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5 Thanksgiving tips to make your holiday even better

Posted on November 10, 2022January 25, 2023 by Stacey A. Shannon

Thanksgiving tips to make your life easier

5 Thanksgiving tips to make your holiday even better and less stressful

With Thanksgiving just a couple of weeks away, I figured this was a great time to share some Thanksgiving tips I’ve learned through the years to make life easier. I have gone other places for Thanksgiving Day, and I’ve hosted. The past two years I was hostess, and I will be again this year.

To be honest, I really enjoy hosting Thanksgiving dinner. I get a chance to make recipes I don’t usually cook, my kids help out in the kitchen and I love food. (Is food considered a love language? If so, it is 100% my love language!)

Of course the biggest Thanksgiving tip is one I have for pretty much everything: give yourself grace. Remember that you don’t have to have a picture perfect Thanksgiving dinner in order to have a good holiday. It’s about spending time with those you love. In fact, I have had great Thanksgiving dinners of tacos, lunchmeat sandwiches and at restaurants. I’ve also had great Thanksgiving dinner filled with delicious homemade food. Even though I do love food, I love my family more. Being together with them is the best part of the holiday. I don’t have to focus on it being picture perfect — and neither do you!

With that in mind, let’s get down to five great Thanksgiving tips to make your holiday even better!

1. Organize your menu and cooking plan.

Because it is a food-centric holiday, Thanksgiving meal planning is important. I am a HUGE list maker and love being organized. In the past, I have used spreadsheets to organize myself for Thanksgiving meal planning, but this year I opted to make that spreadsheet a bit prettier and made a Thanksgiving menu and cooking planner for myself that I shared in the Families with Grace Etsy store.

It’s literally everything I do for menu and cooking planner. I start with the dinner planner and figure out what food we’re having, who is making it, when it should be made and what recipe we’re using to make it. Some foods (like desserts, rolls and cheeseballs) can be made the day before, so I plan for those. Other things have to be made the day of. My dinner planner helps me sort that out.

Then I move on to ingredients. I like printed recipes, so I’ll print recipes out and look through the ingredients. I’ll make a list of what I have and what I need to buy using the shopping planner.

Finally, as Thanksgiving Day gets closer, I organize my cooking planner. I list each food, when to start prepping it, when to start cooking it and when it should be finished. I consider my oven space as I do so to make sure I’m not planning to overfill it.

These three pages are what my Thanksgiving dinner plan relies on!

2. Find the right recipes.

If you’re having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, deciding what recipes to use is important. It can be a good time to experiment somewhat, but for the most part you want to stick with reliable recipes. And you want to go for easy things. I’m big on making things from scratch for my Thanksgiving, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Be flexible!

This year, for example, I thought about making pecan pie from scratch. I’ve made it before and it’s good, but I checked pecan prices and found that I could get a frozen pecan pie to thaw and eat for less. And that frozen pecan pie tastes just as good. So I’m saving myself time and money.

I’m also opting to make dressing as a doctored up version of boxed dressing mix this year. My brownies, which my family loves, also start with a box mix.

But other items I am making from scratch like yeast rolls, party potatoes, corn casserole and mac & cheese.

And, I have to add, make food that your family likes even if it isn’t traditional. My husband and son don’t like most traditional Thanksgiving food, so my menu also includes skillet queso with tortilla chips and a Parmesan ranch cheeseball.

3. Shop well.

While we think of Christmas as being the holiday with the most shopping, Thanksgiving can be right up there for food shopping. There are two tips for shopping well for Thanksgiving that I use: shop ahead and use grocery pick-up.

Part of the reason I menu plan early is so that I can start stocking up on what I need. Three weeks before Thanksgiving, for example, I purchased extra butter, flour and sugar knowing that I’d need those things. And they have a long shelf live. Adding in a few ingredients here and there is good for my grocery budget and makes finding difficult ingredients easier. It reduces my stress to know I have what I need and am not scrambling around trying to find a store with canned pumpkin or frozen hashbrowns in stock.

The other thing I highly recommend is using grocery pick-up. I started using grocery pick-up pre-COVID and haven’t stopped. I love being able to shop from anywhere I am (usually at home) with my phone. It gives me more time to think about what I need and consult my list. I can better compare prices and make the best choices. And I end up not buying extra items that we don’t really need! That’s not to mention the time it saves me in actually going through the grocery store.

4. Have some easy family activities planned.

Having some easy family activities is a great Thanksgiving tip for keeping your family happy and hanging out together even longer. But, especially if you’re hosting, you certainly don’t need any more work to do, so go for easy activities everyone will enjoy. These easy activities can be as simple as everyone saying what they’re thankful for or going around the dinner table and having everyone say something they are thankful for about each person.

Some of our favorites are watching the parade together on Thanksgiving evening, watching a movie together or playing games together. Thanksgiving specific games can be especially fun. For those, I love and highly recommend printable games that you can print out a few days before Thanksgiving and pull out for some family entertainment. You can get them in bundles or separately.

25 Thanksgiving games and activities bundle

You can find all sorts of Thanksgiving printables in the Families with Grace Esty store!

5. Keep it simple — and ask for help!

Find what you enjoy and do it, but keep things simple. I love cooking and baking more than decorating. My Thanksgiving décor this year for dinner will include a tablecloth that I found on sale at Walmart for $1 and some paper plates and napkins for dessert that say something about being thankful. I’m thinking I might pull out my nice dishes this year, but they’re dishwasher safe. Simple and effective.

If decorating is more your thing, do that and cut back on homemade dishes. Find shortcuts, make something nontraditional or buy your dinner and decorate away.

Finally, don’t hesitate to ask for help. This is one of the most important Thanksgiving tips! Your family wants to spend time with you. And if we’re honest the version of you who isn’t overwhelmed and stressed is much more fun to be around. (I say this as a reminder to myself, by the way!) Asking for help really isn’t a sign of weakness, I promise. Ask your children to help with food prep or cleaning. You can even ask those coming to dinner to bring along dishes as well.

If you are organizing a large Thanksgiving meal for lots of people, consider making it a potluck and using a sign-up sheet so that you don’t end up with everyone bring mashed potatoes and nothing else!

Meal kit reviews: What I learned about cook-at-home kits

Posted on May 17, 2022May 17, 2022 by Stacey A. Shannon

Cook-at-home kits taught me a few lessons I’ll continue to use even if I don’t continue to use the kits!

When my daughter first proposed trying cook-at-home kits a few months ago, I was certainly hesitant to give them a try. But now, after trying multiple meal kit services, I’m glad we did so! I wanted to wrap up the series with my overall thoughts, lessons learned and what we’ll do in the future.

(And, as a reminder, I have no affiliation with any of the meal kit service providers and am earning no commission from any of them. These are just my own opinions about Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.)

One cook-at-home kit that didn’t work

Of all the cook-at-home kit services we tried, only one didn’t work out at all. Others I liked at varying degrees, but Blue Apron just wasn’t a fit for my family.

While we didn’t actually receive meals from Blue Apron, it wasn’t for lack of trying. In fact, when I saw Blue Apron offers a two meal plan a week, I decided to try them. I looked at the menu and found it iffy. But I decided to take the plunge and sign up anyway.

I discovered that some of the menu items I saw before signing up that looked good were only offered in two-person portions. And I couldn’t change portion sizes within the same box. All of them had to be the 4-serving selections. There were only eight recipe options I got to pick from by eliminating fish, lamb and shellfish.

Its website was the most cumbersome of the ones I used and not very user friendly overall. I couldn’t find meals that worked for my family. The prices seemed higher to me for what I was getting as well. Once I was clear that Blue Apron wouldn’t work for us, I wanted to cancel my subscription. I found that in order to do so, I have to email Blue Apron’s customer service. I did so, but I find that to be quite annoying. All the other cook-at-home meal kit services had options for me to click in my account to cancel or indefinitely pause my service.

The features I liked

Cook-at-home kit services definitely have likeable features. For the most part, food shows up at your door in the right portion sizes and is ready for you to cook. Some of the services made this easier than others. Overall, my favorite cook-at-home meal kit service was Home Chef. It gets props from me in that it allowed me to pick only two meals a week (best for my family), adjust the portion sizes for all selections I made and had the easiest to cook recipes of all the services that delivered food to my door.

I didn’t know these things would be a draw going in, but I quickly learned they made a big difference after I tried a few other services. Your family may not care as much if you three meals a week is the smallest amount offered or if all meals come in the same portion sizes. But, for our family it really made a difference and fit our needs the very best.

Assessing the cost

Along with concerns about whether we’d find enough foods we like in cook-at-home kit services, my other biggest concern was the cost. For each service I tried, I listed the cost in detail in the individual review posts (see links in the second paragraph or at the end.) Almost all of them offered discounts for new subscribers, but the discounts were distributed over multiple weeks, so they were much smaller on a weekly basis.

Because Home Chef was my favorite, I contemplated whether to continue with it once we were done with the cook-at-home meal kit service reviews. I even found that I could opt to get a delivery every other week or once a month. Being allowed to skip deliveries, it could be even further in between, I suppose. But what I ended up with was a box with two meals for my family (one of which was only two portions because half my family wouldn’t eat it and would need other food prepared for them) that cost around $67. I could take my family of four out to dinner twice a week for the same amount. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me in the end. So, I have indefinitely paused my service.

I know part of the fee for the cook-at-home kits is paying for the ingredients and the convenience. For my family, though, I can get the ingredient locally for less and don’t mind picking them up with my regular weekly grocery order anyway. The cook-at-home kits aren’t made to replace our entire grocery shopping for the week, so they weren’t saving me a trip to the grocery store either.

The one service I’m keeping — at least for now

While I’m not keeping any of the meal kit delivery services, I am keeping EMeals — at least for now. That’s in part because when I subscribed to the service, I had to pay for three months at a time and that time hasn’t ended, yet! But, I am thinking I will continue to use EMeals even after that and renew my plan.

I like that EMeals is cheaper and has way more food options that work for my family. It also uses more convenience items that make getting dinner on the table on weeknights much easier for me. When I first tried EMeals, I didn’t think I’d stay with it. Pinterest and other websites basically do the same thing for free. But, I found that EMeals makes finding new recipes and figuring out what ingredients I need much faster and easier. I don’t get bogged down by too many recipes like can sometimes happen to me online.

EMeals helps me stay creative and out of a rut, which I like. And it fits much better in my budget at $30 for three months. (It does offer an option to pay $60 for a year, which I will do if we continue to like and use it as much as we have been these last couple of months!)

The lessons I’ve learned from cook-at-home kits

I don’t regret trying the cook-at-home kits at all. This experience has changed the way I cook and meal plan — both for the better! We are trying new recipes on a weekly basis now (usually two new recipes a week). I have gotten outside of my comfort zone for cooking and made all kinds of foods and recipes I hadn’t made before. The cook-at-home kits taught me some kitchen skills I hadn’t used before.

I’m now pretty dang good at peeling garlic, cooking chicken and roasting vegetables. I’ve figured out how to meal plan entire meals rather than just main dishes. And my family learned that making two separate meals once a week isn’t so difficult. My husband and son are more particular eaters. Cook-at-home kits got me in the mode of making one meal a week that I knew the guys wouldn’t like for just my daughter and me. I put in a frozen pizza or make something very easy for the boys on those nights. Everybody is happy.

I have also learned that cooking from scratch is tasty, but it isn’t always practical for my family. Some of the cook-at-home kits took me at least an hour at prepare. On weeknights, especially, that’s just too much for it to be on a regular basis. I don’t want to use all convenience, prepackaged food, but I’ve found a happy medium.

Finally, using the meal kits also helped my family eat at home more and enjoy what we’re eating even more. They certainly got us out of a dinner rut. And that’s always a good thing!

What have been your experiences with cook-at-home kits? I’d love to hear from you!

Other posts from this series:

Meal kit reviews: Meal planning on my own

Posted on May 10, 2022May 10, 2022 by Stacey A. Shannon

A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons

A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first; meal planning on my own worked. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.

So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!

Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!

Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.

Meal planning on my own

I realized to truly be fair and give an accurate review and comparison that I needed to also include meal planning on my own. So, I wanted to include that as well. This is what intentional meal planning and looking for new recipes to try on a weekly basis on my own looks like.

To keep organized, I have been doing some easy meal planning. Using weekly meal planning sheets that I can edit digitally and print are incredibly helpful! (Use the code FWGFAN to get this easy-to-use printable and editable meal planner for 10% off!)

Menu choices

The menu choices were virtually unlimited. I had the entire internet at my disposable, including Pinterest, the great mecca of recipes! The biggest challenge in meal planning on my own, in fact, was that I have so many different recipes available to me. I have a variety of meals saved on my personal Pinterest board and browsed through it. I got a couple of ideas that way, but it was hard to narrow them down.

I found that I did better by having an idea of what kind of dinner I was looking for; otherwise the options were just too many. So, for example, my daughter mentioned she’d love to have BLT pizza. My husband didn’t think that sounded as great. My daughter likes the crescent roll crust most, so I searched for recipes using a crescent roll crust and found a Mexican one that I could easily modify for our family of four.

Thanks to the meal kit services, I did better with planning entire meals rather than just a main dish. I did discover one of my favorite new recipes this way. I made this Ritz cracker chicken in the oven and added mashed potatoes and roasted green beans. My daughter, parents and I loved it!

Cost

One bonus to meal planning myself meant that I could also go with things I already had on hand. This helped keep the cost a bit lower as a result. For example, I knew I had a box of spaghetti noodles in the pantry, so looked for recipes using spaghetti noodles that were outside of a jar of sauce. I could also meal plan based on what was on sale at the local grocery store the same week. That I didn’t actually do this time around, but I have in the past.

Shipping

Shipping wasn’t an issue for meal planning on my own. I do utilize grocery pick-up service, so I did that. Easy peasy!

Ingredients

As mentioned with the cost, I could use ingredients that I had on hand. Otherwise, I went with recipes that had ingredients I knew my grocery store would have as well.

Cooking the meals

Meal planning on my own meant that I could pick recipes based on what we liked and how involved they were to make. So cooking the meals was as easy as I wanted it to be. I didn’t have any issues with any of the recipes I picked not turning out well or having complicated instructions.

Portion sizes

Again, this depended on the recipe I chose. The Ritz cracker chicken, for example, called for six chicken breasts to serve six people. Since I only needed enough for four, I used only four chicken breasts instead. Had it been just my daughter and me, I’d have used only two.

Overall rating

Overall, I would say meal planning on my own is about 4 out of 5 stars. I realized that having some help with recipe ideas for the week did make my life easier. I can also get stuck in a bit of a rut if I don’t have ideas of what I want to make or don’t have time to search out new recipes.

Honestly, that’s not the result I expected going into this whole thing!

Other posts from this series:

How to stop eating out as much

Posted on May 5, 2022May 5, 2022 by Stacey A. Shannon

10 Tips to eat at home more often

If you’d have asked me a couple of years ago whether we eat at home more or eat out more, I’d have told you that we eat at home more. While that’s probably true, I realized it wasn’t nearly as true as I thought when COVID struck. In the couple of years since then, I’ve learned more about how to stop eating out as much. We still do eat out, but it’s usually just a meal or two a week.

Combining my 12 years as a mom, 22 years as a wife and 2 years during the pandemic, I’ve learned a few tips for how to stop eating out as much. We enjoy eating at home more now than ever. In fact, I’ve had more times that I chose to eat at home rather than eat out!

1. Don’t feel pressured to cook big meals every day.

Once my kids were old enough to eat meals with us, I started feeling the pressure to have a plan and prepare a specific meal for us all every night. If I didn’t feel like or was unable to cook for whatever reason, then I was stuck on what to serve and more inclined to order pizza or go out to eat.

I quickly realized, though, that my husband and children really didn’t care if I spent an hour in the kitchen preparing dinner or if I spent 5 minutes slapping together peanut butter sandwiches or — gasp! — pouring bowls of cereal. Let go of the pressure to cook big meals every day. It’s not necessary.

2. Keep easy options in stock.

Another way to stop eating out as much is to keep easy-to-make options in your pantry or freezer. One of my easy go-to meals that I try to always have around is premade pizza crust. For our family of four, I make two 12-inch pizzas by putting toppings on and popping them in the oven. My son and husband usually have pepperoni. My daughter and I usually have barbeque sauce with chicken and onion. I used the precooked grilled chicken from the refrigerated section to make prep easier.

Other things I like to keep on hand and rotate through include Spaghetti-Os, bagel pizzas, frozen french toast stick bites, salad kits, frozen fajita chicken mix, frozen pizza, cereal, instant oatmeal and frozen waffles or pancakes.

When you have a busy night or a night you just don’t feel like cooking, having quick and easy items on hand can make it easier to eat home rather than ordering out or going out to eat.

3. Find a good way to meal plan.

I’m guessing you aren’t surprised to see meal planning come up in this post. But, it really does help! I typically do meal planning on Sunday evenings and pick up groceries on Monday afternoons, but find whatever time works best for you. I’m a big fan of keeping things simple. Often I use a list to write down what meals I have planned for the week. Recently, I’ve gotten back into the habit of planning what night we’ll eat what meal, but that’s mostly because our schedule has been busier lately.

Find a system that works for you that you can easily use, and stick with it. Meal planning helps reduce food waste and gives you options for what to make for dinner when you are too tired to figure it out at dinnertime! (Don’t miss this additional tips for meal planning made easy!)

4. Try new recipes.

Making food at home can end up with you getting stuck in a rut and rotating through the same recipes. And that makes you feel more inclined to want to eat out (or at least it does me!). Instead, try new recipes regularly. In fact, in these past few months, I average two new recipes each week. Using meal kit delivery services initiated that change, and I’ve stuck with it.

One eye-opener for me is that I don’t have to always prepare meals our entire family will like. My guys are more particular eaters than my daughter and I are. So when I try new recipes, I usually make sure most of them will work for all four of us. I also try new recipes that are easy to customize for the guys. For example, next week we are trying asparagus spaghetti carbonara. I’ll keep the sauce and pasta separate and let my guys have spaghetti with traditional sauce from a jar instead.

And then sometimes I make recipes only my daughter and I will like and plan to do something from the super easy list for the boys like grilled cheese, toasted peanut butter sandwiches or bagel pizzas. Recently I made this super easy baked chicken recipe for dinner that became one of my favorite meals of all time!

5. Involve your family.

Getting your family involved with what to cook at home is another great way to stop eating out as much. If you’re all excited about what’s in your own kitchen, then you’re less tempted to want to eat out! My daughter is the one who initially had our family try meal kit delivery services. But even before that, I’d ask my family as I was meal planning what sounded good to them.

And when making new recipes, I’ll ask their opinions oftentimes about what sounds best to try between two choices. Knowing my family is on board for the night’s dinner plan makes it easier for me to want to cook at home as well. Even better are the times when somebody helps me in the kitchen. These past few months, my daughter has done that most and has learned quite a few new cooking skills. I’m quite proud of her!

6. Change your mindset.

Remove eating out as an option in your mind. It sounds overly simple, but it works. Once you know that in order to eat that evening, you’ve got to figure out something at home, then you’ll do so. Whether you need to change up your budget to reduce how much money you have for eating out or work with your spouse to keep yourselves accountable, figure out what works best for you.

During these past couple of months, my daughter has had an activity most weeknights from 5:15 to 6:30 p.m. I knew if we were going to eat, I’d have to have the food ready to go early, and we didn’t have time to even consider eating out. I’ve also found that eating at home more is not only better for the waistline and the wallet but it’s usually less stress. We get to visit with each other more and be more relaxed. Determining that eating at home is the only option most of the time really has helped me make it a reality.

7. Make sure you have what you need.

This kind of goes along with meal planning, because part of meal planning is making sure you know what you’re making and also what ingredients you need. To stop eating out as much, make sure your kitchen is stocked for the week (or however long you go between grocery store trips). If you don’t have the ingredients to make something you were planning to, then you are more likely to give up and order in or go out. (Been there, done that!)

Keep regular items well stocked. I have some shelves in my garage where I can store non-perishables and a chest freezer to store extra frozen food. Both of those help me keep stocked. There are many items that I always have an extra one on standby. For example, I love Honey Nut Cheerios. I keep an extra one on my garage shelf. When I run out inside and go get that extra box, then I add it to my grocery list and replace it. That way I don’t run out. This has become even more important for me during recent years when some items were harder to come by. That way if I wasn’t able to find something in stock during one grocery shopping order, I would have at least one more time to try and get it before we ran out.

8. Keep a list of meals for the week handy.

My head is full of so many things that I can easily forget the meal planning I did on Sunday by the time Wednesday evening rolls around. What’s for dinner? Uh. I can’t remember what I have ingredients for! So to stop eating out during these times, I find it helpful to keep a list handy of the meals I have food for during the week. I have posted it on my fridge, kept it on my phone digitally and written it in a notebook. Do whatever works best for you, whether you are planning specific meals for specific days or just maintaining a list of what you have to cook throughout the week.

9. Print out your recipes for the week ahead of time.

If you’re trying new recipes (and why wouldn’t you?!), then make sure you print them out or save them on your phone as you’re meal planning. I don’t like to use my phone for recipes because it’s too easy to get messy. So, I still print recipes. When I’m meal planning, I print them out and then store them in a folder in a drawer in my kitchen island. All I have to do is open the drawer and pull them out when it’s time to get dinner made.

It’s a small thing, but it’s helpful and one less step to bog you down in the fray of dinnertime. And one less stop bogging you down means you are less tempted to just order in or go out.

10. Allow for DIY dinnertimes.

I have days when thinking of making and cleaning up dinner are just too much for me. I’m too tired physically and emotionally and all of it. I’ve learned that my family can do DIY dinners and not complain. Utilize leftovers, easy prep foods or whatever it takes. My son loves frozen bagels. He can heat one in the microwave to thaw, pop it in the toaster and mostly spread the peanut butter on himself. Being older, my daughter can do even more.

I sometimes keep “special” cereal on hand for a DIY dinner and enjoy a bowl of Froot Loops with a side of toast spread with strawberry jelly. It works!

If you’re looking for some easy, delicious family dinner ideas, check out these recipes!

8 Pizza recipes your family will love

Easy baked quesadillas

The best slow cooker potato soup

2-ingredient meatball pockets

Easy pizza subs

Taco cornbread bake

BLT pizza

Meal kit review: EMeals

Posted on May 3, 2022April 28, 2022 by Stacey A. Shannon

A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons

A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.

EMeals

From the beginning of this journey, I was most intrigued by EMeals. It is much cheaper because you’re only paying for the meal plans and buying the groceries yourself. They partner will various grocery stores to help make shopping easier. I do like that. As a rather DIY person, I figured EMeals would be the best fit for us.

Signing up for EMeals was pretty painless. I signed up online but then had to download the app to do much else. You can see your account and payment information online, but finding recipes and creating shopping lists has to be done through the app. I’m not anti-apps by any means, but I often have my laptop and like having the option to use it as well. Plans that have both make me happiest!