. For example, on a Monday she comes home from work/daycare and heats the meal she prepared on Sunday. Then she puts the kids to bed and cooks for Tuesday.

She likes cooking, but not with two very hungry kids crying around her along with a lot of pressure to have something ready quickly. She has a few meals that can be ready in ten minutes and they eat those whenever they didn't have time or didn't feel like cooking the night before. Things that definitely taste better when eaten right away are eaten over the weekend.

​tolietduck explains we switched to easy week night meals which I prepare while my 2-year-old watches TV.

• When we go out to dinner (a couple nights per week and always weekdays, not weekends), I eat half the meal, and then take the other half to work for lunch the next day.

• Some of our week night meals:
  --  Bagged chopped salad with a store bought rotisserie chicken
  --  Frozen fish sticks with microwaveable veggie sides that are pre-sauced
  --  Hot dogs
  --  Frozen pizza
  --  Quesadillas with leftover chicken in them.
  --  Spaghetti with frozen meatballs
  --  I buy a lot of those prechopped salads with all the stuff ready to go.
• We do more elaborate cooking on weekends. Weekdays are just hard.
• Once a week we do a Crock-Pot meal. I make sure we have all of the ingredients and send my husband the recipe. He assembles it all before he leaves for work in the morning (after our toddler and I). We like slow cooker pulled pork or carne asada.

​batswantsababy points out that the slow cooker helps and confesses: sometimes the kids have to cry and fuss and my husband has to be at his wit's end for a while before I cook. I hate cooking in general, so we also eat out more than we should. She adds:

• I also get pre-marinated pork tenderloins from the store. They're way too high in sodium, I'm sure, but then I literally throw them in the oven when I get home and that's all that's required

​whatisgreen works 3 days/week and says planning is a big part of being successful. Her tips:

• Only plan simple meals
• Use the slow cooker
• Rely on leftovers for harder nights
• When possible, cook bigger batches so there are leftovers

​Jmamut is trying to be healthier and budget, so she has been cooking more than before her 8-month-old was born.

Routine:

• Get home from work ~5:45 pm after and picking daughter up from daycare and then focus on cooking while holding her or letting her play on the floor around me (she just mastered crawling so this is her favorite).
• Goal: Have dinner ready by ~6:20 pm.
• Pick really easy meals.
• Slow cooker is best because meal can be ready by the time I get home.
  

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She adds that she loves the recent trend of one pan meals where you just put meat and veggies on a pan, season, and bake. I also try to make lots of each meal so we can eat leftovers the next night and I have more time to play with our daughter. The tricky part is that she usually wants to eat around 6:15 pm. It's a balancing act that generally requires me to eat in less than 10 minutes and then start the bedtime routine. Not ideal, but doable most days. If she's extra clingy making it impossible to cook we just eat after she's in bed at 7. It'll definitely be harder once I'm making her meals too, but I think then I'll rely much more on my slow cooker and preparing foods for the week in advance.

Blenda33 does as much prep as possible the night before.

• Stir fry? Chop veg, Prep meat and other ingredients, so it only really takes the cooking time.
• One night I made chicken and veggie pie, but I just put the filling in the fridge overnight, added the pastry then put in the oven at dinner time. Delicious! Easy!
• There's nothing wrong with beans on toast every now and then, or takeaways.

​catmamma  says she finally got an Instant Pot (pressure cooker) because she's a terrible food prepper and very lazy. She adds ...

• I can make a really tasty meal in the pot in about 20 mins.
• Most chicken meals are fast (even from frozen) and I've made BBQ ribs in 30 mins.

These ideas are super easy to prepare and she says her kids actually eat what see's made.

​cha0ticneutralsugar enjoys cooking and would like to cook full dinners more often for her daughter and Iherself, but if she make 5 meals a week, she ends up with spoiled leftovers. Preparing three dinners seems to be the sweet spot so that everything is eaten over the course of the week. She cooks a lot of the same meals over and over because she's familiar with them so can prepare them fairly quickly. She adds:

• I try a newer recipe ~once/month.
• We eat a lot of pasta, chicken and eggs for dinner. They’re inexpensive and fast to prepare.
• I use a lot of fresh and frozen precut veggies (rather than washing and cutting them myself).
• I cook ~3 meals/week. We are bigger lunch eaters than dinner eaters.
• This week our dinners were:
  --  Grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade tomato soup. (You have to roast the tomatoes for the soup, but you can do other stuff while that's happening so it doesn't feel like it takes too long.)
  --  Steak, mashed potatoes, and broccoli.
       (Most consistently time intensive meal. I cut down on that by getting pre-made refrigerated potatoes and pre-cut broccoli and only searing the steak in the cast iron then baking it in the oven so it's a little less hands on.)

         --  Tortellini with pesto.
         --  Leftovers from the meals listed above
         --  One meal "out."

​Moms_Kitchen 
My nest is now empty (kids are 21 and 19), but I am proud of the fact that I made it a priority to put a home cooked dinner on the table most nights on top of my 50+ hours/week engineering job. [Editor’s note: OK, I think we can all agree that Moms_Kitchen is probably related to Wonder Woman 😉 Especially since she adds: I was also a very involved parent volunteer.]
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• Sunday: When I cooked at home for the 4 of us, I always tried a big cooking project (e.g. roast beef, ham, turkey). Leftovers were served later in the week.
• Monday (Scout meeting night): Usually something I started in the morning in the crock pot.
• Wednesday (catechism night): Always pizza that I picked up on the way home from church.
• I really liked to use my pressure cooker too.
• School Lunches: My kids bought hot lunches at school every day (whenever possible).
  
• My experiences: http://motherskitchen.blogspot.com/  
  I started writing this in 2006 when my kids were 11 and 9.

 
Once the kids are older …
It got harder once the kids were in high school and had a lot of extracurricular activities. They had to eat on the run when they could squeeze it in.  (We had a great team of parents that brought food to the football field after practice so the football players that were also in the band could eat. We also had a great volunteer group that made tons of food for the high school drama club so no one went hungry. We all took turns making it happen.)
 
My advice: make dinner at home whenever you can, and join up with other parents to make dinner happen when you can't.

​dr_millisievert echos the idea "Meal planning all the way. Then prep on weekends."

Related stories:

• The Best Pressure Cookers (reviews) 
• Divide and Conquer  by Kim Darrow
• Streamline Mornings by EJ Kafooples
• Don't Forget Your Lunch
• Breakfast Shortcuts by Rachel Hollis

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