Everyone thinks about how to create delicious, nutritious family dinners that can be both easy and super-affordable – especially when your kids enter growth cycles like my now 6’2” fourteen-year old son who seems to consume double the rest of the family!
These days, with a recession, getting a good meal on the table can be even more difficult. Now, we’re not only contending with busy schedules and a shortage of time to cook a healthy dinner, but rising prices at the grocery store as well.
Tips to make family dinners simple, affordable, and fun:
- Make dinner a tech-free zone. Turn off the TV, let the answering machine screen phone calls and turn off cell phones and texting during meals. Make communication a priority and allow everyone an opportunity to talk.
- Bring back fun and interactive meals like fondue and be creative about it! Kids not only love swirling bread, apples, broccoli and cooked chicken in cheese sauce, but also create a “pasta sauce” fondue where kids can swirl meat balls, bread, small ravioli or cut up fresh vegetables. Involving kids in “make your own” nights where they can add their own toppings or ingredients to make preparing meals like pizza, sandwiches and even more fun!
- As time often proves an issue, just focus on having everyone sit down together rather than having a gourmet meal. Family time is effective no matter what you’re eating.
- Plan your meal so only one part of it must be prepared when you get home at night. For instance, have cold side dishes, salad or bread ready to go, with only the main course to cook. You can also prep as much of the dish as you can by cutting up onions and peppers to sauté or cleaning the meat ahead of time.
- Plan meals for the week or month to save money and time. Give every family member some input - ask them to suggest recipes they’d like to see and offer choices between several menu items.
- Make a budget and stick to it. You’ll be amazed at the inexpensive meals you can create with a little research and planning. Plus, by having a list and paying attention to sale items instead of impulse buys at the grocery store, you’re sure to save a few extra dollars.
- Have fun with coupons. Sit down with your child and go through the paper, having a coupon treasure hunt. Or set up siblings with different papers and make it a competition – whoever saves the most money, wins!
- Make use of leftovers! Instead of leaving the leftover chicken in your fridge for a week and then throwing it out, plan ahead for recipes to reuse old dinners in new ways. When cooking, you can also make a double batch and freeze some for another night. For example, you can make pasta one night and add that pasta to a Chicken Margherita dish with Ragú® Old World Style® Margherita sauce.
- Stock up on frozen vegetables, rice and other side dishes that you can have on hand and use again and again in new recipes for different meals.
- Use international or other food themes to make dinner more fun. One night make tacos, on another, make an Italian meal and on another, make Chinese food. You can also carry one food theme throughout the week and make use of buying larger jars of taco sauce or bigger boxes of pasta or rice to stretch your money further.
