Join us for dinner!

We have a New Year’s Resolution and it is simple: to make meal times easier, healthier and cheaper too. We decided to start a blog so that we can share our New Year’s Resolution with other working moms.

We are Erika and Sara. We are working Moms. We are busy people. We both love to cook and we both believe that dinner time is an important part of family life. We also want our children to be adventurous (as we are) with food, but we are realistic and know that sometimes you have to ‘short-order cook’ for your picky eaters.

Sara: I have three boys, aged 7, 4 and 2. Most days my house feels like a zoo with the animals on speed. My oldest child loves food and has a wide array of foods he enjoys. My middles lives on yogurt and cereal and will touch nothing else. My youngest is trying to decide which brother he will model.

Erika: I have one boy, 3. He alternates between being willing to try anything to only wanting Goldfish for supper. My husband works long and unpredictable hours so I am on pick-up duty and solo for supper making every day. Fast and easy meals are a necessity as the time between getting home and bed time is short.

We are going to try various meal planning methods, try to adapt the plans and recipes to suit our families varying needs, and create a blog about it to record what works, what doesn’t, and lessons learned. We are also open to your ideas and advice too.

We hope that because our families are different and our kids have different likes and dislikes that between the two of us, something will be useful for your own families too. And of course we expect you will be creative and adapt things to suit your own family.

The Plan:

Check our blog on Fridays for the menu and shopping list. Each week we will provide a menu and a shopping list.  If you like what you see, follow along – make sure you tell us about your experience!

We would also like you to tell us about any time or money saving tips you have in your meal prep routine. And we too will look at flyers and try to alert you to deals to take advantage of for weeks ahead.

And of course, we are not striving to be super, we just wanna make life easier, so take out meals and restaurant meals will also happen from time to time. We will offer advice on the best kid-friendly joints in town, and we would love to hear your thoughts on that too.

Week One:

So here it goes. Week one. The menu comes from one of Erika’s favourite meal planning resources, Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine. Each issue has a section called ‘Grocery Bag.’ It includes five days of meals and a tear out shopping list. The recipes are easy and fast and I like how if you stick to the five recipes given, you end up trying something new and possibly challenging your taste buds and that of your kids.

This week’s menu can be found here.

The grocery list can be found here.

Follow us on our Facebook page next week to see how we make out and share your thoughts and ideas with us.