It’s Dinner Time Again?!

After over a year of living in a pandemic, does the thought of finding an answer to a simple question evoke feelings of panic or stress? What’s for dinner? If someone answered with an emphatic “yes”, many are not alone! Not only is everyone trying to get ready for tonight’s dinner, but there is also the holiday meal coming up. Read on to learn more about how to combat the real time, meal time fatigue.

Healthy Tip Tuesday is brought to you in partnership with Trinity Health Systems.

While we know there are many positive, lifelong health and social benefits associated with family meals, most families have found themselves eating at home together much more often this year than in pre-pandemic times, and the continuous effort required to plan, prepare and clean up meals can be exhausting.

Here are a few ideas for overcoming cooking fatigue:

• Ask for help. Allow for age-appropriate food preparation and clean-up tasks to other members of the household whenever possible.
• Use convenience foods such as frozen vegetables and canned beans to cut preparation and clean-up time.
• Ask friends and family members to share their favorite easy recipes. Everyone can coordinate a holiday recipe exchange or start an email chain for recipe sharing.
• Try something new and exciting! Take a trip around the world by trying various recipes from different countries, work your way through a new cookbook, or take the opportunity to get comfortable with a new appliance – something like an air fryer or an electric pressure cooker.
• Build a collection of easy recipes that can be assembled from ingredients that might already have on hand. Food Hero and Celebrate Your Plate are websites for finding easy, budget-friendly recipes that feature fruits and vegetables. Many of the recipes on these sites are kid-friendly, too.

When it comes to holiday cooking it is okay to give the family permission to take the year off. Reduce the stress by ordering carry out, going out to eat, or making something simple in the crockpot to decrease the mess. Not every holiday has to be a huge meal that a few people do all of the work for.

There are still healthy options when opting for local restaurants.

• Family size salads
• Skip the rolls
• Add extra veggies
• Drink more water
• Only order one dessert