i live and die by my weekly meal planning. (sounds dramatic, right?) it’s something i started nearly 10 years ago because i literally couldn’t stand getting the nightly question of, “what’s for dinner?” so, now i plan dinners two weeks at a time, a lot of these dinners call for ingredients that are easy to just keep in the freezer or pantry, and they also check off one very important thing for me: they are simple to make (especially on a weeknight when there’s a million other things going on! and, i do also go with some pretty consistent theme nights…think taco tuesday.)

for the past 11 months, i’ve kept up with the meal planning. for someone like me who likes feeling like i have some sense of control, it’s been that for me in this totally uncertain time. but i’m not gonna lie to you: there was something that happened in january. there was something that happened that just made me feel like i hit a wall with dinners (and dishes and clean up and all the things having to do with dinner.)

i decided i needed to give myself some grace with figuring out what to feed my kids. and, i needed to find a way to make a dinner that absolutely minimized the number of pots, pans, plates, cutting boards and utensils that i got dirty.

one sunday night, i figured it out…and, warning: this is not some brand new, never-seen-before dinner that no one has ever done. in fact, it’s kind of popular.

we did our spin on the charcuterie board…we call it our snacky dinner.

(see, i told you this was not some sort of brand new idea.)

this dinner was literally like a light bulb that went off in my head, a head that has felt so blasted by cobwebs from the last 11 months, and was seriously lacking creativity. i finally realized that i could make an even easier dinner than what i had been doing, have only one plate to clean up (since we used toothpicks and paper plates…another pandemic life hack i used on the regular), manage to make dinner fun and do something different!

let’s share: what pandemic meal genius hacks have you discovered? do you have an easy, must-have recipe that you lean on?