Eating well, cooking at home, and looking after your family doesn’t have to take you two hours in the kitchen or feel like a major undertaking.
I truly do enjoy cooking! I love testing new recipes, preparing a good meal, and getting that little burst of happiness when everyone sits down and enjoys what I’ve made.
What I don’t love is trying to pull together an elaborate dinner at the end of a long, tiring day.
The difference between cooking something slowly on a Sunday afternoon and being in the kitchen on a Tuesday evening, wondering why I chose a recipe that called for 17 ingredients, three pans, and an item that apparently had to marinate for four hours, is enormous.
For a long time, I believed that I had made cooking at home more difficult than it needed to be, and because of that, the true aim never remained clear to me. The reason I cooked was so that I could prepare a full meal, follow a recipe, and make something good.
But if that appeared like too much trouble, takeout or going out to eat became the simpler choice.
Recently, I’ve started taking the pressure off myself – reconsidering what counts as a home-cooked dinner.
Dinner Doesn’t Need to Be a Production
I think social media has slightly confused us about what an ordinary dinner should look like, and that makes the simple version easy to overlook.
Everything is beautifully plated. There’s a homemade sauce. Fresh herbs are scattered over the top. Somehow the kitchen is also spotless.
Meanwhile, I’m just trying to figure out what I can make without dirtying every dish I own.
I still want our food to be delicious, fresh, satisfying, and pretty on the plate.
But pretty and delicious don’t have to mean complicated. Chicken, roasted potatoes, and a simple salad. Tacos with a few toppings. A rice bowl with chicken, vegetables, and a good sauce. Eggs, potatoes, and fruit when breakfast-for-dinner sounds better than anything else. A rotisserie chicken with vegetables and something warm on the side.
None of these meals are revolutionary, but that’s exactly the point: simple meals count.
“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.” – Anthony Bourdain
I’m Learning to Build Meals Instead of Always Following Recipes
This has probably been my biggest shift: focusing less on perfect recipes and more on what gets dinner on the table.
Recipes are wonderful, especially when I have the time, all the ingredients, and actually want to cook. I have a ton of cookbooks, and I love saving recipes from Instagram. But on busy nights, I’m learning that dinner can be less about following instructions and more about putting together a few things we already like.
My easiest formula is:
Protein + vegetable + something filling + something that makes it taste really good.
That might be chicken, roasted Brussels sprouts, rice, and a favorite sauce.
Or seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and tortillas.
Or chicken, broccoli, fettuccine pasta, and a simple alfredo sauce.
Once I stopped believing every dinner needed a Pinterest-worthy recipe, cooking started feeling much easier – and the real goal stayed clear.
I’m not reinventing dinner every night… I’m just feeding my family.
Convenience Foods Are Allowed
This one deserves its own section because we sometimes make cooking at home unnecessarily difficult in the name of doing everything “from scratch,” even when the simpler choice still supports the goal.
I am officially permitting myself to use shortcuts, & you should too!
Pre-cut vegetables? Yes.
Canned salsa or sauces? Absolutely.
Microwaveable rice on a particularly busy night? You do you, Boo!
Pre-shredded chicken I didn’t personally roast for two hours? Go for it!
Frozen vegetables, jarred or packaged, prepared ingredients, and other shortcuts can turn “I don’t have time to cook” into “I can have dinner ready in twenty minutes.”
That matters.
Especially because my real goal isn’t to prove that I can make everything myself – it’s to cook at home more often in a way I can actually keep up.
“Real cooking is more about following your heart than following recipes.” – Unknown
I Want Dinner to Feel Good, Too
Another part of this is about how home feels.
I want home to feel good, and I want dinner to be part of that.
Something is comforting about cooking dinner in the kitchen: music playing, someone wandering in asking what smells good, everyone grabbing plates and sitting down together, even if the meal itself was incredibly simple. That is part of nourishment to me, too.
Food is obviously about feeding our bodies, but meals can also create little pauses in days that otherwise move very quickly. And it doesn’t require a beautifully set dining room table every night. Sometimes dinner is eaten around the kitchen island. Sometimes everyone has somewhere to be. Sometimes the meal that brings everyone together comes mostly from the freezer.
It still counts.
Cooking at Home Helps in More Ways Than One
There’s also a very practical reason I want to get better at this: eating out adds up fast. I mean fast.
And while I absolutely love trying new restaurants – and have no intention of giving that up – there’s a difference between going out because we want to and ordering food because I didn’t plan. I’d rather save more of our restaurant meals for experiences we actually enjoy: the new place we’ve been wanting to try, a date night, lunch somewhere fun on the weekend.
Not another random weeknight order that costs way more than expected and leaves me thinking, I could have made something better at home. (Plus, we’ve eaten at the take-out spots in our area too many times, so now we’re all over eating at those places.)
Cooking more often also gives me more control over what goes into our meals and makes it easier for me to work toward my own health goals without obsessing over every bite.
That feels like a win all around.
Creating healthier routines doesn’t have to mean changing everything at once either. Sometimes it’s as simple as preparing dinner at home more often or finding small ways to move throughout the day. If you’re looking for another approachable place to start, read Walking Counts: Making Everyday Movement Matter.
My New Rule: Keep Dinner Simple Enough That I’ll Actually Make It
I’m realizing that consistency usually comes from making things easier, not from expecting more of ourselves. So I’m not trying to become the person who meal-preps twelve perfectly portioned containers every Sunday. I’m not planning seven elaborate dinners every week.
And I’m definitely not making homemade pasta on a Wednesday night. But if that’s your jam, again, you do you, Boo!
Instead, for me, I want a handful of reliable meals, ingredients I know my family will eat, and enough flexibility that dinner doesn’t fall apart when the day doesn’t go according to plan.
Some nights, I’ll make something beautiful from scratch because I enjoy it, like my Mama’s Homemade Chicken Soup!
Other nights, I’ll put seasoned chicken, vegetables, and potatoes on one sheet pan and call it a success.
Both are cooking at home. Both feed the people I love. Honestly, both absolutely deserve a place in this season of my life.
Maybe nourishment doesn’t always have to look like the perfectly planned meal; perhaps the actual point is that it gets made at all. And maybe that’s enough to matter.
Sometimes it’s simply opening the refrigerator at the end of a long day and realizing: I can make something good from what we have.
Nothing elaborate. Nothing perfect. Just good food, made at home, for the people around my table. That feels like enough for right now.
And right now, that feels like more than enough to me.
What’s your go-to dinner when you want something homemade without spending all evening in the kitchen? Share your favorite easy meal in the comments - I’m always looking for new ideas! 🌿
