I Don't Have Time for That

I do NOT have time to make lunches 🥙 in the morning. 

I give a LOT of credit to the parents who do. Our mornings don’t allow for that luxury. Most of the time I feel like I’ve been shot out of a canon just trying to make sure everyone is handled at on time-ish to school and work. 

In fairness, it’s my own fault. I like sleep so I prioritize that over making lunches. I would rather have the extra 10 minutes of sleep. 

Generally this means prepping lunches the night before when I’m making dinner. 

My other work around? I have stuff prepped and ready to go in the fridge that’s easy to make, healthy, and will hold up in my fridge for the week. 

Here’s one of my favorites!

Does This Mean I Have to Cook Again?

Ugh the holidays are over so I guess this means I have to cook again. 

And I love to cook. I love being in my kitchen making dinner, listening to music and hearing about my family’s day. It’s my happy place.

But it’s been nice during the holidays to have a little bit of a change, dinner with friends and ugly sweater parties. Really all that equates to for me, is not cooking dinner on a regular basis.

Now that the holidays are over and I’m having to get back into the routine of life, I have to make sure I have my healthy dinners back on point. The easiest way for me to transition back into this routine is by falling back on recipes that I know are solid, tried and true recipes.

I know you’re in the same position as me. So I wrote down some of my favorites to share with you so you won’t be totally screwed transitioning back into “real life” too!

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.

My Top 5 Snack Recipes for the Mama on the Go

I feel like your morning is like mine. Granted thanks to my morning routine, I don’t feel like I’m being shot out of a canon SO much but it’s chaos. Making sure everyone is organized, dogs are fed, the kid brushes her teeth, picks out appropriate clothing and eats, making sure I eat (and get coffee because COME ON), and then herding us ALL out the door. I truly never knew I could do so much in an hour until I started contending with getting more than just myself out of the house in the morning. 

The one thing I always forget in the midst of this chaos is to prep snacks for myself. Sure I have snacks for the kid, but I’m not trying to drink my yogurt. I know that this bad habit always leads to me running into a store and grabbing some overpriced snack, that’s debatably good for me. Or I just don’t eat which isn’t helping my own health and fitness goals. Either way I’m not winning. 

I learned the hard way that I need to have snacks prepped in my fridge. I’m not kidding. Like in their individual ziplock baggies, individual Tupperware (for things like dips), prepped. That way when we’re running out the door and I’m making sure everyone looks semi-presentable, I can just grab something. 

Really it hasn’t added to my meal prep workload anymore. I mean it takes two minutes to take baby carrots and divide them into baggies. So I do it when I’m cooking something else and that something else is in the oven or simmering on the stove top. Because I know during that time I’ll have two minutes and I’m not adding onto my day. 

Grab these snack recipes. It’s worth it for those days when you know you need to prep some food but you’re exhausted and don’t want to put the effort into figuring out WHAT to prep. 

My Top 5 Dinner Recipes for the Days When I Feel Overwhelmed and Unfocused

I remember before I had Grace, other moms telling me that it had been DAYS since they washed their hair. DAYS. Not because they didn’t want to, but because they truly didn’t have the time. That laundry wasn’t even getting folded, it was going onto a chair, just to get worn and then go immediately back into the hamper.

In all transparency, my gut reaction thought to that was oh fuck this is going to suck and suck hard. And it did. No one can ever fully comprehend the sheer exhaustion a new parent goes through unless they’ve been in that position before. I think that reason is one of the many reasons is why there’s the “Parent Club”. There’s just no words to accurately convey to another being the level of tired you feel and how you feel like that it will never go away.

I remember sitting in an exhausted haze, looking into my kitchen, knowing I needed to get up and cook dinner but wishing that it would just magically appear without me having to get up or lift a finger.

Alas, Elon Musk has yet to invent that technology SO in the interim we’re forced to have a fall back. My fall back are the recipes that I know from heart, that take little to no effort and that are tried, tested and true in my household. Because there’s nothing worse that having that level of exhaustion, power through cooking dinner, only to have someone complain about what they’re eating.

I’m going to go a step further, because I know how overwhelmed you are, and I’m going to do the work for you and give you the recipes I still use when the thought of recruiting more brainpower for cooking is totally outside of the realm of possibility.

No Time to Cook? My Top 5 Meal Planning Hacks

I never knew I could cram so many freaking activities into one day. I really didn’t but this adulting thing has taken my productivity level (at least most days) up a total notch. It’s crazy. And exhausting. And overwhelming some days if I’m being totally honest. 

I don’t think it matters if you’re a parent or not, the days are busy. Most of the time I don’t even know where the day has gone and by the time my head hits my pillow, I’m out. 

One thing I have noticed though is that when life hits this level of chaos, we sacrifice the things that take effort for things of convenience. Like cooking. We’re so quick to say oh well whatever, I’ll eat better tomorrow but right now I’m exhausted so I’m hitting the fast food line because the prospect of figuring out what’s for dinner, getting the ingredients and then actually cooking is sending my already fried brain into a fucking tizzy. 

The crappy adverse to this though is that if you’re trying to lose weight, if you’re trying to feel better about how you’re looking or just feel better in general, sacrificing your healthy eating for convenience is not going to do you any long term good.

You have to plan it into your life. There’s no easy way around it. If being healthy matters to you, if you’re over the muffin top, if you’re over living in a haze of life, you have to put in the effort. 

Here are 5 things I do that help me stay on track without leaving me feeling overwhelmed about making the decisions I know are good for me:

1. I plan my meals. It doesn’t matter what day you decide to do this, and normally I do it at night while watching Animal Kingdom, but it does mean sitting down and figuring out what’s for dinner. Use the smartphone notes app, write down what you’re going to be having for dinner in the upcoming week and the corresponding ingredients you need to buy from the store. That way you know what you need to buy, you know what you’re going to eat and you don’t have to second guess it. I never plan what I’ll make on what day, but you can do that if it makes things easier on your brain. I usually use websites to find recipes (like www.ahealthfullife.org) or Pinterest. I also like www.pinchofyum.com and www.damndelicious.net.

2. I plan my snacks. Nothing is worse than getting into the kitchen and staring into your fridge because you need a snack but everything requires some level of prep and you’re not feeling it. It doesn’t mean the snacks have to be these complicated endeavors, but it does mean putting some thought into it. Put the ingredients for snacks on your grocery list as well as what snacks sound good for the week. It takes the thought out of it when you’re running from work to activities for the kids and you know you’re getting good options.

3. I prep as much as I can before the week gets going. Usually this happens on a Sunday evening while I’m cooking dinner. For me this looks like taking my snack stuff and throwing it into individual baggies or Tupperware containers so it’s easy to grab and go. It also means prepping whatever meat and veggies I can for dinner so it’s less work when it comes to cooking actual dinner.

4. The morning or afternoon of, I’ll figure out what specific recipe I want for dinner that night and prep a little more. Maybe this means throwing everything into a crockpot and forgetting about it. Maybe it means throwing everything onto it’s single pan and covering it with tinfoil, so all I have to do is toss it in the oven when I get home. Again the idea is to take the stress out of it, so if you can take another step out of the process you might as well. It could even mean making my side salad which I always do on the days I know I’m working late. That way, I’m not spending 30 minutes prepping salad stuff when it’s already late and tired. It’s ready to go and I’m ready to eat and the timing is perfect.

5. I save the complicated recipes for when I have more time. I love to cook. It’s selfcare for me. I love being in my kitchen. But I know that’s not always realistic, so the recipes that I know are going to take more time or have more steps, whatever it might be, I save for a day when I know I’ll have the time to do it. It lets me stay creative with my cooking, lets me continue to enjoy cooking and doesn’t leave me feeling stressed because I’m trying to do this insane recipe after a long day of work.