7 Easy Tips on How to Enjoy Eating at Home

1. Make meals with less clean-up

Find a few slow cooker, Instant Pot, or one-pot meals that you love or just easy things that you can create on the stove so you don’t have to bake or cook too long. I love making sure that when the dishes are clean in the kitchen sink before dinner so that after dinner, the clean-up is a cinch.

2. Find sauces to make meals more fun

Have you noticed that when you go out to eat, there’s always a great sauce? For instance, I love Mexican food and there’s always a warm salsa verde on the enchiladas. Find recipes that you love where you can make a sauce to go with it.

3. Make meals with delicious leftovers

Make meals that you love so you love eating the leftovers. For example, I love taco salad, tacos, and lasagne. These dishes are so good the next day.

4. Decide on favorite family meals

Decide what your favorite meals are together as a family. For example, one of our favorite family meals is an Instant Pot red lentil coconut curry dish.

We also love gyros with homemade sourdough naan, Asian bowls, pad Thai noodles with a delicious teriyaki type sauce with soy curls. We love broccoli in our home.

As I mentioned, we also love tacos and taco salad because there are tons of toppings and it's like a buffet that we are excited about eating in our home.

5. Find your joy in the kitchen

Why don’t you like being in the kitchen? What makes you dislike eating at home? Then focus on flipping those answers around and change those things so you can love being in the kitchen and eating at home. Set the right tone at home.

If you are constantly in a negative mood about having to make dinner, cleaning up, or having to eat at home, then your family is going to feel the same way as you. Work on creating positive, passionate ways to eat dinner at home.

6. Make what you crave yourself

What are you craving? Make it yourself. This week, I was craving egg rolls. Do you know how hard it is to find vegan egg rolls that are also gluten-free? So I figured that if I wanted these specific egg rolls, I’d have to make them.

So I found a recipe for an egg roll dough that fit the criteria and it was amazing. I made a sweet-and-sour dipping sauce and my family went nuts for it. Now, it's a family favorite.

My daughter is craving California rolls and they are super expensive, so we are going to make them. Find a recipe for whatever it is you’re craving or for your favorite restaurant meal and it will be less expensive and fun to make.

7. Have go-to meals for the dinner rush

Have at least four go-to dinners you can make when you're in a hurry. Being in a rush and not knowing what to fix for dinner when everyone is hungry is what really makes you end up eating out and spending too much money.

Here are our four go-to meals. By the way, spaghetti is not one of our four go-to meals because it can get boring:

Oat bowls

Our fourth go-to meal is an oat bowl. We take raw oats, chia seeds or flax seeds, pour milk on top, and let it sit for at least 10 minutes while the liquid is absorbed. We add toppers like walnuts, chocolate chips, or blueberries, plus a little honey.

8. Bonus tip

If you really want to get good at this, don’t budget for eating out. We do not have a budget for that and we like it that way. If we do eat out, we will use our personal money fund or we will save up for a specific day we want to eat out. But we do not just frivolously create a budget for doing that just because we don’t want to cook.

How to enjoy eating at home

These ideas will help you get out of a dinner rut. Cooking and eating fun things at home will make family memories. Your kids will remember their childhood because they had a chance to eat delicious dinners together as a family.

Do you have other tips for fun things to make at home to eat? What do you think about eating at home vs. eating out? Let me know in the comments below!