Weeknight Meals – Our Easy Meal “Formula”

One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is to find a new recipe and have a date night in with Blake. We pour some wine, divide out the prep work, and chat about our weeks while we create the meal. But during the week, some nights it’s a struggle to carve out the time to make a dinner that’s more than pouring a bowl of cereal (or grabbing chips and salsa, which is probably what I would eat most nights if Blake didn’t take the reins on cooking…).

When we meal plan for the week ahead, we will usually have one or two nights where we try out something new or choose an old favorite standby (tacos make their way into our meal plan most weeks). But for the most part, we follow a simple “meal formula” so our dinner planning & prep after a long day of work doesn’t take up too much time. We also follow this formula when we have to make a last minute grocery store run and we haven’t had time to fully plan out our meals.

We simply pick a protein + a veggie + an optional starch. For example, we typically pick up chicken, ground beef, and salmon and then have an array of vegetables to choose from.  Each night before bed, we’ll pull a meat out of the freezer and when we get home from work, we grab whatever vegetable sounds best to us and start prepping it so it can get popped in the oven during Luke’s bedtime routine.

This “meal formula” not only makes the prep time shorter, but it also allows us to eat fairly healthy every night during the week. Occasionally we’ll have pasta or add rice to our meals, but for the most part we both feel our best when we fill up the majority of our plates with protein and vegetables.

To keep us from getting bored, we try to switch up the way we prepare the meals each week. One of my recent favorite finds is the “Everything but the Bagel” spice from Trader Joe’s. A few shakes over chicken before baking it gives it so much flavor without adding a million different spices together. For the salmon, our two favorites are either coconut aminos or honey mustard + brown sugar. We also have a lot of shrimp, and will often add a honey sriracha glaze over rice or keep it simple with a basic pasta sauce over zucchini noodles. For sides, we typically always pick up sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts to have on hand – they both are easy to chop up and roast in the oven!

I’ll be sharing some more of our favorite weeknight recipes soon, but in the meantime I’d love to hear some of your simple weeknight dinner ideas!