My kids finished school two weeks ago, and I have comfortably settled into the slower pace of summer. To be honest, I'd rather spend my afternoons at the pool with the kids than meal planning , so I'm working on setting up meal rotation …
It seems a little surreal that we are heading into the last week of May! This time of year always seems so busy and overwhelming to me and having a week of meals planned out , including recipes that come together quickly , removes one th…
I know lots of us have lost the will to cook , and warmer weather always has me thinking about every single restaurant in town with a porch. But one trick that always works to get me back in the kitchen is to make a meal plan I know my f…
It's time to get that meal plan together for next week and I'm excited to share my meal plan ideas with you. And yes, this is my actual plan for my family of four will be eating. Maybe you make them all, or maybe they just give you a few…
You guys, it's light outside! After 5:00 pm! I can't believe it. I'm so excited, that I'm taking my family to the back porch for dinner every night this week, if possible. So I wanted to plan some easy dinners for the family that we can …
For this week's weekly meal plan, I'm going to be honest -- I've lost a bit of my passion for being in the kitchen over the last year. I know a lot of us are in the same boat. There have been no long, leisurely dinners in restaurants to …
Last week we were all about hiding veggies in our kids' dinners so they didn't even know they were eating them, but this week we want to focus on protein too. Do your kids pull all their toppings off pizza and just eat the crust, or snea…
Have you ever sat back at the end of a week, proud of all all that effort you put in in the kitchen, and then wondered... Did my teens actually eat a vegetable this week? Nope? Just me? If your kids are like mine, all "bring on the pizza…
We have a lot going on in our family over the next few weeks, and I'm not going to be as available as I usually am to cook dinners. So I've been flipping through my recipe collecting and looking online for some of my favorite prep-ahead …
This year I'm all about saving us some money with budget-friendly dinners , while also saving me time in the kitchen. So this week's meal plan is all family-friendly slow cooker dinners under $10 each . Whoo! I'm so excited for a week of…
I'll admit that I'm one of the first to get sucked into a beautiful photo of a recipe online, only to have it turn out terrible when I make it at home. But like a good book, I'm willing to try something that even sounds a little unusual …
2021 is going to have to shape up soon, because we didn't think we'd be hitting the comfort foods so hard right now. How are we coping with the early sunsets, cold weather, anxiety-provoking news, and kids that still need love and care a…
One of bright spots of 2020 is that I have discovered so many amazing new recipes for my family, stemming mainly from my newfound love for meal planning . Yes, meal planning! Who would have thought? Pre-Covid, I really was more of a wing…
At the end of every year, we share our top 10 most popular posts on Cool Mom Eats. It's probably no surprise that most of the posts are pandemic related (remember when we were all baking bread and stuff?). And since so many of us were so…
Budget slow cooker dinner recipes are my whole mood right now. I don't know about you, but I'm short on time with the holidays here, not to mention all those holiday gifts taking a healthy bite out of my budget. So for this week's meal p…
So this week, seems I got my second wind, y'all. After struggling through a bit of a cooking slump last week (Thanksgiving tends to do that to me), I finally turned a corner and got inspired to test a few new recipes to add into my rotat…
Welp, as of this week, we'll have made it to December. Wow. That's 48 weeks of family dinners under your belt, most likely at home, all during an extremely stressful and uh, unusual 2020. If you are human, which I can presume you are, th…
It's Thanksgiving week, parents! I'm thinking ahead to Thursday (smaller though it may be), but also realizing that my family needs to eat on the other days this week too. And since it also happens to be a week where strict quarantines a…
This coming week (and maybe a few weeks after that), I need meal planning to be a bit easier. In fact, I need every one of my responsibilities to be a little easier -- don't we all? So I'm putting together a meal plan of five super easy …
There's a lot of chatter about immune-boosting foods in my social feeds this week, and I get it. Between the time change, the stress of Election week , the colder weather coming in, and (of course) COVID-19 being an ever-present concern,…
I believe that good food is like a warm hug from the inside out. And we can all use more hugs right now, since we are not all getting as many of the actual physical hugs. Leading up to Halloween and election day ( VOTE VOTE VOTE ) I have…
For next week, I am planning some of my family's favorite fall-inspired dinners that are easy to make, prep and clean up. Because Fall seems to be full of all kinds of busy even though we are doing all of the things from home. And honest…
How is it that even with schooling from home and almost no social outings, I still feel frazzled when it comes to getting dinner on the table? To make things easier, I'm planning 5 make-ahead meals this week. These can be prepped over th…
The Instant Pot is hands-down my favorite appliance in my kitchen. The Cool Mom Eats team has been singing the praises of the Instant Pot for several years now, and I agree; every time I cook a meal in it, I think "why don't I cook all o…