Do you love eating great food while connecting with your family & friends at the dinner table?

Yeah, me too.

The dinner table allows me and others in my life to put down our phones, look each other in the eye, and really hear one another.  I crave that connection with my family and friends.

But here’s the deal, I don’t love spending hours meal planning and cooking.  There’s just so many things in my life that I’d rather do than spend hours in the kitchen or grocery store each week.

Dinnertime Insanity

When I got married a few years ago, my world changed a lot. I went from being a super single gal only having to fend for my own dinner, to gaining a husband and two amazing kids.

As you can imagine, cooking became yet another thing in my life to trigger my perfectionist tendencies. I wanted to make healthy and tasty meals to nourish my family. I was spending hours scouring Pinterest and a lot of time trying to make new, exciting and healthy recipes several times a week.

I was already spending a lot of energy adjusting to my new norm and trying to figure out my new role and identity as wife and mom.

The added pressure of meal-planning, grocery shopping and 1.5 hours in the kitchen cooking and cleaning starting to wear on me. I also began to resent my husband and kids for something they never he asked for. Not to mention that our grocery budget was off the charts!

Discovering What Really Matters

As funny as it sounds, I had to get real about my motivations for trying to Suzy Homemaker. I was trying to prove to myself and others (there were many others) that I was worthy to be a wife and mom. Classic Perfectionist.

I realized what mattered most to me and my husband was spending time around the table with our family connecting and nourishing our body and souls.

I knew I needed to take a step back and look for a solution that fit my family’s needs without taking the joy and love I had for yummy food and shared time around the table. I needed to simplify my dinnertime routine.

And that’s when signing up for a meal kit delivery service saved my sanity and restored joy back to dinnertime for me.

9 Benefits of Using a Meal Kit Delivery Service

For clarity sake, a meal kit delivery service involves 2-4 meals a week that include all of the ingredients you need plus step-by-step recipe instructions. You still have to use pots, pans, and the stove!

1.  Freedom from planning five meals a week. – We eat three meals from the meal kit service a week. For the rest of the week: I plan two meals myself and then eat out the other two nights.
2. Offers a variety of recipes types in one week. – I can eat an Asian dish one night, paleo the next, and finish the week with a carb-loaded Italian meal.
3. Eat healthier with ease. I can ensure we have a variety of meats, fish and vegetables each week with minimal planning on my part. I know the nutrition break-down of every meal.
4. Automatic portion-control. A meal kit comes either for two or four people.
5. Waste less food. Eating a variety of meal types requires a lot of random and often expensive ingredients. A meal may only require a small amount of an ingredient and then I would end up throwing out the rest because I didn’t use it before it spoiled.
6. Save money not going to the grocery store as often. This keeps me from buying unnecessary items that somehow jump into my cart (I swear, I don’t remember buying those four bottles of kombucha).
7. Saves time and allows me to focus on things I actually love. – I am able to make fewer trips to the grocery store, which allows me to focus on my other priorities. I stock up every couple of weeks on staples and ingredients for other meals that I commonly make on nights I cook on my own.
8. Allows bonding time with my husband. My husband and I cook together now. We wait until we put down our baby for the evening and we pull out the ingredients, turn on the music, and divvy up the tasks. We find it a relaxing time together catching up on our day.
9. Taught my husband to cook. The recipes come with step-by-step instructions that have built my husband’s confidence (and mine) in the kitchen and enhanced his ability to cook on his own. Honestly, he has come to love cooking more than I do.

Look, I still go on Pinterest for recipes, but coming up with two recipes a week is way more manageable for me.

In case you’re wondering, I have tried four different meal kit services (I am not promoting any service). All have been good. Sometimes, they can get in a rut with recipes so I do another one for a while. You really can’t go wrong. Some have better options depending on your dietary restrictions or preferences.  Here are a few that we have tried.

 

Do a little bit of research and just try one. You won’t regret it, I promise.

What have you found helps you simplify your dinnertime routine?