Financial wizards will tell you that there’s no time like the present to reign in your spending and get a grip on your budget — but it’s their job to say that! Setting a food budget (that you can stick to) isn’t exactly a cake walk. In fact, it’s kinda the opposite. To help you get on the right track, we asked 10 (super-relatable) home cooks for their best realistic food budgeting advice that you can implement right now.
Meal planning is my mom superpower, but meal prep has never been my thing. As a mom of two, I find most of my weekend time gets gobbled up by soccer games, laundry, and epic LEGO tower building.
But having a fridge stocked with at least a few prepped meals makes me a more peaceful, kinder mom come Monday morning. In an effort to make the most of any free weekend time I do have, I focus on breakfast and lunch, which tend to muck up my mornings most. This Power Hour will give you a week of grab-and-go breakfasts, mix-and-match lunches, and a low-prep dinner meal plan. Consider it an entry-level plan for a family of four.
Even though summer is technically over, hot nights aren’t over for all of us. When the temperatures are climbing, cooking is the last thing on my mind. But since one can’t subsist on watermelon and Popsicles alone, I’ve armed myself with a roster of quick and easy dinners I know I can pull off — even on the hottest of nights.
From farmers market salads and grain bowls from the grill, to satisfying sandwiches and shrimp skewers, here are over 50 quick dinners that will save you.
Instant potato flakes aren’t exactly high on most lists of pantry essentials. You may keep them around in chilly months as a quick and easy shortcut to creamy mashed potatoes, but they’re probably more likely collecting dust on supermarket shelves.
What you might not know, though, is that these little flakes — made most often from either russet potatoes or Yukon Golds that have been cooked, mashed, and dehydrated — can work their magic in a surprising amount of dishes. Similar to potato starch, they can act as a thickener for gravies and soups. But they can also make chicken crispier, focaccia fluffier, and meatloaf more moist. Read on for our favorite ways to use them.
Five hundred bucks is nothing to sneeze at. You can get a lot of groceries for $500, book a weekend away, or have a few nice meals out on the town. You can’t, however, usually renovate a kitchen for $500, but you can buy at least one thing that’ll make a huge difference in how you use or feel about your kitchen.
We asked three of our favorite designers to tell us the best way to spend $500 on a kitchen. Here’s what they had to suggest.
If there’s one Costco fact we’ve been trying to prove to you lately, it’s that the warehouse store carries plenty of healthy foods. For starters, there’s the top-quality produce. There’s all sorts of healthy snacks for a lunch box, good-for-you frozen items, and there’s even a pretty healthy food court option.
We actually have a favorite among the many healthy options — and it happens to currently be on sale.
My new mantra is “just get me to October!” September has been busy with back-to-school events (Parents’ Night, Harvest Fest) and lots of solo parenting. Here’s the magic of meal plans, though — when a calendar week is hectic I can use meal planning to make one part of each day easier. (In this case dinner.)
This week’s meal plan includes one slow cooker recipe we stashed in the freezer a few weeks back, plus three new but ultra-easy recipes that everyone will love. There’s still our regularly scheduled pizza on Friday, which uses up leftovers but doesn’t use the slow cooker. Here’s how a week of slow cooker dinners is making my week easier.
The first time I made breakfast burritos the way I like them — that is, the eggs softly scrambled and never dry, busy with vegetables, and nothing terrifying like hot, wet lettuce inside, second only to eating them in front seat of your car in an Austin parking lot on a chilly morning, a Topo Chico in the cup holder (i.e. maybe not exactly the way I like them, but real life requires compromises, or so you adults keep telling me) — I felt woundingly betrayed. It seemed like every cooking website on the internet made them seem so simple, but there I was with separate skillet-fuls of bacon and greens and mixed vegetables and eggs, and then more bowls than I could count for assembly. We were going to have them for an “easy” breakfast-for-dinner that night; dinner was spectacularly late and everyone was hangry and ate my 90 minutes of prep in less than 5, further insult to injury. Never again, I vowed, never.
Fortunately I vowed this on Instagram Stories, which means that my DMs were quickly filled up halfway with “Me too!Why does everyone lie about how easy they are?” and the other half with suggestions of ways to make them more efficiently and intelligently.
If you’re sticking to a calorie budget, you likely understand the importance of planning and prepping your meals. Starting the week with a fridge full of packed Tupperware can help you stick within your calorie range and prevent mealtimes from being stressful. But picking and choosing the best recipes to prep? Now that’s where things get tricky.
It’s also where we come in. This Power Hour plan is packed with lean proteins, fresh vegetables, and whole grains to create an entire week’s worth of meals that all clock in at 1,500 calories a day or fewer — a common calorie goal for those looking to lose weight or consume fewer calories.
During everyone’s most-and-least favorite holiday movie, Love, Actually, Prime Minister Hugh Grant lists all of the reasons why he thinks Great Britain deserves that first part of its name: “We may be a small country, but we’re a great one, too,” he said. “The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham’s right foot. David Beckham’s left foot, come to that.”
That’s a good start, but he somehow failed to mention Britain’s most impressive contribution to world cuisine: the fry-up. (Variations on the always-massive meal are known as the Full English, Full Scottish, or the Full Irish — there’s a theme here — depending on which country you’re ordering one in). Regardless, the most well-known version has to be the Full English, which traditionally includes eggs, rashers of bacon, bangers, black pudding, grilled tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, baked beans, and toast.