Moms, We’re Taking Back Dinner and It Starts Now

The diet industry took meal planning and turned it into a tracker. Suddenly, it became a tool that helped you count points, macros, and everything in between so you could stay on “track” and eat healthy.

Then social media came along, and suddenly it turned into a competition. Pinterest became a place where you could easily save hundreds of recipes, and never cook one. And Instagram and TikTok became a place where trending recipes made you feel severe FOMO while making you feel like your dinner wasn’t “good enough” if it wasn’t picture worthy.

And now, we have AI. AI is turning meal planning into an assembly line, where a machine that doesn’t have tastebuds starts deciding which ingredients go together without ever experiencing the flavor combination.

The tool that moms used to simplify getting dinner on the table suddenly became something more than that. It layered on different expectations and responsibilities, so suddenly meal planning became the thing that was stressful… on top of dinner feeling stressful.

Let’s Simplify It

When we started Weekly Table, it was because we were experiencing the same problems with meal planning. We are two sisters, and moms, in very different life stages. Despite that, the problem was the same: figuring out what’s for dinner every day was pretty much the worst.

My sister and I talked about it quite a bit. Why was it the worst? There were so many layers to it, and a lot of it had to do with how meal planning expectations had shifted from the last several decades.

Growing up, our mom had a pretty solid rotation of recipes. Tacos, stir fry, spaghetti, pot roast, and if dad was cooking? Hamburgers or Hamburger Helper. There were some other recipes in there. There weren’t any expectations like today, that you had to have a constant rotation of meals so it wasn’t boring. I’m sure she did have some cookbooks with recipes that she never cooked, but aspired to do so.

And now, as we are both moms, we talked about what was so hard about figuring out what was for dinner. As we tried to name it, there were quite a few things that came up:

• It felt like our worth on a plate
• We were tired of hearing the complaints (ugh this again?!)
• We didn’t ever want to get a text again in the middle of the day asking what’s for dinner
• It felt like there were so many options and it made it hard to decide

That was it. That’s what it came down to – the deciding.

Why the Deciding is the Hardest Part

I saw some data the other day that on average, humans make 35,000 decisions a day. A few hundred of these are food.

So the brain has a lot to do, and figuring out dinner seems hard because it’s not just one decision. It’s trying to remember what’s in the fridge, what veggie your youngest one won’t eat this week, and if you had enough time to finally make that chicken recipe that you’ve been eyeing up.

Most of the time when this happens? It’s about 4 p.m. and you are completely done after a long day. But suddenly, you have to figure out a meal that needs to be on the table start or the hanger starts to set in (and you definitely don’t want that to hit).

There’s only so much energy that you have for your brain to make decisions, so if you’re hitting crunch time and trying to decide what to make for dinner, it feels so much harder than it should.

That’s why the deciding becomes the hardest part. There’s emotion and worth tied to it, but also endless decisions on whether something can actually make it to the table (and then, whether it will actually be eaten).

When You Take the Deciding Away

Often times, the worst part of dinner feels like the cooking and cleaning. I would argue that it’s not.

The deciding soaks up the most mental energy, and so by time you get to the cooking and the cleaning, you are already done. Sometimes, you’ve been debating with yourself for hours about what to make and trying to make a mental checklist of whether you have the ingredients. So yes, by time you start cooking, you’re just over it.

But, what if you didn’t have the deciding? What if the deciding was done? You could open up your app, take a look at what’s planned, pop into cook mode, and dinner becomes drama free. You cook with what you have, it’s on the table, and you move on.

It’s how meals used to be, before the diet industry, social media, and AI made meal planning so complicated – and just not fun.

So, We’re Taking Back Dinner… You In?

It’s time that dinner becomes simple. And I’m not saying that we all need to start serving hot dogs for dinner because it’s the easiest thing to cook.

It’s time that dinner becomes a meal, an opportunity to nourish our bodies. While we have the energy to nourish our souls by having a conversation with our loved ones at the dinner table.

So, we’re taking back dinner. We’re taking back meal planning and turning it back into what it used to be – a tool to simplify dinner, not add more stress to it. The most important part of taking back dinner is making it work for you and your family. Using the recipes that you’ll actually cook (and they’ll actually eat), and building a plan that will actually work for your family and tastes.

Over the course of five days, our free experience will give you the opportunity to build a meal plan that works for your family. Use your recipes, or ours. Get a meal plan and a grocery list, and finally, take the deciding out of dinner so you can feel that relief… all while still feeding your family.

Ready to try Taking Back Dinner? It’s free – join our next round here.