Taming Weekday Mealtime Madness

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It’s Wednesday at 5:45PM. Zach wants tacos, Sophia wants spaghetti, your partner will be home in fifteen minutes and you have chicken, frozen solid, in the freezer and just want to get dinner on the table.  What to do… takeout – kidding. Don’t get me wrong, takeout is definitely an option and can be built into a families meal (hello deli department) but always fits in better when it is built-in to the week versus picked up last-minute (drive-thru anyone).
One way to tame the weekday mealtime madness is to plan. Planning sounds time consuming and difficult – have no fear, essentially it is just:

  • Knowing what you want to make and writing it down
  • Checking out your cupboards, fridge and freezer for the items that you have on hand
  • Preparing a shopping list for the items you don’t
  • Buying what you need
  • Using up what you buy

It can be as easy as writing Monday to Friday across the top of on a scrap piece of paper, filling it in and jotting down your shopping list below or you can choose to get more elaborate with meal planning sheets. The best thing to do is to get everyone in your household to participate in creating the list – kids are more likely to help out and to eat what is prepared when they have had input into it.  Whether you choose the scrap piece of paper variety or a meal planning sheet, save your work and start to build a collection of weekly menus.  There are many meal planning sites on the web. Two of our favourite resources are:

My Menu Planner on EatRight Ontario

Planning Meals Dietitians of Canada

As for Monday at 5:45 – call that honey of yours and ask stop by the deli department at Pomme Natural Market. It’s one-stop shopping for dinner on-the-go, choose from:

  • Oven roasted chicken (our oven-roasted chicken are unlike anyone else’s – brined and roasted with Pommes special seasonings, our chicken is moist, tender and delicious), or
  • Lentil Loaf or Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes, and
  • Quinoa and kale salad, or
  • Super food salad (kale and edamame), or
  • South western grilled sweet potato salad