Two of my must-have items for making life simple are things I've had for a few years now. A slow cooker and a bread machine. I use them, but I don't use them nearly enough and that's also going to be part of my challenge. These two items allow me to minimize how much dinner prep I have to do with two little boys running around.
My typical routine (that I've always hated) is to spend at least an hour working on dinner right before mealtime (because that's when you're supposed to work on dinner, right?). This seems to be the most hectic time of day for us. My kids are overly hyper and begin to fight constantly, which riles up the dog, and someone almost always ends up getting hurt from either falling over, getting smacked by a sibling, or nipped by the dog because they stepped on his tail during all their running around. And of course my husband isn't home yet and I can't really stop what I'm doing, so I'm standing there yelling my head off for them to stop it and calm down. Chaos. Pure chaos.
My house won't be like that today. Today I'm utilizing the slow cooker and bread machine. I'm using the small amount of quiet time the boys have after school (we only have half day kindergarten here) to do my dinner prep. While they have their snack and watch their PBS show, I am loading up the slow cooker with stuff for spaghetti meat sauce and the bread machine with ingredients for french bread. I'll have to do a little more prep on the bread in an hour or so, but then will only have to spend about 15 minutes getting the pasta cooked right before dinner. We will have a filling, delicious meal and I won't feel like a rundown crazy person afterwards. And I'll be able to spend more time playing with the boys this afternoon. A bonus!
These items are perfect for easing mealtime frustration. Even if you don't like bread machine bread (I'm not a fan of it - I just don't think it's as good as oven-fresh bread), a bread machine is still great for cutting down on time spent in the kitchen. I've never actually baked bread in my bread machine - I only use it for mixing and letting the bread rise (it's a warm place and works really well). I simply pour the ingredients in, turn it on, and it does all the mixing and kneading for me. No mess, very little time.
I'm glad that in this case of simplicity, all I had to do was use what was right in front of me. How many evenings of frustration and stress could I have avoided if I'd just figured that out in the first place?
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