Simple & Practical Dinner Ideas

Simple & practical dinner ideas are perfect whether you’re a stay at home mom or working a 9-5 job in the office. These meals are easy to make and sure to be a hit. Hopefully they inspire you to make some similar meals of your own.

I work a full time job, and even though I don’t have kids, getting dinner on the table is HARD! I leave my house at 5:30 am and don’t get home until 4:30 pm. And as most of you know, getting off of work is usually when the hardest work begins. Believe me, there are some days when all I want to do is order a burger from McDonalds and call it a night.

Benefit of cooking at home

I cook homemade meals mostly to save money. Eating out is EXPENSIVE! I’m all about being frugal, so I would rather spend a little extra time cooking a homemade meal than eating at a local fast food joint.

I also like cooking homemade meals because I get to control which ingredients I use. I used to be SUPER strict when it came to clean cooking, but I found this really stressed me out.

Instead of trying to make my meals perfectly Keto or perfectly Paleo, I now try to make my meals practical and balanced. This is what works best for me and my mental sanity.

Simple & Practical Dinner Ideas

Here are some of the simple dinner ideas featured in my video:

Tips on cooking homemade dinners

• Meal plan! If you don’t, chances are you won’t have the ingredients on hand to make the recipes. Consequently, this means you’ll waste even more time after work stopping at the grocery store.
• Use a white board or planner to write out your meals for the week. My husband, brother and I do this every Saturday. This also allows us to create a grocery shopping list so we don’t miss any items. I purchased this weekly white board from Walmart.

• Try to incorporate side dishes that can be repeatedly used throughout the week. For example, you’ll see that throughout most of my meals I have a side salad. This makes things easier and creates less waste.
• Don’t stress about cooking 7 dinners each week. I normally cook 5 dinners a week and eat leftovers or go out to dinner for the rest.

other dinner inspirations

Checkout some of my other dinner inspirations