Quick Family Dinners: Smart Shortcuts for Busy Weeknights with Nakita Attard-Vassallo

Katy Wells (0:03)

I'm Katy Wells, host of the Maximized Minimalist Podcast. I escaped the hamster wheel of modern day motherhood, overwhelmed by clutter and buried under the mental load. Now, I live in a home that feels calm, manageable and made for real life. I have margin in my days, energy for who matters most, and time for slow mornings and silly dance parties in the kitchen with my family. With over five million listens, the show has helped women around the world turn their homes into their happy place. Around here, we simplify. For more peace, more presence, and more joy. We choose grace over guilt and progress over perfection. And we believe your home should give back more than it takes. I'm here to help you do the same. Come along with me and my guests as we share the real stories, habits and strategies that help you lighten the load from the inside out. Pull up a seat friend and let's do this together. Ready, set, simplify.

Hello, simplifiers. We have Nakita back on the show today. And I was just thinking before I hit record, Nakita, we met when we both went online all the way back in 2019

So we've known each other a long time now.

Nakita Attard-Vassallo (1:19)

Yes, we've come quite a long way, I would say, right?

Katy Wells (1:22)

I can't help but think to how much I think about you on a daily basis, which sounds creepy and weird, but when you keep learning from someone and, you know, you have, I'm so excited for today's topic on quick family dinners and all these smart shortcuts. I've learned so much from you over the years as I followed you and been in your program. So I'm excited to bring a lot of this to my listeners today, who I know it's just like, I feel like no matter how on top of things you are as a mom or a dad or a caregiver or just a human being, I feel like dinnertime is just sometimes frustrating. And you can hear my voice because I'm like, okay, I'm recording this at lunchtime. I have to think about dinner.

So it's so timely for so many of us. So thank you for all you do. And I'm excited to dive in. I wanted to talk about the top. I think this really ties into decision fatigue.

I think it's kind of trending on social media. And I think it hits a lot of boxes for a lot of us, parents and caregivers. And it's something I certainly, like when I first heard about it a few years ago, I was like, oh my gosh, yes. We all, I feel like, are struggling with decision fatigue. And my whole goal over the last really several years is always to be tweaking, systemizing, optimizing when I spot these different patterns or pain points. Oh my gosh, what's for dinner again tonight? And meals for a lot of us are a big recurring pain point. And I think, and I know, I've learned from you, like I said, there are a lot of different levers we can pull as parents. You know, there's a list of go-to meals. I know we've talked about that we can rotate through, which I need to get better at. See, it's these foundational things. I know there's meal planning, there's meal prepping, batch cooking, freezer meals. And I know not everyone may not have the time or interest to want to like spend three or four hours on a Sunday doing all of these things. So I kind of want to take each of those levers we can pull one at a time. And if you could help me and help my listener understand, like, what is better for what problem or what is better for what personality type, if that makes sense.

Nakita Attard-Vassallo (3:29)

Yes, I do, because I know that it sounds quite overwhelming. So many words out there and actually a lot of them overlap. So let's simplify it for your simplifiers. So first of all, go to meals and meal planning. They both solve the decision. What do we make for dinner? Now meal planning is more detailed, but having a go-to list of meals that your family likes to eat is pure gold. So I really suggest that for everyone. Then for those types of people who like to be organized and plan to detail, they can actually assign those meals to their calendars, and that's where you go one step ahead. But basically, both things are solving the decision. Then we have meal prep. We have batch cooking and freezer meals. They all overlap as well. Meal prep solves some of the preparation. You may be chopping a couple of ingredients or prepping all of the ingredients for a meal, and then you can also batch cook, which means essentially that you are just making multiples of the same recipe, so that you can have a lot of dishes ready for the family, either to go into the fridge or even to go into the freezer, which brings me to freezer meals, which is basically batch cooking for the freezer.