30 Days of Dinner

I’m going to give you an actual day-by-day walkthrough of 30 days of dinner in my house. I have met so many of you in my classes and online who have expressed that, while you believe me that making a hot, healthy, homemade meal every day is possible… with kids, a full-time job and other obligations… you aren’t sure it’s possible for you.

It is. If you look at it as a game, and set out to win. I hope that reading about my dinner experiences and strategies will infuse you with some offensive strategies to bring into your own home. This “reality blog” will not be glamorous, as I am no superwoman. What I do know is how to play the dinner game. And winning this game means making a fresh, homemade dinner for my family every night, amid working, driving to after-school activities, and managing a generally busy schedule. I will tell you what I made, but I will more importantly walk you through my playbook and show you my game plan in action. I plan to condense entries into 3-day posts so you are not getting a post every day.

Here is the Organizing Dinner playbook, for reference:

Multimealing - The term “multitask” is an understatement these days. If we’re not multitasking, we’re not getting it done. Multimealing is more specific. It refers to making the absolute most of your time spent in the kitchen. It means while making breakfast, you boil the pasta for that night’s dinner. While simmering dinner on the stove, you are making muffins for the next day’s breakfast. You get the idea.

70 Meals One Trip to the Store – For those of you who don’t know how the 70 Meals plan works, here’s a quick run down… you can make any one of the 70 dinners in the cookbook with what you have on hand at home, after following a quick and easy stock-up shopping list. There are 3 meat bases in the book, chicken, ground beef and fish. If you have one of those meats on hand either frozen or thawed, that equals more than 15 dinner options based on that meat alone (there’s another 20 that are all vegetarian, so there are those options too). But if I reference, “I have chicken”… under the 70 Meals game play, that automatically means 17 dishes I can make.

Cook Once, Eat Twice – One night’s cooking efforts becomes two night’s unique meals.

Gifts to Self - When one step of dinner is done in advance. i.e. chicken precooked and frozen, vegetables pre-chopped, etc.

2/3 Rule - Don’t set out to make a full 3-course meal on a busy weeknight. Of 3 courses, success is more attainable if 2 are fresh/homemade, one is prepackaged or frozen.

Day 1

Menu: Baked Crab Cakes, Thai Peanut Pasta Salad, and Sweet Potato Fries

Game plays applied:

2/3 rule: crab cakes and pasta salad homemade, fries frozen/packaged

multimealing: cooked the noodles while I made the lunches during breakfastime

Day 2

[My thought process about tonight's dinner] It’s 6 am, and I will be gone all day until 5 pm. I have ground beef thawed in the refrigerator. With the 70 Meals game play, I know that means there are 17 dishes I can make with what I have on hand at home. My favorite is Beef Stroganoff, but I know the kids would prefer burgers, straight up. Plus I have the pasta salad left over from last night, so burgers make more sense. I will have 40 minutes to get dinner on the table after we get home, before activities. No problem.

Menu: Burgers, leftover pasta salad

Game plays applied:

70 Meals: hamburgers

Day 3

[Thought process about tonight's dinner] I have plans tonight (yoga and wine at a very Zen local studio with about 25 friends . Hubby will be home with the kids. I am home early in the day, but not later. Hmmm, crock pot or something easy to leave out for hubby to make? Went with easy meal for hubby to make…

menu: Grilled Chicken Sausage, Rice and Brussel Sprouts

Game plays applied:

Multimealing: I made the rice for hubby while making lunches during breakfastime. All he had to do was grill the sausage and brussel sprouts.