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When you’re always short on time, it can be hard to get healthy meals on the table.
Even more exhausting and stressful than preparing dinner can simply be deciding what to have!
And lets not even talk about the mom guilt that happens when we fail to think about dinner soon enough and end up running through the drive-thru…
Last spring I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I’ve learned that the root cause of Fibromyalgia, for me, is stress. People will say things like “you have to make ‘you time’, take some breaks, get some rest”. While I’d love to do those things, the bottom line is, in this chapter of our lives, I just can’t. There’s not enough time in the day for everything that has to get done, let alone schedule regular “me time”.
I’m slowly finding little things that I can change that make a positive impact on my stress level and in return help me to feel a little better and hurt a little less. One of those things is increasing the amount of sleep I get. My goal is now to get 8 hours of sleep every night, it sounds easier than it is, but I’m making a real effort, and I can feel the benefits.
The other thing I’ve been getting better at is meal planning and making it a priority that we all eat dinner together at night as often as we possibly can. We don’t often have time that we can spend doing fun things as a family, so it’s important that we take time to connect every night.
The term “meal planning” used to really freak me out and I’d make excuses:
I don’t have time.
There’s no way I can set aside a day or even an afternoon for meal prep each week.
I’m not good at planning.
Even if I try, I know I won’t be able to commit to it.
My picky family eats the same thing over and over, I really don’t need to plan.
Just so you can get an idea of what crazy farm life looks like, this is what my day looks like during the week, sprinkled with doctor, dentist, & orthodontist appointments, school meetings, band concerts, never-ending farm projects, etc, etc, etc… The weekends are very similar, minus school. (I do have to give mad props to our kiddos as the boys do a lot of the farm chores on the weekends and our oldest daughter has started milking a couple times a week. This helps ease some of my physical stress and helps me catch up on the computer/paperwork a bit.)
5:20 am - 8:00 am ~ Kids up and off to school
8:00 am - 1:00 pm ~ Milking and Farm Chores
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm ~ Paperwork and Client Communication
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm ~ Kids off the bus
3:30 pm - 6:30 pm ~ Milking
6:30 pm ~ Dinner
7:00 pm ~ Get Belle ready for bed
7:30 pm - 8:00 pm ~ Milk to store / close up
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm ~ Finish up odds & ends / sit down for a minute
9:00 pm ~ Bedtime
While our days likely look different, very different probably, I bet we can agree that there is simply never enough time in a day!
If I can manage to meal plan, you can too. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Get a small whiteboard to list your meals by the week, hang it somewhere easy to see in the kitchen.
Keep it simple.
Make it a habit to plan the week’s meals every Sunday.
Plan the simplest meals for your busiest nights.
Out of ideas? Have each family member give you 1 or 2 suggestions of meals they’d like to have that week.
Allow yourself some grace. Pizza night is okay (at least around here it is).
Stick to recipes that don’t require much prep beforehand, if you want a more complex meal, maybe plan that for the weekend.
Make a list of all the meals that your family eats, keep it behind your whiteboard so that you can pull it out when you’re really stumped on what to make.
We are pretty blessed that Brent’s parents raise a huge garden and do a lot of canning/freezing for us, even though we’re not able to help out nearly as much as we should and wish we could. Because of their efforts, most of the year we always have canned green beans, frozen corn, canned spaghetti sauce, and potatoes on hand.
Learn what staples you find yourself using often and try to stay stocked up on them. We also always have our most used cuts of beef, pork, and chicken in the freezer. By purchasing your meats in bulk, you can have your meat freezer stocked too. These two things, make our meal planning SO much easier.
We’re not really “fancy” eaters, we have a couple picky eaters and try to keep things simple most of the time to appease everyone’s tastes. Because of this I can often just write the meat we’re having on my whiteboard and I know that I’ll also be making a potato and warming up a veggie.
Most often our go-to potato is oven roasted potatoes, but when I’m in a hurry and we’re having burgers or brats, I’ll often toss some frozen fries in the oven. Not perfect, but it’s mom life, I know you get it!
I use the Crock Pot for things like ham, chicken, and roasts and the Instant Pot for things like casserole, goulash, and mac and cheese. These tools help cut down my time in the kitchen drastically.
Anything that helps me get a meal on the table and only dirty one or two pans is totally my best friend.
Lots of times I’ll come in from milking at night and quick start something in the instant pot, then clean milking equipment while it cooks. That way dinner is ready as soon as I’m done and we can get on with our night.
It’s okay to have options on your meal board too. This week, for example, I wasn’t sure if I was going to have time to make bone broth for stew, so I left ham as an option. I was able to squeeze in enough time Tuesday morning while getting the kids ready for school that I roasted some bones for a bit (straight from freezer to oven) and then tossed them in the Instant Pot for broth. So we had stew Wednesday.
Usually by Friday, I’m beat, so we’ll often do pizza. It kinda feels like a reward for making it through the week ya know.
Some nights dinner just doesn’t happen the way I had planned so we have “Fend For Yourself” nights. Everyone’s going to survive just fine if they have cereal, granola and yogurt, or a PB&J sandwich for dinner every now and then.
I’ve noticed that the weeks when I don’t get around to planning out our meals I feel super stressed.
I find myself constantly asking the family what they want for dinner every day, to which they always reply “I don’t know”. Then before I know it it’s 5 or 6 and I still have no idea what I’m feeding people which often leads to something quick and easy like chips and cheese. Then I feel terrible that we all ate junk for dinner. Mom guilt overload.
Taking that time on Sunday (seriously takes maybe 5 minutes) to jot down meal ideas for the whole week takes so much pressure off.
When you know at a glance what you’re going to make for dinner, you’ll find yourself mentally prepping for it. If the meal board says roast beef on Tuesday, when I run downstairs for veggies for Monday’s dinner I better grab a roast and some beef bones. That way, Tuesday morning I can quick throw a roast in the Crock Pot and bones in the Instant Pot. Trust me, it works.
There was even one week when I was lacking the mental energy to make my meal plan, so I handed the whiteboard to our youngest daughter and asked her to fill it out for me. She did pretty well. Granted we had chips & cheese and hot dogs that week, but she picked healthier things for the other nights, and not having the stress of choosing dinner myself totally made up for in my mental health what it lacked in our meal’s health.
You’ve got this, give it a try and see how it goes.
Be sure to comment below, I’d love to hear what’s working for you and what’s not and any tips you might have to offer. If you’re stuck, ask your family for some help.
Good luck, I know you can do it!
~ Farmher Jen