Share your tips for ways to stress less with HelloFresh - £300 voucher to be won NOW CLOSED

[JustineBMumsnet]

Modern family life can be very busy - and this might mean that otherwise simple tasks like thinking about what to have for dinner or getting out of the door in the morning can become overwhelming or stressful. HelloFresh would like to hear about the tips you have for stressing less, whether this is in the kitchen or elsewhere in your family life.

Here’s what HelloFresh has to say: “HelloFresh is on a mission to help families stress less when it comes to mealtimes with the launch of its new Family Box, offering an all new range of tailor-made family-friendly recipes designed to appeal to kids, teenagers and adults alike and bring variety to dinner time. The HelloFresh Family Box has been created to reduce stress levels and help save parents time and energy. The focus in development has been to make meal planning and preparation as easy as possible, whilst serving meals that guarantee to make family mealtimes delicious, but most importantly totally fuss and hassle-free. Want to give it a try? We've got a special offer for you with 50% off your first two boxes with the code HELLOMUMS.”

Do you have tips that mean sitting down to a family dinner in the evening is an enjoyable rather than hectic experience? Perhaps you’re a pro at making tiny changes to meals so that fussy eaters are catered for? Do you and your family cook together to reduce the stress of preparing an evening meal? Maybe you ensure you’re making time for ‘me-time’ every day so that you can wind down?

Share the ways you #StressLess with HelloFresh below to be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

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I put everything into serving dishes so the children can help themselves. It saves so much hassle.

I meal plan, then do any from-scratch cooking in the mornings when everyone else is out. I can play the music I like and not have people standing in front of important cupboards at critical moments, and then, of course, it's ready to chuck in the oven when people are getting hungry.

As I know we all eat mainly the same basic flavours, it's chicken chicken chicken. I always use my slow cooker for a large chicken stew for the family, and add some chilli flakes for my OH and me to spice it up a bit. I blend the remaining stew and make a soup, and we have that with some tiger bread. The rest of the week it is chicken on skewers (adding some cherry tomatoes and yellow pepper) as again, we all like that. The remainder of the chicken is breaded and used as nuggets with sweet potato wedges. It is basic but it gets eaten, and with the introduction of more spices, and additional vegetables I am hoping that palates will develop and new flavours and meals added. There is no point turning meal times in to a battleground and causing a fussy eater of the future, easy flavours, and sweet veg are what works for me.

I think you have to be consistent. I found the second child to be so much worse but I think that is because of outside influences

DP hates cooking and I hate washing up. So I cook and he washed up. Saves us both some hassle.

Online shopping is essential. We also sometimes have a night of pitta or and carrots and hummus etc or soup- a lighter 'snacky' dinner rather than a large hot meal. I also use a lot of frozen vegetables like broccoli, spinach and peas for both my five year old and my eight month old.

I batch cook and freeze any leftovers, it's handy when you don't have time to cook.

Prepare your menu in advance, so you have an idea of what you want to cook, I'm always trying to save money as I'm on a budget so I always look around for the best deals on ingredients.

Try to make something each family member likes on different days so there isn't a fuss about people not like their dinner.

Luckily my family isn't too fussy when it comes to food :)

Mine are fussy, DH, DD1 and DD2 rarely like the same meals.

I stress less by making sure everyone has one meal a week they like and fill in the other 4 days with easily adapted, easy to cook meals. And I can frequently be found pointing out I am not running a cafe!

TBF though, any joy I ever got from cooking has been ground out of me. Apart from baking. Thankfully they all love cake .

Less stress round the rest of the house? A load of washing on every day, washed, dried and put away. Bags packed the night before. And paying the kids pocket money in return for chores done.

Definitely a slow cooker is a tip from me especially more so coming into colder months. I put it on before work and then we can all enjoy a meal together when we come home or if kids are hungrier earlier they can have some and we can later and still lovely and hot. I do bologneses, casseroles, chilli, soups and stews and joints of meat.

I get DP to do the cooking he really enjoys cooking, I would rather wash up!
Eating together is important to us, so depend which children are at home (we have 4) we try and cook a meal that everyone who is eating that day will enjoy. self assembly meals like fajita or make your own pizzas work well too.

Meal planning!
We sit down once a week and decide on menus. Things like salads are eaten on the first or second days when the produce is at its freshest, by day six it's usually a pasta dish or something out of the freezer.
If it's a meal that can be frozen we always cook extra.

Since meal planning we found our desire for takeaways decreased dramatically - now we might have one every three months whereas before it was once or twice a week.

I'm with the previous poster - meal planning is the way forward. And, for my own sanity, I like to try out a different recipe at least once a month. Everyone will try it, if they don't like it they can have bread and butter.

Batch cooking all the way!

Always 'sleep on' what I'm going to cook for dinner the next day which helps remove an awful amount of pressure.

Get children involved as much as possible. They are more likely to eat the food!

I do a weekly meal planner with the family so we all have a input of what we will eat and agree. Even the kids get involved which makes it much easier for me.

I tend to make things from scratch, but still enjoy a decent tray of oven chips and fish fingers from time to time.

I reduce stress by not caring about meals. DD has school dinner every day and various clubs during the week so we never sat at the same time each day.

Tea could be spaghetti, lasagne, or a cheese toastie. I really don't care as long as it's food.

I do a lot of batch cooking, and always cook a large roast on Sunday so there's plenty of meat for tasty sandwiches.

The mornings can be the most stressful for us, so I pre pack the kids fruit into tubs a few days in advance so they can just be chucked into lunch boxes, and DS loves buttered bagels so I prebutter and then freeze them individually so they to can just be added to his lunch box and don't have to worry about an open pack going stale. We also store the drinks and yoghurts next to the fruit in the fridge so it's just grab something from each stash and lunch is easily done.

My stress free tip is to get together with someone who can also cook and share the burden. DH cooks 4-5 nights a week, I do the rest. He used to be a chef so is quick. But I am more adventurous and less keen on stuff in sauces. So, weirdly, when I cook it is either really easy (chops and salad) or something new we haven't tried before. He does the weekly grind and much of the planning.

We meal plan, batch cook and stock up on long-life/freezable food when they're on offer.

We have numerous 'quick' meals / oven-only meals which can be done when we need to focus more on other things. And then once/twice a week we have meals which involve more strenuous cooking - I play some tunes and find it really relaxing.

For me it's having a fallback of a few simple, tasty meals I know I can put together without too much stress that all the family will eat. A well-stocked store cupboard helps! Then on those hectic days, I don't have to spend hours in the kitchen making something tasty.

I find a nice stress free way to cook is to use a slow cooker, its so simple and easy, makes the house smell fab all day and delivers really tasty meals.

sometimes in day to day family life tasks build up and it can feel overwhelming. I breal the tasks down, write bullet point lists and tick them off.
it helps me #stressless being able to see I'm making progress.
Running, mindfulness and Online shopping also help.

I prepare in advance so that in the evening it is just a case of putting a cottage pie or lasagne in the oven and doing a bit of veg or salad. It makes dinner less stressful and we eat earlier so none of us are hangry.