My Top 5 Dinner Recipes When Meal Prep is Leaving You Frustrated
Look, I get it. Meal planning oftentimes is one of those best laid plans that sometimes fall to absolute shit. I say it because I’ve been there. It’s like post child bedtime and you should be planning what your family is going to eat next week but the prospect of combing through recipes, finding new recipes, or writing anything down is daunting AF. You know in that moment that you’re just going to end up discouraged and frustrated because what you would rather be doing is zoning out to something on your DVR that’s NOT Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
The caveat to this is that you also know that anything you choose to cook your family in this moment will be met with dismay by said family when you put it on your table. There’s nothing more frustrating than that. I love cooking, don’t get me wrong, it’s such a source of selfcare and I attribute cooking to being the only reason why I still know fractions. But when you bust your ass in your kitchen for any length of time to put dinner on the table and then your family bitches about said dinner…well. That’ll make you want to cut someone. Like how quickly can I slam my head into a wall level of frustration.
Those moments drive me crazy. Really, I got super blessed because those moments were few and far between when it was just me and the hubs. We’re both not picky eaters, so as long as the meals were reasonably healthy, he didn’t care what was put in front of him. He really is a dream in that respect (and many others) because not only would he eat it, but he would also compliment my cooking and be excited about the food.
But then I had Grace. Who has a HUGE opinion sometimes. Especially about food, as most small humans tend to do.
All of a sudden, I’m stuck between the rock and hard spot of force feeding her something for dinner, or making multiple dinners. I’ll give her this, she’s generally a fairly adventurous eater, she’ll try lots of things but she definitely gets into modes where no new food is welcome. She’ll look at me like I’ve insulted her if I try to introduce something new. Like GOD FORBID.
Annoying as that is, I’m trying to provide her with all the healthy nutrition I can, so when she gets into those moments, I fall back on these recipes. For everyone’s sanity I have to, otherwise things at the dinner table would get super ugly.
Seeing as how adulting is hard AF and parenthood is a straight up ThunderDome, I feel like the least I can do for my fellow adulting their asses off adults is to share the recipes that have worked for my family, in the hopes they work for your family as well.
