In case it is helpful to any of my teachery friends out there, I thought I would share a system I set up to help with one of my biggest school-year stresses: Making supper.
While this won't make supper cook itself, it will at least save a ton of time when it comes to menu-planning and grocery-list-making.
First I made a list of 30-ish meals my family likes enough to eat, well, once every 30-ish meals. These are the only things I am going to cook during the school year, usually along with a salad or frozen veggies. Occasionally something might get bumped from the list and something else might get added, but this is pretty much it. There is nothing sophisticated here for sure. They are mostly simple meals with short prep time and minimal ingredients. Cooking isn't really my thing. But it is cheaper and healthier than eating out, so I try.
When it is time to "menu plan", I just need to highlight 5-ish meals on the list. Those are what I'm cooking this week. I cross off the meal once we've eaten it. When we've gone through the entire list, I will print a new one and start over.
The next problem I've always had is grocery list making. I hate digging around for recipes and putting the ingredients on a list. I also hate trying to remember all the things we use on a regular basis and hoping I don't forget about toothpaste or toilet paper. And then I discovered this app:
You can input your own recipes, or pull them in from a variety of websites. This took me some time, but should pay off with huge time savings later. (Hint, you can skip typing the directions. Its the ingredients that matter). Now I can select the meals that I've already decided to cook, click the grocery cart (see it there in the upper right corner?), and boom! The ingredients are automatically compiled in a list.
I also added a recipe titled "staples" where the ingredients are items we always keep around like milk, bread, breakfast bars, and such so that I can easily add them to the grocery list by clicking on that recipe. And, because I am very thorough, I also created a recipe called "stuff we use" where the ingredients are toothpaste, toilet paper, and such. So I can also add those items to the list with one click. It is very easy to remove items from the list if you already have them on hand.
Then go shopping. I haven't figured out a way to speed up that process.
I picture myself coming home from a long day of school, looking at what's highlighted on the list, and throwing something together easily since I will already have all the ingredients on hand. So no more worries about supper.
One less thing.