We have been in the midst of a very busy season around here. The kiddos have a summer full of family visits, sports practice, and fun camp experiences, against a background of our two full-time jobs and managing the homestead. I’d love to be able to say that eating a healthy dinner in the midst of all that running around is our number one priority, but can I be honest for a moment? Our #1 family wellness goal in this season has become just not eating fast food every night! {smile} And we’re actually doing pretty well! We’ve managed to develop a system to put real food meals on the table every night in 30 minutes or less, other than the occasional frozen pizza and salad night.

We work on a weekly system with a little bit of prep and a lot of simplicity. It can work with farm-fresh ingredients or easy and fresh store bought ingredients (and I use both, depending on the status of my garden and pantry!)

Is the menu always exciting and different? No. We save that for the weekends when we have more time.

Is it healthy, balanced, and mostly fresh and wholesome? Yes.

And since Mr. Fix-It’s not a big fan of crockpot meals, that’s not a big part of our solution. It also doesn’t rely heavily on hours of weekend prep work–because our weekends are just as hectic and exhausting. Believe me, no one feels like cooking and chopping for 3-4 hours to get ready for the week after a full day of mowing, worming sheep, scrubbing water buckets, raking out nesting boxes and all the other hot, summer farm chores.

One Week at a Time!

Working a week at a time keeps the prep work down to a manageable level for me and keeps all the fresh fruits and veggies we use from going bad. When I get in a super-busy season like right now (football, volleyball, VBS, YMCA day camp and farming for us at the moment) I use my spring freezer cooking rotated with cereal for breakfast, soup or sandwiches for lunches, and this easy weekly menu planner from Bloom on the fridge just for dinners.

I can’t stress enough how important writing down the menu is if you have a busy family–it keeps everyone from accidentally using your ingredients for a snack! It also helps Mr. Fix-It and I coordinate–whoever’s home first knows what to start for dinner!

Keep it Plain and Simple

Our family dinners on busy weeknights are a protein, a carb, and fruits or veggies. That’s it, and that’s how we keep it down to 30 minutes with “real food.”

1. We keep our proteins mostly limited to chicken and hamburger during the week to keep things simple. And we use the grill, a lot, to keep the kitchen cleaner. By taking a few minutes to slice the chicken breasts in half on the horizontal, you double your meal value and half your cooking time.
2. For carbs, we’ll oven-roast potatoes or cook rice or grains while we’re grilling.
3. We have a salad at just about every meal, no cooking required and veggies done. Or we’ll throw in a quick steamed veggie. Any fresh fruit in the kitchen or applesauce is also allowed at dinner. This covers our fresh fruits and veggies without much mess or time.

Double or Triple Batch Cooking at Once

This is the heart of our weekly system.

After all the time it takes to harvest, can, and/or freeze our own produce just to save what we’re already growing, I don’t have a lot of time left to do major freezer cooking sessions very often. Especially not in the heart of a crazy-busy-family-season. Here’s what I do have time for–cooking a double or triple batch of the current dinner protein. It takes the same amount of prep and cooking time to grill 15 chicken breasts as it does 5 of them. Same amount of time and dirty dishes to cook 6 lbs of hamburger, as 2 pounds.

If I double the batch, one is for tonight and one becomes a remake (not leftovers!) later in the week. If I triple batch, one is for tonight, one is a remake, and one is for a quick freezer meal. I also double batch on the weekends and the leftovers get remade during the week to mix up our chicken/hamburger routine.

What does this look like? I’ve got a printable outline for you below, but here’s an overview…

• Monday–Grill 10-12 hamburgers. Dinner is hamburgers, homemade fries, and salad.
• Tuesday–Grill 10 thin-sliced chicken breasts. Dinner is grilled chicken, rice, and steamed broccoli from the garden.
• Wednesday–Chop left over grilled chicken. Dinner is grilled chicken over salad.
• Thursday–Heat leftover hamburgers, add onions and brown gravy. Dinner is Salsbury steak, baked potatoes (microwave!), applesauce and steamed Brussel sprouts from the garden.
• Friday–Tacos for Family Movie Night! Brown 5 pounds of hamburger. Use 2 lbs of meat and the leftover salad fixings and rice from the week for tacos. Put 1 lb of meat to the side for spaghetti sauce and 2 lbs aside for stroganoff next week–or put the 3 lbs in the freezer for later.
• Every other week or so we throw in a Fridgerator Buffet for leftovers or a frozen pizza with salad on Friday. This “remaking” method doesn’t leave you with a ton of leftovers to deal with.

Tools to Make REAL FOOD Faster

I am definitely NOT above frozen tater tots or boxed rice! My favorite at the moment is Minute Rice’s Multigrain Medley. I’m also a huge fan of frozen, steam-in-the-bag, vegetables these days and always keep some on hand for overwhelmed nights.

But I’ve learned it’s not that hard to accomplish the same thing for your backyard (or supermarket) fresh produce with a few modern kitchen gadgets while skipping a lot of the additives and preservatives.

1. Micro-cooker/Steamer–just throw your fresh veggies in, sprinkle with water, and microwave for a few minutes. Spritz with butter or olive oil and salt when they come out. You can use a steam basket in less than 30 minutes as well, but the micro-cooker is less dishes and kid-helper-friendly.
2. Rice cooker or Instapot–I don’t have an Instapot yet, but I’m about to get one just to save cabinet space from all the smaller appliances it replaces. A rice cooker (we have a little one from our wedding that I’ve just learned to use in the last 2 years!) will let you throw in any grain (rice, quinoa, couscous, etc.) while you’re grilling your chicken, and have your side-dish on the table in 30 minutes or less.
3. French fry cutter--you can quickly cut homemade fries to oven bake from your own fresh, whole potatoes. We even leave the skins on, just scrub, cut, spritz with olive oil and salt, and bake at 450. When they’re cut, they only take about 20 minutes to oven cook. The easiest (and safest for little helpers!) is to cut the potatoes in half and put the cut end flat on the cutting board, then slice down on the round end.

Everybody Helps

These dinners are so simple everyone in the household can pitch in to help get them on the table.

While I’m grilling on Monday, the kids can gather lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, and onions for the weekly salad. They can wash, chop, and run them through the salad spinner and get them on the table. They can pull the cheese, bacon bits, croutons, carrots, and dressings out of the fridge. A couple kid-friendly kitchen knives will go a long way.

Or they can pick the broccoli, asparagus, or Brussel sprouts from the garden and wash and put them in the micro-cooker or on a sheet pan to roast. Or they can throw the steam-in-a-bag veggies in the microwave. Monitor them when removing, but our kiddos have learned how to handle hot steam safely.

They can wash and cut up fruit for the week with our simple slicers.

They can scrub and slice the potatoes–although I usually do this one because I’m in a hurry to get them in the oven and I try to never “hurry” the kiddos when they’re slicing or cutting stuff in the kitchen.

And they can put the rice or grains in the rice cooker and start it.

It’s great training for putting together quick and easy meals later when they’re on their own. No surviving on mac and cheese and Oodles of Noodles in college here! {smile}

If you’re a farm or homestead like we are, just thaw your own chicken and your own beef and pick your own veggies and fruits from the backyard on Sundays. Still quick, simple, and fresh. The major prep work comes when you’re processing your meat for the freezer, not during the weeknights while you’re cooking. Or when you’re blanching and freezing or canning your veggies and applesauce, not when you take them out for dinner on Tuesday evening.

Here’s a simple little printable plan for a couple weeks of quick, whole food meals that all get done in 20-30 minutes before church or after practice on weeknights. It’s not recipes as much as it’s an outline of how to use double and triple batching in your meal plan without leftovers. If you’re looking for recipes, you’ll find some quick and easy stuff on our Hamburger Hero and Winner Winner Chicken Dinner Pinterest boards.

We’re a family of 5, and we all pack leftovers for lunches too (which is why posting the meal plan is SO IMPORTANT!)–so I’m usually looking at 4-6 lbs of hamburger, 3-6 lbs of chicken, and the equivalent of 3 heads of lettuce and salad fixings for the week. You’ll really need to determine what amounts your family needs for a whole week.

Download pdf HERE…

What are your go-to strategies for busy weeknight dinners? My boys are HUNGRY after football practice, but between chores, showers, and soon school work, there’s just not much time in our evenings. I’m always looking for more ideas on good food, fast.