How to cook a weeknight meal

Hot off Jen Hatmaker’s Of Mess and Moxie, thought I’d give my own “How To” a whirl!

How to cook a weeknight meal in 1 hour and 53 minutes and 36 easy steps…

1. Meal plan while hungry and decide to make a Greek dinner – grilled chicken and your fav orzo salad will do
2. Overlook the fact that the orzo salad requires a TON of chopping – you like chopping!
3. When it’s time to cook, get out ALL your ingredients and your printed recipe! You’re ready to go!
4. Stop to get child a glass of milk.
5. Start marinating your chicken, then boiling your water and chopping your veggies.
6. Half way through chopping, decide that you really want to make some bread to go with dinner.
7. Stop and get other child shredded cheese in a cup for a snack. She won’t eat dinner anyways, so who cares.
8. Wash hands and grab your phone to look up “easy dinner rolls” on Pinterest. Scroll though 3 recipes until you find the perfect one! 🙌🏼
9. Stop to get other child glass of orange juice.
10. You’ve got all the ingredients on hand (yay!) so fire up your KitchenAid and start mixing up that dough!
11. Stop to referee argument between children.
12. Preheat grill.
13. Ignore your own advice and skim through bread recipe because you’re in a rush!
14. Let dough rise for a bit and return to chopping veggies!
15. Boil orzo!
16. Make dressing and set aside.
17. More chopping!
18. Place dough in a greased 9×13, flatten and cut into 12 “equal” pieces. Place in a 170 degree oven. Then turn oven to 350 and start 15 minute timer.
19. Put chicken on the grill.
20. Forgot about the asparagus! Quickly rinse, chop the ends off and marinate in some oil, vinegar, salt and garlic.
21. Realize the dog is on the kitchen table eating your child’s shredded cheese 🤦🏼‍♀️ Yell at dog.
22. Timer for bread goes off, but bread looks strange. Go back to phone and realize the bread was supposed to rise at 170 for 20 mins 😬.
23. Pop that bread back in for 10 mins and hope for the best! 🤞🏼
24. Mix together orzo salad!
25. Tell children to stop running through the kitchen.
26. Oh crap, need to check the chicken!
27. Chicken is fine! Turn it and put the asparagus on the grill.
28. Walk back in kitchen and observe the war zone that you’ve created.
29. Remove bread from oven, marvel at its beauty and your insanely good baking instincts 💁🏼‍♀️
30. Temp chicken and remove everything from the grill.
31. Realize that you forgot to make the tzatziki sauce. Consider your options, but decide that you can’t have Greek without tzatziki. Proceed to chop more onion, and cucumber and do a rough measure on the other ingredients.
32. Use Alexa to tell family it’s time for dinner.
33. Get scowls when one child realizes the chicken has bones and there is cucumber in the tzatziki 💆🏼‍♀️
34. Make everyone’s plate (on paper – no room in the dishwasher and this chic does not do hand washing).
35. Put yours on a pretty plate and take a picture for Instagram.
36. Sit down as a family, say a blessing and enjoy your dinner!