Working moms - how do you make dinner?

Question

We get home between 5:30-6PM. 
Night time routine for bed start at 6:45, 7PM the latest. We have our Aug baby and almost 3 yr old. 
I just don’t get how families with both working parents cook dinner. It’s so hard! We’ve done HelloFresh and it worked with just a baby but with both, it’s really hard. We have a hard time giving up the only time we get with the kiddos to cook. So we resort to takeout most nights or just suck it up and make pasta or tacos. 
How do you do it?

Answer

Same boat, we eat like crap. And I don’t have a three year old!

Answer

Same here. 1 baby and 1 toddler and basically we're like you. Barely have time to really cook. We just do very simple dishes and I admit sometimes I just fall asleep once the kids are in bed. I'm too tired.

Answer

We do Hellofresh too and love it. My husband  does the cooking because he enjoys it while I play, feed,, and do bath time with our two little ones.  He finishes cooking and watches the 2 year old while I nurse the baby to sleep then we both eat sharing some food with our daughter if she shows interest.  It works most nights for us.

Answer

To be honest, i don’t enjoy cooking . I’d rather do anything else except cooking but my husband enjoys cooking. So for now, he cooks when he gets home and it’s pretty late by the time we eat but i don’t see any other option. But if i have to order out, i do it since i have to survive.

Answer

My husband and I skip dinner because there’s no time to cook.   He’ll just prepare a meal for our toddler and I nurse the baby.  We’ll have a snack after they’re both in bed. 
I really look forward to the day when we can cook Blue Apron as a family and eat dinner together, but that won’t be for a few years.

Answer

All I can say is I feel you! This was us until Covid hit and I became a SAHM. Now I start dinner prep during my toddler’s nap time. Before that....we were in a rat race everyday and he was basically eating frozen food that I popped in the oven. Then we’d put him to bed and my husband and I would eat. I hated it. 
I agree crockpots are the easiest option if you don’t want to spend the weekend meal prepping. (Which I didn’t want to do either).

Answer

You could batch cook meals at the weekend and freeze them so you just have to warm each meal up in the evenings?

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Crockpot! You can prep it the night before, and just throw it all in before you go to work!

Answer

I'm a SAHM so this might not be the kind of input you are looking for but I have done some variety of meal prepping throughout all my adult like (marathon training, 4 hour roundtrip commutes, etc). Order groceries for the week through grocery pickup, utilize crock pot meals that can be put together the morning of or even the night before and find instant pot recipes with short active cooking times. Think about buying chicken or other protein in bulk, put it in different marinades and then put it in your freezer. Then just pull it out to bake or grill and serve with something simple like steamed veggies, salad, etc. We also order pizza every Friday. I hope this helps!

Answer

We eat dinner late but I typically take out the meat or chicken from the morning and pre-plan what I want to make. Usually my baby and 4 yr old play while I prepare food and my husband is still at work or when he does come home, he’ll take care of the kids. If you have instagram, there are so many pages that have simple meal recipes for yall to cook that really do not take much time if you have the ingredients. We order out once a week, if that. I do like to cook so I make it a priority after the kids are taken care of.  Join those IG pages and do your grocery shopping on the weekend.

Working moms - how do you make dinner?

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