When life is running as fast as it does for most families, making dinner can feel like an unscalable peak at the end of each day.
For busy parents the dinnertime trifecta is:
A) Food my kids actually will eat.
B) A recipe I don’t have to kill myself to prepare.
C) Mostly kinda-sorta healthy.
I hear you because I am right there in the same boat.
Last fall I signed up for a meal ingredient delivery service. My sister was using the same service and telling me how great it was to have fresh ingredients show up at your door so all you have to do is cook the recipe. She had been a member long enough that I was able to try the first delivery for free.
The first box arrived on a week I was going to be gone for several days. It was perfect timing. I handed the recipes to my husband, pointed out the ingredients and told him he would do great. He did, in fact, do great. Sure, it took him about an hour to prepare the meals while the kids ran around tearing the house apart but the pictures of the finished dinner he texted me looked just like the advertised recipe.
I set the deliveries to bring us two meals a week. Each four-serving dinner was enough for our evening meal with leftovers. Combined with a weekly produce delivery I was pretty happy with our new system of food procurement.
However, after a few weeks the gilding fell off the lily. Each recipe claimed to require 10 to 15 minutes of prep work and 25 to 35 minutes for cooking. In practice it took about 10 minutes to round up the ingredients, 5 minutes to get out all the bowls to put ingredients in, and at least 15 minutes of washing, peeling, chopping and arranging the ingredients in bowls. That doesn’t include time to attend to the children, who get more wound up as dinnertime approaches.
After finally staging the ingredients, every recipe had to be cooked. Most of my go-to meals are tossed together and left to bake, simmer or steam until finished. During which time, I wash a few dishes, read the mail or simply sit at the end of a long day. For the most part, these recipes were the opposite. Most of the entrees used a large skillet. Things needed to go into and come out of the skillet with constant attention for the entire cooking time.
When the meals were finally ready, it was never less than an hour and usually an hour and a half from start to finish. The kids were overtired, the kitchen was a disaster and I no longer thought it was great having the ingredients come right to my door. At the table, the kids often picked apart the carefully prepared ingredients or refused the aromatic sauces.
Everything we tried was delicious but my husband and I no longer saw value in the service. We were eating mostly kinda-sorta healthy, but we need the trifecta. We need quick and easy family-friendly meals, minimal hands-on prep and a mostly-unattended cooking process.
As my sister, who also canceled her service, says, “Nowadays I just pray the kids like the food so they sit and be still for approximately 10 minutes while (my husband) and I get to eat a few hot bites of something and maybe even dare to have a few minutes of conversation.”
Amen sister, amen.
Easy meat loaf muffins with barbecue glaze
Meatloaf is one of the great American family favorites. This recipe has a few adaptations to make it even easier to prepare and quicker to cook. Use dehydrated onions in both the meatloaf and the sauce for a no chop preparation. Old-fashioned oats stand in for bread crumbs, giving the mini meatloaf a nice tenderness without added flavor and using a pantry staple to eliminate an extra ingredient from your shopping list.
The muffin pan significantly reduces the cooking time compared to traditional meatloaf and provides a modest-sized portion. Kids will love having their own muffin-shaped loaf. Calorie watching parents will love the assistance with portion control.
Barbecue glaze
1 (8 ounce) can of no salt added tomato sauce
2 tablespoons molasses
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire
3 tablespoons diced dehydrated onion
½ tsp. salt
Meatloaf
1 pound 93 percent lean ground beef, very cold
1 pound 93 percent lean ground turkey, very cold
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1¼ cups low fat milk
3 tablespoons diced dehydrated onion
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black Pepper, or more to taste
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Combine all the sauce ingredients and set the sauce aside.
Combine all the ingredients for the meatloaf — work just enough to evenly combine everything. Divide the meatloaf mixture evenly between 18 muffin cups.
Spoon 1 tablespoon of sauce over each meatloaf.
Bake for 20 minutes until the edges have a slight crust. Allow the meatloaves to rest in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes before serving warm with the side dishes of your choice.
Notes: Picky eaters might prefer a plain meatloaf muffin with sauce on the side. If serving the sauce on the side simmer the ingredients in a small pan over medium heat for 5 to 10 minutes until the sugars caramelize and the sauce darkens from bright to deep red — stir frequently, do not let the sauce boil.
You may use all ground beef or all turkey for this recipe. Using all beef makes a firmer meatloaf while an all turkey meatloaf will be softer.
Leftovers or double batches will freeze very well for several months.
Prep time: 15 minutes. Cooking time: 20 minutes
Yield: 18
Serving size: 1 meatloaf muffin. Calories: 117, fat: 4g, saturated fat: 1g, carbohydrates: 8g, sugar: 4g, sodium: 248mg, fiber: 1g, protein: 123g
— Adapted from Pioneer Woman: BBQ Meatballs
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