
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…
- Meal plan while hungry and decide to make a Greek dinner – grilled chicken and your fav orzo salad will do
- Overlook the fact that the orzo salad requires a TON of chopping – you like chopping!
- When it’s time to cook, get out ALL your ingredients and your printed recipe! You’re ready to go!
- Stop to get child a glass of milk.
- Start marinating your chicken, then boiling your water and chopping your veggies.
- Half way through chopping, decide that you really want to make some bread to go with dinner.
- Stop and get other child shredded cheese in a cup for a snack. She won’t eat dinner anyways, so who cares.
- Wash hands and grab your phone to look up “easy dinner rolls” on Pinterest. Scroll though 3 recipes until you find the perfect one! 🙌🏼
- Stop to get other child glass of orange juice.
- You’ve got all the ingredients on hand (yay!) so fire up your KitchenAid and start mixing up that dough!
- Stop to referee argument between children.
- Preheat grill.
- Ignore your own advice and skim through bread recipe because you’re in a rush!
- Let dough rise for a bit and return to chopping veggies!
- Boil orzo!
- Make dressing and set aside.
- More chopping!
- 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.
- Put chicken on the grill.
- Forgot about the asparagus! Quickly rinse, chop the ends off and marinate in some oil, vinegar, salt and garlic.
- Realize the dog is on the kitchen table eating your child’s shredded cheese 🤦🏼♀️ Yell at dog.
- 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 😬.
- Pop that bread back in for 10 mins and hope for the best! 🤞🏼
- Mix together orzo salad!
- Tell children to stop running through the kitchen.
- Oh crap, need to check the chicken!
- Chicken is fine! Turn it and put the asparagus on the grill.
- Walk back in kitchen and observe the war zone that you’ve created.
- Remove bread from oven, marvel at its beauty and your insanely good baking instincts 💁🏼♀️
- Temp chicken and remove everything from the grill.
- 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.
- Use Alexa to tell family it’s time for dinner.
- Get scowls when one child realizes the chicken has bones and there is cucumber in the tzatziki 💆🏼♀️
- Make everyone’s plate (on paper – no room in the dishwasher and this chic does not do hand washing).
- Put yours on a pretty plate and take a picture for Instagram.
- Sit down as a family, say a blessing and enjoy your dinner!


