14 Tips for Stress-Free Meals

1. Plan a week’s worth of dinners. Once a week, sit down with a pad of paper and your favorite cookbooks or cooking magazines. Think about what’s in your freezer and refrigerator, what your family likes to eat, and what your upcoming week entails. Then plan out the week’s menus. At the same time, write out your grocery list. Post the list of menus on the kitchen refrigerator or bulletin board. If you need help or inspiration, check out our recipes for quick meals.

2. Delegate. If you have kids older than ten or another adult who gets home before you do, get them started on dinner. For example, you might ask your spouse to pick up ingredients on the way home; your teen to start chopping vegetables for the salad and fill the pasta pot with water; and your preteen to gather needed ingredients for a given recipe and put them on the counter for you, preheat the oven and set the table.

3. Chop, dice and slice. When you get home from the grocery store, go ahead and cut up vegetables for future use. It will make meal preparation a snap.

4. Organize your kitchen. Just because you have always kept certain things in a certain place doesn’t mean they always have to stay there. Our lifestyles change, kids get older and things we used to use all the time are in kitchen’s past. Give your kitchen a good reassessment. Box or give away utensils or appliances you no longer use and better organize the things you do.

5. Keep a plastic grocery bag on the counter where you cook. All the garbage will end up in the bag without a second thought. Then make one trip to the garbage can when you’re done.

6. Put ingredients away after you use them. The kitchen can look like a war zone after a meal. Take some time to clean up while you cook.

7. Buy in bulk. Keep dry goods on hand that you know you use frequently to avoid last minute grocery trips.

8. Stock up. Always keep ingredients on hand for one or two of your standby recipes.

9. Clean a dish here or there. Naturally, there will be dishes to clean after the meal is done, but cleaning some of the prep dishes while cooking will lessen the load.

10. A well stocked freezer. Decide to spend a day filling your freezer with easy-to-prepare foods. Many casseroles and meatballs freeze well.

11. Freeze fruit salads ahead of time. Individual serving cups are good idea for “grab as you go” meals.

12. Cook rice and pasta ahead of time. Cook, drain and freeze pasta and rice for future use. When you need it, thaw and use. Try adding some fresh vegetables, shredded cheese and Italian dressing for a quick salad.

13. Package freezer foods. Consider individually packaging single servings of food in rigid containers or small freezer bags.

14. Make your own snacks. Snack foods like granola bars, cookies and snack mixes freeze well and are much healthier when you make your own. Freezing in kid-sized individual freezer bags makes them easy to snatch on the run.