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Well, my meal prep Monday served me well for Tuesday and Wednesday, but tonight I was on my own. I knew I had to make dinner for my family – in addition to getting on my kids to soccer practice, while my husband did our weekly grocery pick up.
Weeknight Grocery Pick-Ups
We moved to weeknight grocery pick ups a few years ago after I read this great book called Time to Parent. I read the book after listening to their parenting podcast. One of the biggest take-aways from this book was moving our grocery pick up to a week-night.
We made that decision by doing one of the exercises in the book where you lay out all the things that you want/need to accomplish in a specific time period (for us we did the weekend). We found that between cleaning, getting chores done around the house and spending quality time as a family that there was no comfortable way to still grocery shop. So we decided to move grocery shopping to mid-week. This freed up time in our weekend for what was more important to us.
This doesn’t mean that weeknight grocery shopping is going to best for your family – but the task of writing out all the things that you need to do and want to do in a specific time frame and then figuring out what you could move to a different time helped us realize that weekend grocery shopping had to go.
During the pandemic we started doing click’n’collect type grocery shopping and we still frequently make use of this service, though there is a also a smaller grocery store that isn’t too far from our home that we will go to for the lighter week shops when there we have fewer things to buy.
For use grocery shopping is a once a week task. We have gotten our grocery orders/shopping streamlined enough that we seldom need to do a mid-week shop and by the end of the week our fridge is starting to empty out.
We also use these “All Out of” pads to keep track of what we need through-out the week. The first time I got one of these things as a Christmas gift but I love them so much – I have bought one consistently to keep on fridge ever since.
Making dinner on the fly
We pick up groceries after dinner, so the grocery store pick up doesn’t help me with dinner for tonight – per se. But on the way home from work I am already starting to do a mental list of what I can make for dinner.
For our family, quick week-night meals often start with pasta. That is because my kids love buttered noodles, and quite frankly, so do I! So as soon as I get home, I put the pot of water on to boil and figure out the other parts of the meal.
Next up I take a look in the fridge to see what is looking most in need of getting eaten. In tonight’s case we had two bunches of Kale that were starting to get a little bit limp, so I grabbed them out. All things being equal I would choose something that has a shorter shelf-life (such as kale) compared to something with a longer shelf-life (such as broccoli) if I had both and both were still looking good to go.
Once I had my two ingredients (pasta and kale) I literally googled “pasta kale recipes” to see what would come up. My first thought was to make a lemon, kale pasta recipe that we have previously had and that was super delicious – but alas I used up all our lemons. The second recipe I picked was kale, parmesan pasta – but foiled again – no parmesan.
So I dropped the word pasta from my google search – left in just the kale and found a bunch of recipes for sauteed kale. I didn’t follow any specific recipe for this as I know how to make sauteed kale without a recipe, but the google search gave me enough inspiration to keep moving forward. By this time, my pasta was in the pot boiling away.
From here, my next task is to find a protein. I didn’t pre-plan anything so I didn’t have any meat defrosted in the fridge. So my first stop for a quick protein is my pantry, where cans of tuna, salmon and beans are waiting for me.
We try to have at least one vegetarian meal per week – in part for the environmental concerns with too much meat, but also because a can of beans is very cheap, so its a good financial decision too.
Tonight I grabbed 2 cans of small red beans and sauteed them up in olive oil (or you could use butter or any other fat) then added a bit of ketchup, siracha sauce and garlic powder. It sounds simple but it’s really delicious.
In addition to this I made Neapolitan milk – which is a fancy way of saying I took some frozen strawberries, milk and cocoa powder, mixed it up with my immersion blender and served it with supper.
In addition to this I made Neapolitan milk – which is a fancy way of saying I took some frozen strawberries, milk and cocoa powder, mixed it up with my immersion blender and served it with supper. It seriously tastes like melted Neapolitan Ice cream but its really nutritious.
Dinner is on the table
Start to finish about 30 minutes and I had dinner on the table.
What did they eat?
Both my kids love pasta and wanted a scoop of noodles and the Neapolitan Milk. My older one also wanted to try the kale and beans.
My older one liked everything and had several helpings. My younger son had a few helpings of noodles and ate most of them. He also finished his milk. He decided to try the kale and 1 bean – he did not like the kale or the bean – but that’s OK. We didn’t say anything about it one way or another.
So what?
Without any prior meal prep I made dinner on the fly tonight. Fortunately because of our grocery shopping routines (despite tonight being our grocery pick up day) I was able to pull together a meal from what we had in our fridge and panty.
The steps I follow for getting a last minute meal on the table are:
- Start with something that is quick that my kids like (for example noodles)
- Look in the fridge to see what needs to be eaten first (tonight it was Kale)
- Google recipes with my first two ingredients and see what inspires me
- Look for a protein – tonight it was in my pantry and I found a can of beans.
- Google a quick pan-fried canned beans recipe or feel free to try your own combos (see above for my go-to quick bean sauté)
What does your family like to make for a quick week-night meal? Do you have any good, quick-cooking canned beans recipe I should add to my rotation? I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment or send me an email. Thanks for reading!
