Plan dinner well

You’ve probably heard the saying “planning is half the battle”? That’s a similar way to describe the challenge when it comes to preparing a quick dinner for the family. In fact, careful planning helps to ensure that dinner during the week doesn’t turn into stress. It’s best to start planning on the Friday or Saturday before the week begins by thinking of a dinner for each day of the week. Avoid elaborate dishes or new recipes and stick to tried and tested dishes during the week. However, dinner should be balanced and healthy if possible. Get your children involved in the planning: What simple favorite dishes do the family have that you could cook? What haven’t been there for a long time? And which dishes can the children even help with? This way you have a great chance of avoiding long faces at dinner.

Organize weekend shopping

If you have to work during the week, Saturday is the ideal day to go shopping. Although the supermarkets are busier than on a weekday, you are usually not in a rush. However, make sure that you do not start shopping without planning. Here’s how to do it: As soon as you have planned all the dinners, write down as many ingredients as possible in a shopping list. As a rule of thumb, the more complete your shopping is, the more likely you are to avoid stressful small purchases during the week. When making the list, it is also helpful to check whether some of the food you need is still in the pantry. This will help you to manage your household efficiently.

Prepare a quick dinner for the family: pre-cook, freeze and preserve

Because the working day can be long and exhausting with work and children, parents are happy when they don’t have to spend a long time preparing food every evening. Luckily, there are various ways to prepare meals in advance.

 

As soon as you cook a meal, you can prepare the dish in larger portions. This works well with casseroles, stews or a hearty goulash. Tarts or quiches can also be prepared well in advance and will keep in the fridge for several days. If you don’t like eating the same dish several days in a row, you can freeze the pre-cooked food in portions. If you take it out of the freezer in the morning, it will be thawed by the evening at the latest and you will have a quick dinner on the table. The prerequisite: a sufficiently large freezer and labelled storage containers.

More and more households with gardens or large balconies love to try out self-sufficiency. The harvest from bushes, vegetable patches or fruit trees does not have to be used up all at once, but can be stored for later. Many berries, vegetables and herbs can be flash frozen or fruit and vegetables can be preserved like grandma used to do. You can find numerous instructions on how to do this on the internet.

Quick and easy dinner (hot & cold) that children and adults love to eat:

To this day, many German households still have the classic evening meal on the table. In addition to bread or rolls, this includes cheese or sausage, spreads, as well as butter, honey, quark or jam. For dessert, there is yogurt, pudding or fruit. Drinks include water, juice, hot cocoa or a delicious herbal tea.

If that gets too boring in the long run or if you’re looking forward to a hot meal in the evening because of the day’s schedule , you can rely on numerous simple recipes that are healthy and delicious. In the autumn and winter months, for example, soup or stew with baguette warms you up after an afternoon of games or outdoor sports activities. You can recharge empty batteries with fried eggs on toasted bread or pasta with sauce. In summer, salads provide an energy boost. Simple baked potatoes taste great with quark and sausages. And for those with a sweet tooth, you can conjure up pancakes or Kaiserschmarrn with apple sauce. There are numerous recipes for quick dinners in magazines and, of course, on the Internet.

Quick warm dinner – What (almost) everyone likes to eat: