Okay, I tell you to make meals for your family all the time. I give you quick recipes for these said family meals. I built a business around having families sit down to dinner every night and enjoy a home cooked meal. But now that I have a toddler and an infant—man, is it hard to get a good meal on the table EVERY NIGHT!!! Okay, okay, I’m five weeks into recovering from my surgery and I should be ordering take-out. However, it gets expensive and fattening and quite frankly, I miss cooking!

I remember how it felt to make the first meal as a mom of two like it was yesterday. Okay, it wasn’t yesterday but more like two weeks ago, but don’t ask me to remember what I made. I’m lucky if I remember to get out of my pajamas after three days, let alone what I made for dinner two weeks ago! What I didn’t forget was the balancing act and exhaustion I felt while trying to chop and prep, with an infant crying, and a toddler whining, “I’m still hungry”, when she has literally eaten everything in the house! I remember feeling like, “Wow, and I thought it was hard towing one tyke around town to cook for folks and getting dinner on the table. This is so not how I thought it would be.”

After trying to cook a mid-week meal, I decided that I needed to hire a personal chef! I needed me, but not me because me is on maternity leave. However, I had a talk with myself and decided that on the weekends I would carve some time out to shop, cook and freeze. I would also allow us to order take-out when we got sick of what was in the freezer. I gotta say, it’s worked out. We have almost finished the stash of food I made two months ago. I have since kept the fridge loaded with fresh fruit, veggies, hummus, and brown rice and the freezer has two different kinds of lasagna and grilled chicken. In a moment’s notice, because these days I have nothing more than a moment’s notice, we can reheat a well-rounded meal in five minutes.

So moms out there, dinnertime doesn’t have to be so doom and gloom if you just take a few hours a week (try, try, try to find those hours, I know it’s hard) to shop, prep, cook and freeze your meals for the week! Your budget, your waistline and your family will thank you.