Planning and prepping and cleaning.

One of the many positive, but unintended consequences of this adventure in home cooking has been the new time frame it allows for in the evenings.  Dinner time is stressful in a house with young children.  Add to that an erratic schedule for my husband and it used to be that 3 out of 5 nights of the week were pure chaos around 6pm.

I have been shockingly pleased at how much smoother evenings are in the Patterson house now that takeout/delivery are off the table.  We have adopted Taco Tuesday's ( I think I've mentioned this before?) and Fish Friday's, which take such a weight off my shoulders in terms of planning.  Every Tuesday we have tacos.  Regular old ground beef, lettuce, cheese, hard shell tacos.  It is delicious, affordable, easy and everyone is ALWAYS happy about it. Same for Fish Friday.  We eat some kind of seafood every Friday night. Pair it with a vegetable and a starch (almost always broccoli, rice or noodles.). Again, so easy to plan, prepare and EVERYONE is happy.

So the "unintended" part is that the simplicity of these meals has made cleanup easier!  With less work to do during the day and before the meal, the post eating cleanup feels much less overwhelming.  It's the little things right? Going to bed with a clean kitchen just makes waking up in the morning so much more pleasant 😊