The Healthy Mama Kitchen Podcast: Healthy Cooking Hacks, Meal Planning & Meal Prep for Busy Moms
May 4, 2026 · 16 min · 12 segments
I know life at the end of the school year can feel extra busy- but you still want to feed yourself and your kids healthy meals. So my goal with today’s episode is to help you to simply get meals on…
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So let's get through this busy season so it doesn't feel like we are crashing through the end of the school year into the summer.
The first thing I want you to do if you are feeling overwhelmed by life being extra busy and meals feeling extra hard, is to take the pressure off at least one day a week.
This means we are going to choose one day a week where we are absolutely, certainly not cooking dinner.
This might seem like funny advice for an episode on healthy dinners, but if I've learned anything in the busier seasons of life, it's that I'd rather plan for convenience than be caught off guard.
So what we do in our house is in the busiest seasons, we have one day a week, one night right off the bat, for us it's Wednesdays, where I do not cook and we know we're gonna get takeout on the way home.
We try and choose something that is as healthy as you can get for some sort of takeout.
But knowing that that night is there to give me some relief makes the rest of the week easier.
That's just how it happens to work for our schedule because we have Wednesday night sailing.
But Wednesday night is nice because I've already cooked three meals that week, and I still have three meals left at the end of the week.
So having that day in the middle of the week with a little bit of relief and less to think about and less to worry about really helps me get through the rest of the week easier.
The key here is that we have got to ditch the perfection and make this realistic right off the bat.
If you've heard me talk about meal planning before, you know I always recommend just planning for five days and allowing some flexibility those other two days.
Maybe it's a takeout night, maybe it's a leftover night, maybe it's date night.
Whatever it might be, I always want you to give yourself a little bit of flexibility within your schedule.
So let's get through this busy season so it doesn't feel like we are crashing through the end of the school year into the summer.
The first thing I want you to do if you are feeling overwhelmed by life being extra busy and meals feeling extra hard, is to take the pressure off at least one day a week.
This means we are going to choose one day a week where we are absolutely, certainly not cooking dinner.
This might seem like funny advice for an episode on healthy dinners, but if I've learned anything in the busier seasons of life, it's that I'd rather plan for convenience than be caught off guard.
So what we do in our house is in the busiest seasons, we have one day a week, one night right off the bat, for us it's Wednesdays, where I do not cook and we know we're gonna get takeout on the way home.
We try and choose something that is as healthy as you can get for some sort of takeout.
But knowing that that night is there to give me some relief makes the rest of the week easier.
That's just how it happens to work for our schedule because we have Wednesday night sailing.
But Wednesday night is nice because I've already cooked three meals that week, and I still have three meals left at the end of the week.
So having that day in the middle of the week with a little bit of relief and less to think about and less to worry about really helps me get through the rest of the week easier.
The key here is that we have got to ditch the perfection and make this realistic right off the bat.
If you've heard me talk about meal planning before, you know I always recommend just planning for five days and allowing some flexibility those other two days.
Maybe it's a takeout night, maybe it's a leftover night, maybe it's date night.
Whatever it might be, I always want you to give yourself a little bit of flexibility within your schedule.
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