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I’ve written about dinner strategies a lot on my website, in my cookbook Dinnertime SOS, and here in this newsletter—yet I keeping coming back to it because I know that it is continuously such a source of stress. And we all need more ease in our lives!
From the mom who emailed me last week desperately wanting my list of “drop dead easiest” weeknight family dinners while she solo parents through stretch when her husband is recovering from an illness, to my friend in real life who gets home from work at 5:45 and just cannot figure out how to cook and give the kids attention they need simultaneously, to me, who constantly has to drive kids to activities that occur right during freaking dinner…we are all doing our best to figure this out. And it’s really hard.
Plus, when we’re stressed or anxious, everything is harder. And I know we often judge our “success” as parents based on what the kids eat or how meals go—which I don’t recommend, to be clear, but I am acknowledging that it sometimes happens. And can be a hard habit to break free from.
To help (I hope!), I have three strategies to release some of the pressure and ease both the actual process of cooking and the anxiety surrounding it that have helped me this year.
Because ever since I started feeding just myself and my kids as a divorced single mom, I have discovered that there are ways to make things easier—and it’s often more about simple changes in our approach than it is about the kids. Which actually does make things a lot easier to implement!
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The five item dinner rotation is genius! It is simple but gives you a structure, so one can vary on the details. I will try and incorporate it for my family. Thank you so much, Amy! Amelie from Germany
It really helps my brain work a lot less so I hope it’s a useful approach for you too!