Simple Dinner Strategies

Host: Dr. Jennifer Hunter, Assistant Director for Family and Consumer Sciences Extension, University of Kentucky 

Guest: Dr. Heather Norman-Burgdolf, Extension Specialist for Nutrition and Health

Episode 28, Season 2

0:02 Welcome to Talking FACS; what you need to know about family, food, finance and fitness. Hosted by the University of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program, our educators share research knowledge with individuals, families and communities to improve quality of life.

0:21 Dr. Jennifer Hunter: Hello and welcome back to Talking FACS. This is your host, Dr. Jennifer Hunter, Assistant Director for Family Consumer Sciences Extension at the University of Kentucky.

Today, I'm pleased to have joining us Dr. Heather Norman-Burgdolf, Extension Specialist for Nutrition and Health. Welcome, Heather.

0:31 Dr. Heather Norman-Burgdolf: Yeah, good to be back.

0:37 Dr. Hunter: I love it today's topic, Heather: simple strategies for getting dinner on the table. This is my life right now. And literally, I am day to day on getting dinner on the table.

But those of you all that listen often know I've got two kids; one of them is in Third Grade and one of them started high school this year. They each have their own activities, none of which align. They don't like to ever eat out. So, they always want to eat at home. And some nights it is just so hard. So, you're going to fix all this today.

1:10 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: I'm going to try.

1:11 Dr. Hunter: You're going to tell me -

1:12 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: And I do think this is a struggle for everyone. Like kids of all ages, different times of the year, life gets so busy, like you said, after school activities. If you have toddlers and picky eaters, like there's so many factors that impact.

1:26 Dr. Hunter: My kids do at least eat.

1:27 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: So, it's good.

1:28 Dr. Hunter: I need to be appreciative of that. They're not picky. They will eat most things that I put in front of them. But still, sometimes the struggle is real.

So, let's start off talking about that. You know, I do kind of joke about it and also very real mean it that sometimes, it is really hard and it would just be easier to say, “Hey, let's grab a pizza or let's go out and eat.” I almost begged my children to eat out last night and they wouldn’t.

But we do know that there are significant benefits of cooking at home. So, let's start off with those, so that we know the pros, we know what we're working towards and our goal.

2:06 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: So, I want to plug, at this point, a couple podcasts that we've already had aired with Talking FACS. Really, we're talking about the benefits of having kids in the kitchen and being involved in the cooking process, as well as that idea of family meal time and sitting down together, like you said, with getting even if it is a pizza, just sitting down together is very beneficial.

But really, we know that people who cook more at home, they tend to have more balanced diets. So, they consume more whole grains, fruits and vegetables. They actually consume less calories than when you're eating out. So, overall, we just see that they have a more healthful diet.

And as a result of all of that, we actually know that people who cook more at home are less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. So, it's kind of this idea of cooking for health, really. We're starting to see this kind of pop up everywhere, even in healthcare.

2:55 Dr. Hunter: Right. And I feel like since school has started back, and we really do prioritize cooking and eating at home, but like I said, sometimes it's a struggle. But I feel like since school has started back that we've just kind of lost, I don't know, even our meal planning that it's just kind of the same thing, “Well, we'll have spaghetti tonight” or “Oh, it's grilled chicken tonight.” and we just kind of seem to be in this. And it's very kind of last-minute whatever protein I might have in the refrigerator.

Really, do you have tips about how to plan your meals and kind of wrap your mind around how to make this easier when you do get home after a hectic day?

3:34 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Yes. That is the first place I'm going to start. And talking about planning meals ahead. What I want to say first is that we really need to lower the expectations we have on ourselves, when it comes to putting cooking at home.

So, I think we automatically go to complicated recipes or we think it has to be this elaborate spread. But life is busy and life is hectic and we're feeding a lot of different people; whether you're a parent or you're a caregiver for a parent yourself, it's all over the place. So, lower your expectations. It doesn't have to be complicated.

4:03 Dr. Hunter: Can you take my kids to lower their expectations?

4:07 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: But really, if you really just keep the food groups in mind, when you're putting a meal together, it's fine if one night, it's like picnic style and you're kind of snacking at dinner. As long as you've got a whole grain present, some type of protein, a fruit and vegetable, really, that is balanced.

So, just lower all of our expectations on ourselves, especially for those who are working full-time or have hectic, crazy work schedules that aren't super traditional and hours, just lower expectations.

I think a lot of times, the hardest part is just getting started or knowing what you're going to fix. So, like you said, you get home and you don't even know. So, you're like, “Okay.”

4:44 Dr. Hunter: I made decisions all day.

4:46 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Right, exactly. Decision fatigue. It’s a thing. So, what I do and our family does this, we literally have a piece of notebook paper on our fridge that has about 15 meal ideas to help us plan our meals out for the week.

5:01 Dr. Hunter: That’d be great for the kids.

5:03 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: So, we do plan our meals weekly and I know some people who do monthly. So, you already have that monthly calendar on the fridge and you have all of your meals plan ahead. This helps putting together your grocery lists. It helps you stay on budget, if you know exactly what ingredients you're buying for; you're not just buying protein, chicken, and then you get home and you're like, “Okay, what I'm going to do with it.”

So, really just having an idea, taking the time, the same amount of effort you put into going to the grocery, I think, if you can put in that amount of time as well, kind of thinking about, “What am I going to buy and how am I going to spend my food dollars?” It really does pay off.

So, yeah, we have this list on our fridge. And if I don't know what I'm going to do, we're going to have something repetitive and that is okay. It's okay to be repetitive in the meals that you put on the table.

So, for example, you could do something where every Wednesday, it's a pasta night. All right. You already know what you're going to have, right. So, it's whatever veggies you have on hand; throw them in the pasta. But those are very shelf, stable and economical things to have.

Always having wholegrain pasta and a jar of tomato sauce, you throw in whatever veggies you have. Maybe you have leftover protein from the night before, throw it in. It doesn't have to be fancy. There you go. The burden's taken off. One night out of the week is already taking care of.

6:14 Dr. Hunter: I will say last school year, our little girl felt like every Tuesday night should be taco Tuesday. And it was the greatest thing ever. Until our oldest got just totally burnt out on tacos. And he's like, I can't eat another taco on Tuesday.

6:27 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Yeah, well, maybe every Tuesday for a month could be tacos, the next month, every Tuesday could be pasta night. You could have every night, one week is homemade pizza night. And you know, you throw on whatever veggies you have.

6:40 Dr. Hunter: And I love the idea of having a list on the fridge that's more than a week's worth of meals. But like you said, ten or fifteen, because that also lets the kids then, you know, on Sunday or Saturday, whenever it is, you're doing your meal planning, that they can kind of look at that and say, I want one, two and three this week.

6:56 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: It’s literally a menu. It's a menu of options.

6:59 Dr. Hunter: It's a menu and that does take a lot of that thought or frustration away at the end of the day.

7:05 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: And again, just simple ideas, you know, cheese and veggie, {indistinct 7:08} with rice and beans. Or breakfast for dinner; that's my favorite. If I don't know what I'm doing, “Okay, we’re having some eggs in some form.” If I've got some veggies, I'll throw them in, some wholegrain toast. You know, really just lower the expectations of what the spread has to look like.

7:26 Dr. Hunter: Yeah. So, I probably shouldn't tell this on myself. But last night, when I was trying to figure out dinner and my oldest kind of rolled his eyes and he's like, “Really?” And I looked and I said, “Look, I'm doing the best I can.” It's fine.

7:39 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: It's fine.

7:40 Dr. Hunter: “And you're going to eat in your belly is going to be full and nobody's going to bed hungry.”

7:43 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Yeah.

7:44 Dr. Hunter: And he just kind -- Of course, he's 15. So, he just kind of rolled his eyes at me, but he sat down and he ate plenty of food.

7:50 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Right.

7:51 Dr. Hunter: So, I mean it did not stop him from consuming the food.

7:53 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: You're doing a good job.

7:54 Dr. Hunter: I think he wanted -- his expectations have not been lowered to where the realistic expectations.

8:00 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Does he listens to these podcasts? So, many of them are {indistinct 8:03}.

8:04 Dr. Hunter: Because I would be in trouble.

8:05 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Okay. Well, another suggestion I have. So, if life is crazy and you do have time to fix dinner one night, just double it. If you've got the time set aside, go ahead and double what you make and freeze back half of it. And there is dinner for you another night, maybe a couple weeks down the road or next month.

Because really we can freeze some of these types of meals, specifically casseroles, soups or stews that you make; a lot of times we make soup or stew and it makes a ton and you don't want that to go to waste.

And even pizza dough. So, even in our house, I'm fortunate my husband makes large batches of homemade pizza dough and he'll freeze it back in about the amount we need in order for one pizza.

So, if I'm like, “Oh, we've got pizza dough in the freezer. I'll just pull that out. We've got some random pasta sauce that's leftover. We'll use that as our pizza sauce and just throw whatever we have on top.”

So, again, kind of just having some of those quick things in the future, just making double batches of things you already making. If you're taking the time to prep it and clean up for it, get more bang for your buck.

9:04 Dr. Hunter: And I do pretty good with that, with things like soups, chilies, spaghetti sauce that I'll make several meals worth. Sometimes I do more than double it because those are also so quick, too. When we have soccer practice or there's some type of event going on and you're trying to get everybody in the house fed and clothes changed within 30 minutes, just having those things that are quick and easy that often don't even require an additional side with it makes life so much simpler sometimes.

9:33 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: For sure. For sure. Another strategy that I would have is if you can and if you have the luxury to be able to kind of stock your pantry or your freezer with just some of those grab items that you can build a meal around. So, I've mentioned just having the pasta or the pasta sauce kind of always on hand because you can go to that. A lot of those are cost effective and they're very shelf stable. So, if you can buy them in bulk, if they're on sale and store them in your freezer, in your pantry, that's great.

I think frozen veggies, a lot of times people think we just steam them, but really we can do so much more with them. So, even if the bag says they're steam able, you don't have to steam them. You could cut them open and roast them. I think roasted veggies have a lot more flavor to them. You could throw it into a soup. You could put it into a casserole. So, really just kind of having frozen veggies on hand, there’s a lot of things you can do with them outside of just what that bag says of steaming them in the microwave. If you like that, that's great. I'm just saying there's a lot of flexibility there.

10:32 Dr. Hunter: I do try and keep a pretty good stash of frozen veggies on hand because again, they're quick and sometimes they're easy and my kids will eat anything. So, I can just steam some peas and put on some {indistinct 10:43 -44} some pasta and I feel like at least, you know, they're getting.

10:48 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: And they're one of those items that tend to go on sale pretty frequently at the grocery store or you can buy so many of them for $5 or something like that.

10:54 Dr. Hunter: And they don't take up a tremendous amount of room in the freezer. So, I do try and keep a pretty good stash of frozen veggies around.

11:00 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Yeah. And then we find a lot of ways to use pasta sauce. So, if I'm just fixing it for my husband and I, we might not use a whole jar. Well, we might use the other half of the jar as pizza sauce instead. It doesn't say that it's pizza sauce, but you can still use this tomato-based sauce as a pizza sauce or even adding it to if you're building a flavor in a soup or stew, adding a little pasta sauce as well can you give a little bit more flavor as well and depth to it.

So, just kind of thinking outside the box of how you can use some of these items when you're trying to put together a meal in a pinch.

11:33 Dr. Hunter: So, let's talk about meal prep. This is, again, I think one of those things that seems daunting to some people about planning ahead. But a few minutes in the morning can definitely save you a lot of just stress later on in the evening.

11:50 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Absolutely. Yeah. Just a few minutes in the morning. It could be as simple as you're getting your breakfast together or you're getting breakfast together for your kids. Just pulling out the ingredients for the dinner that night and having it on the counter. So, when you get home, it's already all assembled for you. Now, those are the things that can be right on the {indistinct 12:02}.

12:08 Dr. Hunter: {crosstalk 12:08}

12:09 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm just saying, even having it out, walking in saying, “Okay, this is what I'm doing.” is going to save you five minutes while you've got kids who are asking for help for homework and you're trying to feed the dog and like all the different things at one time, having the ingredients assembled is super helpful.

And if you want to go a step further, you really can prep ingredients a few days in advance to have them ready. If you know that on it's Sunday night and I'm going to make this on Tuesday or Wednesday night, there are even certain veggies that you can go ahead and prep. And when I say prep, that means wash and dry and peel if necessary, and then chop and store them in the fridge in an airtight container.

And there are a lot of vegetables you can do this with. Some examples would be asparagus, green beans can be trimmed in advance, and Carrots can be peeled and chopped and kept in the fridge, bell peppers, you could do onions. You might want to put it inside another baggie because your whole fridge might smell like onion. But still, even if a recipe calls for a diced onion and diced bell pepper and some Sloppy Joes, if you could do that in advance, you're going to save yourself some time on the night that you need to put that meal together.

And then there are also fruits, too. So, let's not forget about fruit, because we can prep fruit as well. And that's always a great side dish. Like, I don't think a lot of people kind of think about having fruit on the table at dinner. But you could have a helping of cut-up {indistinct 13:28} or some quartered grapes for some smaller kids on the side with their dinner. And that's a perfectly good side to be able to make a balanced meal.

13:36 Dr. Hunter: We put food on the table and that's their dessert.

13:38 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Yeah, that's great.

13:40 Dr. Hunter: So, there's typically –

13:42 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: I know they love sugar, but it's a great way to get some sweetness.

13:45 Dr. Hunter: At least some nights that I have my act together that we typically do do a bowl of fruit.

13:51 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Now, and that's great.

13:52 Dr. Hunter: On the table, just because it is something a little sweet at the end and it kind of curves that sugar need that they have.

All great information, Heather, and I appreciate, just even the opportunity for me to think through my own meal stress. What about other resources that might be available?

14:13 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: So, check out the local county extension office where you live. Food preparation, cooking classes, even food safety, which is really important when we're thinking about preparing meals at home. They have all kinds of publications that are most likely hosting programs as well.

And don't forget, they have great recipes. Again, don't feel like you have to have this complex recipe to get dinner on the table, but they do have great resources to kind of get you started and thinking about what some balanced meals look like that you could serve your family.

14:39 Dr. Hunter: This is a great topic. Thanks so much for being here today, Heather.

14:42 Dr. Norman-Burgdolf: Thank you.

14:43 Thank you for listening to Talking FACS. We deliver programs focusing on nutrition, health, resource management, family development and civic engagement.

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