The Best New Thing to Buy at IKEA — Shopping

We have a hard time finding things we don’t want to buy at IKEA. (How is it all so pretty and functional?) But because we sadly can’t have it all, we constantly have to edit down our wish list to just our favorite things.

With the launch of IKEA’s new line, JASSA, a limited-edition collection inspired by the color and craft of Indonesia and Southeast Asia, we are practicing our restraint. Here is the one must-have from the new collection.

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Why My Week Always Includes a Pizza Night — Meal Planning for Beginners

Pizza Friday is a well-loved weekly event in our family. To be honest, I can’t remember why or how we started it, but I do know that having this day on the calendar each week has not only brought joy to my children, but also a little more sanity to my meal planning. Friday night pizza serves two important and seemingly unrelated purposes: clearing out the fridge and holding space for family time.

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10 Budget-Friendly Dinners for Meatless Monday — Recipes from the Kitchn

It always feels good to start the week off with a wholesome dinner that won’t set back your budget. Luckily, following Meatless Monday — the practice of making dinner meat-free every Monday — can make that quite easy to accomplish, particularly if you lean on affordable pantry staples like canned beans and tomatoes, root vegetables, and tofu. Here are 10 great vegetarian recipes that won’t break the bank.

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5 Small Appliances That Belong on Your Wedding Registry (and 2 That Don’t) — Small Appliances, Sweet Love

“Go register for your wedding,” the other brides said. “It will be fun!”

Turns out, I was not programmed with that particular bridal chip.

I don’t use the word “literally” lightly, so when I tell you that I literally stood in the middle of the Macy’s housewares department only kind-of-jokingly yelling, “Representative!” as if to an automated answering service, I assure you that I am telling the truth.

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The Fastest Pasta Salad Comes from the Freezer — Quick Tortellini Dinners

Keep a bag of frozen tortellini tucked away in your freezer and you can rest easy knowing that a quick meal is always at the ready. This series on fast tortellini dinners will show you how to transform frozen tortellini into dinner using pantry staples and a few surprising techniques. Pasta sauce is just the beginning!

Family get-together coming up this weekend and you need to bring something everyone will eat? Pasta salad. Need a fast, but fresh dinner between work and soccer practice? Pasta salad. Pasta salad solves problems with its ease and straightforwardness, but we like to take it a step further by leaning on cheese tortellini to make it a little more substantial. From there, it’s just a matter of adding veggies, cheese, meats, and dressing.

In this version, we’re keeping things vegetarian with a dish inspired by Greek salad. Cukes, tomatoes, a bit of feta, and a vibrant dressing — homemade if you’re up for it — get tossed with the cooked and cooled pasta for a meal you can actually make in 30 minutes. It’s just another reason to keep frozen tortellini on hand.

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5 Recipes That Will Teach You the Art of 30-Minute Meals — The 30-Minute Meal

As much as I truly enjoy cooking, weeknights can be rough, and the dinner struggle is real. But at the first mention of 30-minute meals, I knew that was a cooking strategy made for me. I’ve come to lean on 30-minute meals during the week for numerous reasons, but time is always the main draw. The time cap on these recipes is an easy sell, but are they delicious? Will they cost me a small fortune in pre-prepped veggies? Will there be a ton of stuff to clean up? And seriously, 30 minutes from start to finish? Lies!

No lies here — just hot, delicious meals that answer all those questions with a yes, no, no, and yes (in that order).

From an ultra-satisfying soup to sheet pan salmon, these are the five weeknight-friendly recipes that will teach you just how easy it can be to get a nourishing dinner on the table in 30 minutes.

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Grocery Store Shortcuts Are the Key to the 30-Minute Meal — Meal Planning for Beginners

(Image credit: Forrest Clonts)

You and I both want weeknight dinners done in the time it takes my 5-year-old to take off her jacket and hang it up in the hall (feels like forever, but it takes about 30 minutes of prodding from front door to coat hook), and in that quest we’ve tried many, many methods. We stock our pantry with shortcuts and use fewer ingredients, but the real countdown clock on cooking dinner should start in our grocery cart.

Kelli’s got you covered on what pantry staples you’ll need to get dinner on the tables in about 30 minutes, but this post will teach you how to use the various departments of your grocery store to get dinner done faster. These grocery store shortcuts should be in your grocery cart too if you want to master the 30-minute meal.

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5 Strategies for Picking Recipes for a Week of Meal Planning — Meal Planning for Beginners

Before you can actually execute your meal plan, you need to choose recipes you’ll cook during the week ahead. This is possibly the most important step in meal planning. When approached in a way that’s just right for you, the recipes you choose will set you up for success. To the uninitiated this step can feel overwhelming, but I assure you that it’s not when you let these strategies guide the way in selecting the recipes for your meal plan.

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