how to squeeze in homemade meals even with a busy fall schedule + four FREE meals

While we’re still enjoying summery weather here in Michigan, our schedules have switched over to fall.  School, travel and sports practices are filling up our days and evenings and we don’t always have a great chunk of time to attend to dinner.  But I’m a firm believer in sitting down with our family whenever we can, sharing a great meal and conversation and doing our best to reconnect.

But when at least one of our children has a practice or event during the dinner hour at least 4 nights a week, it  makes it hard to keep the family dinner tradition going.  Here are a few things I’ve compromised on:   1.  I’ve realized that for at least 6 weeks in the spring and 6 weeks in the fall, it’s unlikely that we will all get to eat dinner together more than 3 nights a week.  It’s hard for me to give that time up, but it’s even harder when I have an unrealistic expectation.  2.  The 3 meals we do have together need to be special and healthy.  We need to take our time to sit and talk and enjoy our food.  And with a little help from Green Chef, that is a very realistic expectation.

Green Chef is a service that sends fresh, organic ingredients right to your doorstep along with step by step chef-created recipes to make deliciously simple meals.  When I say simple, I mean you’ll spend around 30 minutes making dinner–they send along the meats, veggies and sauces you’ll need so you won’t have lots of extra side jobs.

Another thing I love about Green Chef is all of the choices!  My husband and I recently finished a Whole30 and realized that dairy and some grains are causing a few side effects we’d rather avoid.  So we are opting to eat more paleo meals and I was so excited to see that Green Chef has a menu just for paleo diets!  Vegan?  Vegetarian?  There’s a menu for you.  Gluten-Free?  You’re covered, too.  Check out all of the different options they have!

We enjoyed three amazing meals last week with Green Chef–Southern Fish ‘n’ Chips with garlic sweet potato fries and arugula salad, chicken tinga poblano stuffed peppers with cashew crema, jicama and slaw and rosemary sirloin steak with sweet potato lyonnaise and bacon & baby spinach salad.  Every meal was our favorite–the ingredients were super fresh, organized and packaged well (color-coded so you know which ingredient goes with which recipe), and so SO delicious.  And I love that they send the ingredients I need.  I avoid so many recipes simply because I don’t want to go out and buy large bottles of sauces and spices when I know they will go bad before I ever need them again.  With Green Chef I have everything I need and I save money by minimizing waste.

Green Chef is offering SIMPLE readers 4 free meals in your first order using this link.  Tell me you favorite meal option from Green Chef!