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[quote=Anonymous]It's definitely a challenge to get dinner on the table by 6:00 at our house, but usually we do manage to eat around 6:30. DH usually can get home by 6 or 6:30. We would ideally start getting DS (almost 3) upstairs for bath/changing/etc. by 7:15 for an 8:00 bedtime, but it's more realistic for us to shoot for 7:45 upstairs, 8:15-8:30 sleeping. Family dinner is the only time we all have together during a weekday, so we decided we would push back bedtime as required to make sure we could have that time most days.

Some strategies that help:
- prepping ingredients ahead of time (I'll devote an hour or two at the beginning of the week to chop up several onions, peel carrots, mince garlic, etc. Prep cuts of meat. Mix together sauces/dressings that can keep for several days.)

- "double duty" elements where you can cook a larger quantity of a meat or grain and use it in different recipes. Like yesterday, we had a crockpot pork roast that cooked all day while I was at work. Got home and dressed it with a barbecue sauce and we had bbq sandwiches for dinner. Tomorrow night, I'm using the leftover meat with a tomato sauce over quinoa patties for an Italian-type dish.

- quick backup meals. If something goes haywire at work, or DS is starving and just NOT going to wait, I usually have something stashed away that I can whip up quickly, like 10-15 minutes or less. Our house favorite is breakfast for dinner: scrambled eggs, and waffles/pancakes (I keep a bunch in the freezer, just make a few extra whenever we cook them and then put in ziploc baggies).

- meal plan and grocery shop on weekends. I make a list of the dinners for the week and make sure we have everything on hand as there is definitely no time to run to the store on weeknights. I use Relayfoods some weeks and have it delivered so I can cook/prep instead of spending 2 hours trekking out to grocery shop.

- Careful recipe/food selection. I have some cookbooks I don't touch except for "weekend meals" because I know they require roasting, simmering sauces, etc. I learned the hard way to make sure I really read a recipe and/or think through all the prep and cooking required for a dish before trying to cram it in to a weeknight dinner.  A few quick recipe source favorites include: weelicious, supernatural every day (heidi swanson), smitten kitchen. I'll often just pick a protein we can cook quickly and simply, like fish, and then add on a vegetable and starch. Frozen vegetables are a great time saver. Quick steam and sprinkle some parmesan cheese, and on the table in 5 minutes. [/quote]

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