Bad news for air fryers.
Much as I adore mine and use it almost every day, an air fryer won’t save dinner. 😖
Airfryers, instant pots and all other “messiah” appliances claim to save you time, and keep your dinners fun and exciting. They don’t. Boooo!
I totally get it. When it comes to making dinner easier we are willing to try ANYTHING. But read on for the truth, and one simple thing you can do today to make dinner easier.
The trouble with these appliances is that they’re set up like some kind of silver bullet that will magically solve all your dinner stresses. But no matter how practical an appliance, it’s still YOU who has to decide what to make, get all the groceries, chop and measure everything and clean up afterwards. In my experience those are the things that are the real causes of our dinner dilemmas.
I had an instant pot, and I tried to love it, but everything I made tasted kinda the same. Hey, that’s not a bad thing! But I don’t want to eat braised meats or beans every night for the rest of forever. (Also it gave off the most awful burning rubber smell. Am I alone?)
Meanwhile, our airfryer is one of the hardest working appliances in our house. I love how fast and efficient it is, how easy to clean, and the fact that my son can use it without me worrying about safety. Our regular oven died in February and we survived with just the airfryer for two months! Michael even made my birthday lasagna in the airfryer. Awesome!
BUT it doesn’t make my dinner decisions or the grocery shopping or chopping.
Is there ANY SINGLE THING that can make dinner easier?
YES: A light meal plan. HEAR ME OUT! I don’t want to lock you into an old-fashioned, rigid, colour-coded meal spreadsheet. Those kind of meal plans almost always fail (more on why another day).
This is ten minutes of planning that feels liberating, not restricting.
Take ten minutes once a week to:
Look in the fridge for what needs to be eaten asap
Check the freezer for stuff you could thaw and eat in the week
Glance at the pantry to make sure you’ve got essentials for a “back pocket dinner”
Take a peek at your family’s calendar for the week (soccer on Tuesday, choir on Thursday, you’re working late Wednesday?)
You don’t even have to write it down, but imagine a 3 meals for the week. (Although feel free to write this on a piece of paper and stick it on the fridge so that Wednesday you remembers there’s a club pack of chicken thighs in the freezer.) You don’t even need to assign a meal per day! Add a few things on your grocery list that will facilitate these dinners.
If it’s a quiet week, feel free to try a new recipe; if it’s a chaotic week, the please, please Lean. On. What’s. Already. In. The. House.
It’s not meal planning the way we’ve seen it before, it’s knowing what you’ve already got in the house, and what kind of a week you’re heading into. And I’m telling you, these simple steps will make you feel so much more prepared for the week ahead.
So the next time someone tells you the instant pot changed their life and you gotta get one immediately, remember it doesn’t plan, shop for or chop SQUAT.
Then have Pasta with Butter and Parm for dinner ;) I’ve got you!
P.S. There are about 50 other ways to make dinner easier, from stocking the freezer in the right way, to outsourcing dinner to anyone in the house who is older than 11. Reach out, I can help!
