Double Down Dinners
Double your recipe. If you followed the planning steps, tonights meal is easily doubled, perhaps freezer friendly, definitely leftover friendly so it can become a lunch.
You’re already cooking, you’ve already dirtied the dishes, why not? For most recipes, it adds only a fraction of time to make double the food.
Before you sit down to eat, set aside the portion you doubled for another day (this helps prevent over-eating).
Place it in an oven-safe glass dish with a lid, let cool to room temperature, then pop in in your freezer.
You doubled a meal that isn’t really freezer friendly? No Problem! It will make a great lunch.
Is one of those crazy days coming up? It just got more busy than expected? Not to worry—there’s a full meal waiting in your freezer to be popped into the oven. Happy dance. 😊
More time-saving ideas...
Batch prep. Glance over your list of 14 (or 21) Family Favorite meals. Do any of these lend themselves to prep’ping part of it ahead? Anything you can make and put aside for a rainy/busy day?
- Roast a chicken or even just chicken breasts then chop or shred the cooked meat and freeze in 2 cup portions for a future meal.
- Make bone broth. Place the chicken bones from the roasted chicken into a crock pot (see the recipe at ournutritionkitchen.com) to turn them into bone broth. Freeze in 4 cup (1 quart) portions to have a stock for easy soup making.
- Cook ground beef (maybe with onions or taco seasoning) and use in tacos, casseroles, soups, and one-pot dinners. My Instant Pot love is inspired by many things, but its ability to cook 5 pounds of ground beef at a time is just one of them!
- Make a double batch of meatballs OK, forming all those meatballs is not easy or quick; and can be messy. If I’m going to make them at all, I’m going to make enough to freeze and have again—probably more than once. I figure a pound of grass-fed ground beef or turkey for one meal (4 servings). So I’ll use 5 pounds of meat plus spices to wind up with four meals worth. Beautiful to have on hand for quick soups or spaghetti squash and meatballs, appetizers for parties…
- Mix up a double batch of Sunshine muffins or scones that just never seem to last around my house. I’ll leave a plate out for after school / before homework energy and pull out the second batch to survive crazy mornings or last-minute lunches.
Obviously, you’re not going to make ALL of these! LOL! But how about choosing 1 or 2 for next week’s meal plan, or later this week?
You can double a meal and you can also make a staple to have on hand like broth, cooked meat, muffins or…. Do this while you are cooking dinner; yes it adds a little bit of time to dinner (so schedule it when your family calendar allows it); that little bit of additional time is tiny compared with the convenience and freedom you just created for yourself.
Share your ideas with our community on Facebook.
A few important things...
I recently had the opportunity to explore the importance of Family Dinners in my Masters of Functional Medicine and Human Nutrition program. I thought you’d enjoy these surprising and moving thoughts. I never knew eating dinner as a family could improve so many areas of life.
- Regular family dinners improve many behaviors that parents pray for: lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy and depression, as well as higher grade-point averages, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.
- Dinner conversation is a more potent vocabulary-booster than reading, and the stories told around the kitchen table help our children build resilience.
- The icing on the cake is that regular family meals also lower the rates of obesity and eating disorders in children and adolescents.
What else can families do that takes only about an hour a day and packs such a punch?
Truly, what other one-hour investment can do so much good for so many members of our family?
So make it fun!
I know how hard it can be to get everyone together for meals—especially at first, if that hasn’t been the norm. But it’s worth it—so please make it a moment of pleasure and take interest in anything a family member is willing to contribute. That way they’ll contribute again.
Yours in Health XOXO —Marie