The dreaded rush for dinner and lunch making

We have been getting crazy busy around here.  Between the schedule of the kids going back and forth with their dad, soccer practice, working full time, and homework, baths, making lunches, and whatever else my poor mind can't remember right now dinner doesn't have a big presence every night.  Its not like we eat at the drive through all of the time either, nobody can afford that.  It just takes some planning and thinking and some more planning.  Being that I am super organized and love to plan this is great for me.

We try and do all of our grocery shopping on Monday's and then we can prep all of our perishables for the week.  I have a great veggie tray that I use, it has a tray on the bottom to allow for better air circulation and then the kids get to pick out which different kinds of fruit they want for the week.  Now that we aren't living so far out in the country anymore we have been also hitting up this amazing fruit and veggie stand to get some awesome goodies.  They taste so much better right out of the ground and are way cheaper.  I always thought that it was more expensive there but its actually way cheaper.  Double win :)

For lunches I do a big batch of muffins and cookies up, wrap them all up individually and then throw them into a big container in the freezer and when its time to make lunches or grab a snack the kids can pull one out, throw it in the microwave and eat it or throw it in their lunch and they are thawed by lunch, along with the yoplait tubes. 

 

I like to have cut up veggies with dinner every night, sometimes we do frozen or canned but while they are fresh and yummy and we have them on hand we prefer raw.  I just spend an hour or so on Monday afternoon, if I am off, and cut up all the veggies so they are ready to go and then I just pull out the tray at dinner time and pour some dip and the kids dig right in, its also great to put out if dinner is running late just to tide them over.

So my tips for dinner would be when you are making something that you can freeze, spaghetti sauce, meatloaf, Shepard's pie, most casseroles, homemade crisps and crumbles, and much more.  I like to make double and freeze half.  Then on the nights that I am running late from work or know we have something going on I can just defrost the meatloaf instead of just ground beef and save myself a lot of time.  Something else that I have been trying is to freeze it uncooked.  If you make meatloaf, a big hit around here, make two, freeze one raw, but totally ready to go in the oven and cook up the other one for dinner. 

 

Another great thing that I found that I have been loving is partially cooked buns.  They are only partially cooked so you grab however many you need for dinner, whether it be one or six and then pop them in the over with dinner for the last like 10 minutes.  They taste like fresh baked buns and all I did was take them out of the freezer :)

Do you have any great tips for me?

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