I cooked the whole thing! Flag cake. Julia Child’s potato salad. Fresh corn salad. Vegetable coleslaw. Burgers and hot dogs on the grill.

I also made ham steak with red-eye gravy and cheese grits for Saturday breakfast.

I’m sharing it late because we’ve still got a month of summer left, and Labor Day is coming. If you’re hosting one more cookout this year, this is the menu to make (with one caveat).

The menu:

• Ham steak with red-eye gravy and cheese grits (this one’s actually from America’s Test Kitchen)

• Ina’s famous flag cake

• Julia Child-style potato salad

• Fresh corn salad

• Vegetable coleslaw

• Grilled burgers and hot dogs

The breakfast wasn’t technically on Ina’s menu. But Adam’s favorite meal of the day is breakfast, and weekend breakfast is our tradition. I’m not a huge breakfast-eater, but he is, so it works out well for us 😂

About cooking someone else’s menu…

Even Ina’s!

Five of these six recipes were genuinely great. I wouldn't make one again, and I’ll tell you exactly which one and why.

Ina writes beautiful recipes. But you need someone to tell you which ones need adjusting, which ones make way too much food, and which ones will let you down at your cookout.

So, I’ll do that job.

My notes on all the recipes!

Ham steak, red-eye gravy, and cheese grits

Verdict: keeper, with edits.

The gravy recipe is strong as written, so it needs a few fixes.

First, use less espresso powder than the recipe calls for. Start small and taste. You can always add more, but you can’t take it out.

Second, you might need to add more maple syrup. Brown sugar, white sugar, or honey works too. You need that sweetness to offset the salt and the espresso.

Mine also came out thick, so I thinned it with a splash of water at the end. Taste as you go. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it gravy.

For the grits: cook per the package, then stir in a combo of Velveeta and shredded cheddar, a little butter, and some half-and-half.

Yes, Velveeta. It melts better, and my Midwest roots always appreciate Velveeta. Finish with hot sauce to taste.

Ina’s flag cake

Verdict: keeper. But it’s HUGE.

This is the best sheet cake I’ve made in a while. A lot of homemade cakes turn out dense and dry. This one didn’t, and I think the cup of sour cream in the batter is why.

Two warnings:

One: this makes a massive amount of cake and frosting. If you’re not feeding a crowd, cut the recipe in half. I didn’t, and we ate flag cake for a week. Not the worst problem, but still.

Two: the berry decorating is tedious and takes time. Pick raspberries that aren’t bruised, because the soft ones will break down in the frosting as the cake sits.

And obviously, let the cake cool completely before frosting. Warm cake and cream cheese frosting is a melty mess.

Julia Child-style potato salad

Verdict: keeper. Fancier than my grandma’s, and my grandma’s is the OG.

The trick in this recipe is the same one my grandma taught me. Pour the white wine vinegar over the potatoes while they’re still warm. The hot potatoes absorb all the flavor.

My one addition: a splash of half-and-half in the mayo dressing. That’s also my grandma’s trick. Potatoes soak up the dressing as the salad sits in the fridge, and that bit of dairy keeps it from going dry and pasty.

One budget note: the recipe calls for cornichons, which are about $12 a jar where I live (when I can find them). If you’re in the same boat as me, tart finely-chopped dill pickles will do the job.

Fresh corn salad

Verdict: keeper. I’ve made it before, and I’ll make it again all summer!

Learn from my mistake: blanch the corn BEFORE you cut the kernels off for 3 minutes in salted boiling water. I did it backward and had to blanch loose kernels, which still worked.

Also, I used freeze-dried basil because my grocery order subbed it for fresh, and it was great. If fresh herbs are super expensive where you live too, you can swap this.

The flop recipe: vegetable coleslaw

Verdict: I wouldn't make it again as written.

I went in trusting Ina completely, and this recipe let me down. The dressing is extremely tangy and aggressively celery-forward. Lots of Dijon, cider vinegar, celery salt, AND celery seed, with not enough sugar to balance it.

I tasted it partway through and knew it needed a bunch more sugar. I didn’t listen to my gut. (Here’s your sign).

If you make this anyway: double the sugar (minimum), taste, and adjust from there. Or just make the sweeter slaw you already love and put your energy into the corn salad instead.

Burgers and hot dogs

Verdict: I went rogue, no regrets!

Ina’s menu calls for smashed burgers with caramelized onions. I skipped the onions. I don’t love them on a burger, Keira barely eats red meat, and Connor wouldn’t touch them.

My method: smash the patties between two sheets of wax paper, so they’re all the same thickness. Season with Lawry’s seasoned salt, then grill them as you normally would.

One note from my own grill: get it properly hot before the burgers go on, and let them cook before you flip. I didn’t; I massacred a couple, and then salvaged them under some slices of American cheese.

Your Labor Day game plan!

Don’t cook all of this the day of (you can totally do a ton of make-ahead here).

Two days before:

• Bake the flag cake. Cool completely, wrap, and store in the fridge.

The day before:

• Frost and decorate the cake. It keeps well in the fridge.

• Make the potato salad. It’s better after a night in the fridge anyway.

• Make the corn salad and chill it.

• Make the slaw and chill it.

Morning of:

• Make the burger patties, season, and refrigerate.

• Set out toppings, buns, and chips.

Right before eating:

• Grill the dogs and burgers. That’s it!

You can watch me make the whole menu here!

The bottom line:

Ina writes great recipes, I cook them, fix them (if needed, which isn’t common), and tell you which ones are worth your time and grocery money.

Planning dinners the rest of the week too?

The Dinner: Done Meal Planner is 15% off right now in the shop! Grab it here with code NEW15OFF.

Reason number one? The carts.

She didn’t want to deal with the quarter. Can’t figure out how to get the cart out. Can’t figure out how to get it back in.

She admitted she’d probably get it if she tried once or twice, but she’s just not going to do it.

Girl.

You put the quarter in the slot. The cart comes out. That’s it.

But here’s the thing. She’s skipping some of the cheapest groceries in her town over a 30-second learning curve.

And I think a lot of us do some version of this. Not with carts, but with trying to cook for two.

Cooking for two has a cart problem.

When you’re cooking for two, every recipe feels like it’s working against you. Recipes typically serve 4-6.

Aldi sells red onions in a three-pound bag whether you want one onion or not. So you either eat the same leftovers for four days, or you give up and order takeout.

And takeout for two is not cheap anymore! Two entrees, tax, tip, maybe a delivery fee, and you’re at $45 for one single dinner.

This cart full of groceries cost less than that one DoorDash order.

Three dinners, six plates of food, one Aldi trip: $36.41 total.

That’s about six bucks a plate!

Here’s the menu.

Gyoza Salad with Spicy Edamame. Chicken potstickers served over a dressed-up bagged salad kit, with edamame on the side.

This takes 15 minutes to make. And I mean actually 15 minutes, not food-blogger 15 minutes.

The trick is cooking the potstickers with a steam-fry: brown them flat side down in a little oil, then add water and cover. Crispy bottoms, tender tops, no babysitting.

The edamame steams in the bag in the microwave. Sometimes Aldi carries a chili garlic version, but mine didn’t have it, so I tossed plain edamame with soy sauce, salt, and a spoonful of sambal.

Bang Bang Salmon Bowls. Cajun-seasoned salmon bites, rice, quick sesame cucumbers, and a bang bang sauce you’ll want to make over and over.

Why Cajun seasoning on an Asian-inspired bowl? Because that’s what I grabbed. Use whatever blend you have. The sauce is doing most of the work here anyway.

Speaking of the sauce, make it first and let it sit in the fridge while you cook. It needs that time for the flavors to come together. Taste it before you serve, too. Mine needed more sriracha.

My kids ate this one while my husband was golfing, so I can confirm it scales up for teenagers with zero complaints. And zero leftovers, which around here is the highest possible compliment.

Shortcut Falafel Pitas. My favorite of the three. Canned chickpeas, fresh herbs, fried until crispy, stuffed into pitas with tzatziki and a tomato cucumber salad.

Traditional falafel starts with dried chickpeas you soak overnight. I’ve made it that way, and it’s great. But this is Tuesday-night falafel, and it’s still crispy outside and fluffy inside.

One honest note: I forgot to put a lime on the grocery list, and you need one for the bang bang sauce. It’s on the printable list, but you can sub a splash of vinegar if you don’t have one.

About the falafel being my favorite:

I’ve been getting a lot of requests for more vegetarian recipes. Which is funny, because I grew up in the Midwest, where meat wasn’t part of dinner. Meat was the dinner.

Every meal, no exceptions.

My daughter was pescatarian for a while, and she ate so much tuna that I actually had to research how much one person can eat before mercury poisoning occurs.

And every once in a while I get “the meat ick”, where I just don’t want anything to do with it at all.

Some days I eat a bag of edamame for lunch. It’s got fiber, it’s got protein, it fills me up (win/win).

Here’s the thing: a vegetarian dinner isn’t a downgrade. It’s just dinner.

And this week, the meatless meal was the best one on the menu!

If you’re not cooking for two, these recipes are great for lunch prep!

The falafel holds for four days in the fridge and re-crisps in the air fryer (or eat it cold).

The salmon keeps for 3 days, as long as you keep the sauce separate. The sesame cucumbers actually get better overnight.

The gyoza salad is the exception. If you’re going to prep that one, keep all the components separate and toss them right before you eat.

Tell me in the comments: are you vegetarian? Pescatarian? Chicken-and-fish only? Or do you eat everything?

I’m planning future menus, and I want to know!

Want the full system?

The printable below has everything: the complete priced grocery list, all three recipes, and a full notes page covering meal prep storage, make-ahead tips, and what to do with the leftover red onions Aldi forced you to buy.

Paid subscribers get new printables every week!

If tonight’s dinner question is still open, this is the easiest $40 you’ll spend.

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Here’s the thing about traveling as much as I do. I eat a lot of good food in a lot of places I barely remember.

Then I come home and try to recreate it with whatever I can find at Walmart 😂

That’s what this week’s menu was inspired by!

Some of these dinners started as restaurant meals on work trips. One is a church potluck classic from my childhood. All of them are low-maintenance, because that’s the season I’m in right now!

Bonus: cooking this way means my kids grow up eating flavors from everywhere.

All five dinners, around $92. One Walmart trip. No passport required.

For the best Dinner: Done experience, please use a desktop browser.

How to navigate this week’s plan:

1. Grab the grocery list. Check off anything you already have. Don’t skip the pantry staples, and note this week’s chowder also needs milk and butter from your fridge.

2. Shop for or order (my preference!) the remaining groceries.

3. Check your schedule. The chicken marinates overnight, so pick that day first. The chowder and the pork are slow cooker days, so save those for your busiest ones.

4. Set aside 30 minutes to complete the prep sheet.

5. Cook and eat!

This week’s dinners:

🐟 Ginger Soy Salmon

If I let my kids pick every dinner, this would be in the rotation weekly. It’s the most requested meal in my house, and I have teenagers, so that’s saying something.

Sweet, salty, sticky, and done in 30!

I buy the 2 lb. bag of frozen, skinless salmon filets at Walmart. Individually packaged, so thaw what you need. Add to cold water in a bowl, let sit for 30 minutes, done.

One thing that matters: don’t marinate this longer than 4 hours. The orange juice starts breaking down the fish and the texture suffers.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the salmon: chicken thighs or pork chops work great in this marinade.

• No fresh ginger? Half the amount of ground ginger will do in a pinch.

🥣 Ham + Potato Chowder

Every week needs one dinner that tastes like home, and this is the one!

This is a church potluck soup. I grew up eating soups like this out of somebody’s slow cooker on a folding table at the church potluck, and I mean that as the highest compliment.

Frozen hash browns and diced ham mean you don’t have to chop. Load the slow cooker in the morning, come home to soup!

Use your biggest slow cooker. This makes a lot, and the leftovers are a lunch you’ll look forward to.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the ham: cooked bacon or smoked sausage, or leave it out if you’re a vegetarian.

• Want it richer? Swap the milk for half-and-half.

🌮 Baja Fish Tacos

Somewhere out there is a restaurant that served me the fish taco this recipe is based on. I ate it on a work trip. I could not tell you the city, even if I had to.

That’s the reality of traveling for work; all the trips blur together. But I always remember the food!

The Baja sauce is the best, so don’t skip it!. Whisk together sour cream, mayo, lime, and a little sriracha. Make it on prep day, because it’s even better after a night (or several) in the fridge.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Any firm white fish works: mahi mahi, cod, tilapia.

• Don’t have corn tortillas? Flour tortillas, or serve it in rice bowls with the same toppings.

🍗 Thai-Style Coconut Chicken

My kids love this chicken. That’s the reason I cook varied flavors: kids can’t request a dish they’ve never been served.

This recipe needs to be marinated for at least 6 hours, so put it in the fridge the night before. A few minutes of work before bed, and you’ll get the easiest dinner of the week!

Sambal oelek is a chili paste I always keep on hand. If you don’t have it, any hot sauce works. Bonus tip: it’s really good. I encourage you to try it on edamame if you haven’t yet!

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• No grill? Broil or pan-fry it in a hot skillet.

• Chicken thighs work great here too!

🍊 Cuban Pork with Mojo Sauce

Another work trip, another restaurant I fell for. This time it was Cuban food, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the mojo pork.

The restaurant version probably took real skill! My version takes a cheap pork roast, orange juice, lime, a bunch of garlic, and a slow cooker.

It tastes like it took all day, because technically it did.

You just weren’t there for it 😂

Serve it over rice the first night. Then put the leftovers in tacos or quesadillas, with any leftover Baja sauce you have.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Pork butt roast is marbled and makes more tender pulled pork, but shoulder works too.

You can download the PDF here, which includes the menu, grocery list, prep sheet, and recipes. ⬇️

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I was born in 1983. So when I found a stack of cookbooks from that year, including the 1983 Southern Living annual and Betty Crocker’s Step-by-Step Picture Cookbook, I knew what this week’s plan had to be.

Every dinner this week is vintage-inspired! Some come straight from those 1983 cookbooks.

Some are the recipes my mom and grandma made back then.

And here’s the thing about vintage recipes. They were built for busy families on tight budgets, which means they still work perfectly for us!

This week’s menu features my grandma’s cheesy cauliflower soup, my mom’s tart lemon chicken, a crustless quiche that skips all the annoying parts of a normal quiche, creamy dilled meatballs over buttered noodles, and a tater tot casserole that will start arguments at your table (more on that below).

The best part? All for around $82! (excluding pantry staples).

For the best Dinner: Done experience, please use a desktop browser.

How to navigate this week’s plan:

1. Grab the grocery list. Check off any items you’ve already got in your fridge, freezer, and pantry. Don’t forget to check for the pantry staples as well!

2. Shop for or order (my preference!) the remaining groceries.

3. Check your schedule and decide which days you’ll make each dish. Note: the quiche and tater tot casserole are mostly hands-off oven time, so they’re good picks for nights when you’re home but busy.

4. Set aside 45 minutes to complete the prep sheet.

5. Cook and eat!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click and buy — at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

This week’s dinners:

🥣 Cauliflower Cheese Soup + BLT Salad

My grandma on my dad’s side made cauliflower cheese soup all through the 80s and 90s, so this is pure nostalgia for me.

This version comes from Betty Crocker’s Step-by-Step Picture Cookbook, published in 1983.

Yes, it uses Cheez Whiz. No, don’t skip it! It’s a 1983 recipe, and the Cheez Whiz is the point.

The BLT salad comes from the Oscar Mayer 100th anniversary cookbook, and the dressing is just mayo, milk, mustard, and sugar. I was skeptical. But it’s actually really good!

The dressing can be made up to 5 days ahead, and pre-cooked bacon makes this side come together in minutes.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• No white wine on hand? Substitute an equal amount of water with a splash of lemon juice or vinegar. The acidity balances the richness of the cheese.

• You can substitute bagged iceberg salad for the head of lettuce.

🍳 Crustless Potato Bacon Quiche

Quiche peaked in popularity in the early 80s, so of course it’s on this menu. This one comes from the 1983 Southern Living annual recipes book.

It’s crustless, which means you skip the most annoying part of making quiche. Eggs, hash browns, Swiss, cottage cheese, and bacon on top. That’s dinner, with a side salad or fruit!

You can assemble it up to 2 days ahead and store it in the fridge. Just add 10 minutes to the bake time.

One honest note: egg dishes always seem to need a little longer in my oven than the recipe says. Check it at 30 minutes, but don’t panic if it needs 40.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Refrigerated or frozen shredded potatoes both work. Just thaw the frozen ones completely first.

• For the full 1983 experience, serve it with a can of fruit cocktail. It’ll run you about a buck extra, and it’s worth it.

🍋 Lemon Chicken + Rice

This is my mom’s recipe, and it’s the one I’m most excited for you to try.

She made this when we were kids because chicken breast was one of the pricier proteins back then, and this dish stretched it with flour, broth, and lemons. I recently made it for my sister, and she said it tastes exactly like Mom’s. That’s the highest compliment I can get!

Fair warning: this sauce is tart and lemony on purpose. If it’s too much for you, a teaspoon or two of sugar balances it right out.

My mom always used Minute Rice, so that’s what’s on the list. But any hot cooked rice works!

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Chicken tenderloins work great instead of cut-up breasts.

• Steamed broccoli makes a great side if you want a veggie.

🧆 Swedish Dilled Meatballs + Noodles

Another gem from the 1983 Betty Crocker cookbook. Beef and pork meatballs in a creamy, dilly sour cream gravy over buttered egg noodles.

Two tips from my kitchen:

• First, if the meatball mixture is hard to roll, stick it in the freezer for 10-20 minutes to firm up.

• Second, dice the onion fine. Nobody wants a big chunk of onion in their meatball.

The gravy will taste bland before you season it. Salt it, taste it, and add a splash of Worcestershire if it needs more depth.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Not an onion person? Swap in a teaspoon of onion powder instead.

• If you have rye bread on hand, fresh rye breadcrumbs add really good flavor. Just know the meatballs will be a bit more delicate.

🥔 Tater Tot Casserole

My mom and dad made this when I was growing up, and it’s the ultimate throwback comfort food.

Two hills I will die on with this recipe:

• One: Kraft Singles. Not shredded cheese, not the off-brand slices. They melt the best in this casserole, and I will not be taking questions 😂

• Two: Line up your tots in rows. It’s the only way to get even tot coverage. My sister dumps hers on all willy-nilly, and we are still speaking, but barely, LOL.

This is also your best freezer meal of the week. Assemble it in a foil pan, cover, and freeze unbaked, or just build it up to 2 days ahead in the fridge and add 10 minutes to the bake time.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• All ground beef works fine if you’d rather not split the pork between two recipes.

• Cottage cheese on the side is my ideal pairing. Try it before you knock it!

You can download the PDF here, which includes the menu, grocery list, prep sheet, and recipes. ⬇️

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That was not an accident. This is the kind of meal plan I lean on when summer gets busy, and I don’t want to turn the stove on! Load it in the morning, walk away, and dinner is basically done when you walk back in the door.

The time badges on these recipes are hands-on time (mostly the prep and finishing the meals at dinnertime). Your slow cooker handles the other 6 to 8 hours while you live your life.

This week’s menu has a creamy chicken chili that might be better on day two, hot turkey sandwiches like my Grandma made, a Spanish beef stew with a secret weapon (prosciutto), roast beef melts that are going in your permanent rotation, and a pulled pork so easy it barely counts as cooking.

All five dinners for $105 at Walmart. Typically, our meal plans are $100 or less; however, we’ve got several beef dishes this week, so that bumped up the cost a bit.

For the best Dinner: Done experience, please use a desktop browser.

How to navigate this week’s plan:

1. Grab the grocery list. Check off anything you already have in your fridge, freezer, and pantry. Don’t forget to check the pantry staples list too!

2. Shop for or order (my preference!) the remaining groceries.

3. Check your schedule and decide which days you’ll make each dish. Any order works this week. Save the Root Beer Pulled Pork for your most chaotic day.

4. Set aside 45 minutes to complete the prep sheet.

5. Cook and eat!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click and buy, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

This week’s dinners:

🍲 Cheesy Slow Cooker Chicken Chili

Chicken slow-cooks in broth with corn, beans, and tomatoes. Then cream cheese and cheddar go in at the end. Creamy, a little spicy, and honestly the leftovers might beat night one.

A couple of things that matter here. Soften the cream cheese before you whisk it in, or you’ll be standing there whisking way longer than you want to. And you’ll only use half the shredded cheddar in the soup itself. Save the rest for topping.

Do not skip the toppings. Sour cream, cheddar, tortilla chips, cilantro. They make this dish.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Short on time? Use 3/4 tsp. garlic powder instead of fresh garlic.

• Any hot sauce in your fridge works. Franks, sriracha, Tabasco, whatever you’ve got.

🦃 Hot Turkey Sandwiches

A classic Midwest staple that usually only shows up after Thanksgiving. This version uses a frozen turkey breast with a gravy packet, so you can make it in July if you want. My Grandma made these with Thanksgiving leftovers every year, so she would absolutely approve.

The turkey goes in frozen with onion, garlic, and seasonings. Hold the gravy packet back and prepare it at dinner time. Bread, mashed potatoes, and turkey on top, gravy over everything.

We’re using instant mashed potatoes because this is a weeknight, not a holiday. If you want to make homemade or use the refrigerated kind, go for it.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Steamed green beans make a great side if you want a veggie on the plate.

• If it IS Thanksgiving leftover season, skip the slow cooker and use what you’ve got.

🥘 Spanish Beef Stew

I’ve been making this spin on beef stew for years, and my family loves it. Prosciutto and paprika take it somewhere regular beef stew doesn’t go. Serve it over hot buttered egg noodles.

Yes, the recipe calls for 10 cloves of garlic. That is not a typo. I promise the flavor isn’t overwhelming once it’s cooked down for 6 to 8 hours.

The flour slurry at the end is what thickens it up. Whisk the flour with some cooking liquid first, so you don’t get lumps, then cook it for another 20 to 30 minutes on high.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Not feeling noodles? This stew is also great on rice or mashed potatoes.

• A simple salad with vinaigrette or crusty bread rounds this dinner out.

🥪 Homestyle Roast Beef Melts

Chuck roast slow-cooks with pepperoncini, rosemary, and butter. Then it gets piled on toasted hoagie rolls under melted provolone. Ten minutes of work at dinner time, because the slow cooker did the hard part hours ago.

Pour the whole jar of pepperoncini in, juice and all. That’s where the flavor is. When you shred the beef, discard the fat so your sandwiches aren’t greasy.

This one’s going in your permanent rotation!

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Want to stretch it? Use a bigger roast. The leftovers reheat great for lunches.

• Potato chips or a deli pasta salad on the side keeps this a zero-fuss night.

🐷 Root Beer Pulled Pork

Save this one for the night you have zero energy. Pork, onion, root beer, BBQ sauce, and salt go in the slow cooker. That’s it. At dinner time, you shred the pork and pile it on buns with pickles.

Diet or regular root beer both work, so grab whichever you’d like. Pork butt roast is a little more marbled than shoulder and makes a more tender pulled pork, but either one is fine.

This recipe doubles easily. The extra pulled pork can be used on quesadillas, pizza, or mac and cheese later in the week.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• Serve with chips or a tub of deli coleslaw.

• No root beer? Cola works in a pinch.

You can download the PDF here, which includes the menu, grocery list, prep sheet, and recipes. ⬇️

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You know what sounds good when it’s 92 degrees? A cold salad from the fridge that doesn’t require you to turn on the oven!

So, I spent an afternoon making six of Ina Garten’s most-loved deli salads, start to finish.

Then I tasted every single one and rated them, zero to ten.

Spoiler: five of these are real keepers. One was a rare Ina miss, and I’m still a little irritated about the pound of feta I wasted on it.

Why deli salads are a working mom's cheat code

Deli salads are a make-ahead meal that actually gets better as it sits. You can make them once, then they hang out in the fridge and the flavors improve.

Pull one out, add bread, or a rotisserie chicken. Bam, Dinner: Done ✅

Now, let’s get to the ratings!

How I tested these recipes

I made every recipe the way I would actually make it on a busy day…not the way it looks on the Food Network.

That means:

• Rotisserie chicken instead of roasting bone-in breasts

• Frozen shrimp I already had and thawed overnight

• A little less olive oil here and there

• Duke’s mayo, because I wanted to see what the fuss was about

Ina would say “good mayonnaise.” I say the mayo that’s already in your fridge is good mayonnaise.

How bad can that be? 😂

I chilled all of the salads before the taste test because they all taste different after an hour in the fridge. Season lightly up front, then you can adjust the seasoning more once they are cold (if needed).

All of the salads, ranked!

1. Fresh Corn Salad: 10/10

I will make this recipe again and again! It’s just sweet corn, red onion, basil, cider vinegar, and olive oil.

I was nervous that the cider vinegar would be too tangy. It’s not. It contrasts perfectly with sweet summer corn, and this is peak sweet corn season in the Midwest.

If your corn isn’t super sweet, add a few teaspoons of sugar to the dressing.

I cut the olive oil in half and didn’t miss it. If you’re taking this to a get-together, double it! You won’t have leftovers.

2. Roasted Shrimp Salad: 10/10

I was wholly unsure about this recipe. The dressing uses orange juice and orange zest instead of the usual lemon, which is a nice change.

Light, tangy, lots of fresh dill. The dressing lets the shrimp shine instead of drowning it.

This would be an absolutely perfect lunch meal prep.

I used cheap frozen shrimp, and it was still a 10.

With good shrimp, roasted the way Ina writes it, this would be dangerously delicious. Eat it on a brioche roll and thank me later!

3. Tarragon Potato Salad: 9/10

I have about 6 Barefoot Contessa cookbooks and have always eyed this recipe, but never made it. That was a mistake! 😂

The fresh dill and tarragon make it. Slice the potatoes instead of cubing them, and pour the dressing on while they’re still warm so they absorb it.

I wanted a touch more dressing, so next time I’d add more mayo or use one less potato.

I only rated it a 9 because my grandma’s potato salad is the pinnacle of potato salad, and I don’t make the rules, LOL.

4. Pasta, Pesto, and Peas: 8/10

Really good if you love pesto. Also probably one bajillion calories, because the dressing is homemade pesto AND a cup and a quarter of mayo AND Parmesan.

The quote comes to mind, “but I’m here for a good time, not a long time.” 😂

Ina says store-bought pesto is fine here. Listen to her. I made mine from scratch, and five cups of fresh basil cost me approximately $76 because I live in the middle of nowhere, Iowa.

One of the things that irritates me about where I live is that fresh herbs are a luxury item. I have grown my own basil before, and I need to do it again this summer. So much cheaper!

If I make it again, I’d lighten it up. Less pesto, Greek yogurt in place of some of the mayo, and extra lemon to brighten it.

5. Chicken Salad Veronique: 7/10

Chicken salad is my favorite lunch food, so I wanted to love this.

It’s good. It’s also extremely salty if you make the recipe as written.

The recipe calls for up to 2 teaspoons of salt. Start with a half teaspoon. Trust me on this one because I didn’t trust my own gut and paid for it.

The dressing is also a bit skimpy.

Whisk extra mayo with a splash of milk to loosen it up so it actually coats the chicken.

The tarragon and grapes are a nice change, but my usual version with almonds and red grapes still wins in my book.

6. Tomato Feta Pasta Salad: 4/10

This recipe is a rare Ina miss. I can count on one hand the Ina recipes that have failed me, and this is one of them.

It came out dry. Too much pasta, too many tomatoes, not nearly enough vinaigrette.

And a full pound of feta plus a teaspoon of salt makes it a sodium bomb.

I’m honestly irritated I wasted half a pound of good block feta on it. If you make it anyway, halve the salt, halve the feta, and double the dressing.

Or just make the corn salad twice.

Watch me make all six recipes!

I filmed all afternoon, including taste tests.

📒 Grab the free printable eBook!

I put everything into one printable eBook, so you have the recipes and all my tips in one place.

What’s inside:

• All six full recipes with prep, cook, and total times

• My honest rating and real notes on every recipe page

• The corn-cutting trick that keeps kernels off your floor

• My fix for dry chicken salad

• The tools I actually use, nothing fancy

Ina's Best Deli Salads eBook

7.06MB ∙ PDF file

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One more thing!

If a fridge full of ready-to-eat dinners sounds like your kind of summer, that’s what I do here every week!

Every week, I send Dinner: Done Club members five shoppable dinners for $100 or less.

A grocery list with prices, a prep sheet, and all five recipes in one printable PDF.

You don’t have a cooking problem.

You have a planning problem, and I already solved it for you!

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Welcome to the Dinner: Done ✅ recipe vault! This page is updated weekly with new recipes.

This vault is part of the paid subscriber experience!

Do you want to search by meal or protein type?

Have some chicken or ground beef in your fridge that you need to use up?

Search this page by both meal type and type of protein. Each recipe has a printable link so you can easily cook the dinners you need on demand!

Want the full experience? Become a paid subscriber today! I’m running a 30% off Summer Sub Special so you can get a full year of meal plans for just $55.

That’s less than the price of one DoorDash order. Join us in the club today!

➡️ How to navigate this page:

Use the links below to navigate to a section of the vault.

Each recipe is linked to the original post and to a PDF printable of that individual recipe.

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Can you make three healthy dinners for twenty dollars?

I said yes.

Then I sat there for a second and wondered if that was really true.

BUT. I love a good challenge.

So I gave myself one twenty-dollar bill and some rules.

• Family of four

• Three real dinners

• No sad plates

So many people live on the bare minimum. There are also so many people whose parents have not taught them how to cook from scratch and stretch a dollar.

That is my goal in teaching people how to cook online. Cook from scratch when you have the time and save money later.

The thing about cheap dinners that most people leave out is that it’s not a cooking problem.

It’s a planning problem, and you need to use ingredients across multiple meals.

Twenty dollars works because of decisions I make before I ever walk into the store.

I am strategically planning these meals using online prices and identifying which ingredients can work across multiple meals.

The three dinners:

Here’s what one grocery haul turned into.

Black Bean and Zucchini Enchiladas. Vegetarian, and nobody at my table missed the meat. Three enchiladas have 20 grams of protein and 13 grams of fiber.

Open-Faced Tuna Melts with Potato Wedges. The fastest of the three dinners. Going open-faced means more tuna per slice. 650 calories and a wild 43 grams of protein.

Black Bean Soup with Chips and Salsa. Cozy, filling, and the salsa is genuinely better than the jarred stuff. 270 calories, 15 grams of protein, 18 grams of fiber.

How twenty dollars stretches this far!

There are two tricks that do most of the heavy lifting!

Cook once, eat twice. One pot of dried black beans becomes the enchilada filling and the soup. Same pot. Two dinners. When your ingredients overlap like that, almost nothing goes to waste.

Cook the beans yourself. A bag of dry black beans is $1.50. It makes roughly six cups, which is about four cans’ worth for the price of one. Use your Instant Pot and there’s no soaking! 35 minutes and done.

That’s it. That’s the magic! It’s boring, and it works.

There are eight more budget habits I use every week, from checking the clearance rack first to buying the block of cheese and shredding it myself.

They’re all in the free printable below!

About that twenty dollars…

My cart came to $20.70.

Yours might land a little under or a little over.

Produce is weighed, prices shift by season, and what costs 86 cents in Iowa might be different where you are.

Treat $20 as the target, not as a promise carved in stone.

The point is, you can feed a family of four three full dinners for about $20.

Grab everything!

I put everything in a free printable so you’re not scrolling back through this post at 5pm with a spatula in one hand.

It has all three recipes, the full grocery list with prices, the exact order I cook things in, and my ten budget tricks.

Print it. Stick it on the fridge. Go make dinner!

$20 Budget Meal Guide!

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Make 3 budget dinners for $20. Extreme budget style!

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If you want a fresh plan like this in your inbox every week, that’s the whole point of the Dinner: Done Club! Real meal plans for real working moms, written by a working mom.

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There are just a few problems. The closest one is over 35 minutes away.

Also, I can make it at home for about a quarter of the price.

Go out for Olive Garden, and you’re looking at eighty, ninety bucks. For one dinner.

Here’s what I want you to take away from this week’s meal plan.

Most of your family’s favorite restaurant meals are stupidly easy to make at home.

That sauce that tastes exactly like the Stouffer’s French bread pizza you ate as a kid? It’s tomato paste and dried herbs you already own. The Olive Garden soup everyone loves? A rotisserie chicken and a bag of gnocchi.

You’re not paying fast-casual restaurants for their cooking skills.

You’re paying them for assembly and convenience.

This week, we’re making five restaurant copycats from one grocery trip. $93 total, for all five dinners, for a family of four.

Here’s this week’s lineup

Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza. This tastes seriously nostalgic. Make the sauce ahead; this is on the table in about 20 minutes. My kids would eat this every night if I let them!

Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi Soup. My absolute favorite this week, so make sure you make this one if you don’t make anything else. Creamy, makes a lot of leftovers, and a rotisserie chicken does all the hard work. Serve it with cheesesticks and watch it disappear.

Boston Market Meatloaf. Pure comfort food. It takes a little longer in the oven, but you can assemble it on Sunday and just bake it the night you want it for even less weeknight effort.

Wendy’s Asiago Ranch Chicken Club. Make this on the night you have no patience left. It’s more assembly than cooking. Frozen chicken filets and potato wedges: done.

Chili’s Quesadilla Salad. The copycat of the Quesadilla Explosion salad, made simple. The only trick I’ve found to get a teenager to eat a salad is to put a cheese quesadilla next to it. It works every single time.

You don’t have a cooking problem.

You have a planning + prepping problem.

Every one of these dinners is pretty dang easy. None of them is hard to cook.

What makes your week fall apart isn’t the recipes; it’s standing in the kitchen at 5pm with no plan and a fridge full of ingredients that don’t add up to anything.

The real fix is spending forty-five minutes on a Sunday.

That’s it. Forty-five minutes of prep on the weekend, and all five of these dinners drop to half an hour or less on a weeknight. Some of them less than that.

I’m going to give you the exact prep sheet. The order to do it in, what goes in which dish, what to make ahead, and what to make the night of.

Plus, the full printable plan, and the grocery list typed out so you can shop straight off your phone at Walmart without printing a thing (if you don’t want to).

If you’ve been a free subscriber, this is the week to upgrade! One year of the Dinner: Done Club costs less than that night out at Olive Garden.

The printable

Here’s the full plan: menu, grocery list, prep sheet, and all six recipe cards in one PDF. Print it, stick it on the fridge, and make your week infinitely easier.

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I travel about two weeks a month right now, and my husband Adam holds the house together while I’m gone. When I have a freezer full of dump-and-go meals, it makes his job so much easier.

But I also really appreciate having these meals in the freezer when I’m at home, too!

You don’t have a cooking problem.

You have a planning problem. Freezer meals fix the planning problem on a day you actually have the energy, so dinner is already decided on the day you don’t.

I keep coming back to chicken for these. It’s cheap, my teenagers will actually eat it, and it works in both the slow cooker and the Instant Pot.

Greek lemon chicken, cool ranch chicken tacos, slow cooker chicken noodle soup, Thai chicken curry, and a buffalo chicken my son puts in everything.

This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Why this works when meal planning doesn’t

Regular meal planning asks you to make good decisions at 5 pm (the worst possible time).

Freezer prep moves every decision and every bit of chopping to a time when you do have the energy.

By dinnertime, there’s nothing left to decide. You dump a bag in a pot.

The gear that makes prep day easy

A few things turn this from a chore into an assembly line:

• Freezer bags and bag holders. The bag holder is the unsung hero. Filling a floppy freezer bag solo is a two-hands-not-enough disaster. These little stands hold it open so you’re not wearing the marinade. Buy the heavy-duty Ziploc bags. The cheap ones split.

• Freezer labels. Future you won’t know what’s in the mystery bag. Label everything and skip the “is this curry or soup” coin flip.

• A large slow cooker. Built for this. Batch it, freeze the rest.

• An Instant Pot. Dump the thawed bag in, lock the lid, done.

The 5 chicken freezer meals

1. Greek Lemon Chicken and Potatoes (Instant Pot)

This one surprised me. I went in skeptical and ended up eating it standing at the counter, straight out of the pot. If you like anything lemony, make it.

Into the bag: bone-in chicken breasts with the skin removed, baby gold potatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, and the zest and juice of two lemons. Zest before you juice. You only learn that the hard way once.

Cooking day: dump the thawed bag into the Instant Pot, high pressure 15 minutes, 10-minute natural release. Shred the chicken right in that lemony sauce, crumble feta over the top.

No Instant Pot? Slow cooker on low for 6 to 7 hours.

2. Cool Ranch Chicken Tacos (Slow Cooker)

Into the bag: about two pounds of chicken breasts, a packet of taco seasoning, a packet of ranch seasoning, the juice of one lime, and half a cup of chicken broth.

Mix the dry stuff in, pour the liquids over, mix and freeze.

Cooking day: low for about 7 hours, then shred. We do tacos, but the same shredded chicken can be used for quesadillas or burrito bowls. One bag, three different dinners.

3. Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup

Into the bag: four small-to-medium chicken breasts, chopped carrots, celery, and onion, plus garlic powder, dried basil, oregano, a bay leaf, pepper, and chicken bouillon. I’m loyal to Knorr chicken bouillon. Big flavor, pennies on the dollar.

Cooking day: dump the bag in, add 8 cups of water, low for 8 hours or high for 4. Pull the chicken, shred, add it back with about two-thirds of a bag of egg noodles. Let those cook in the broth 20 to 30 minutes.

My one trick: squeeze a little lemon in at the end. You won’t taste lemon. It just wakes the whole thing up.

4. Thai Chicken Curry (Slow Cooker)

I love this one. It’s the only one with any real mixing.

Into the bag: cubed chicken breast, red curry paste, chicken stock, brown sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce, big chunks of bell pepper and onion, ginger, and garlic. Whisk the sauce right in the bag, add the chicken and veg, freeze.

Cooking day: slow cook, then stir in lime juice and coconut milk at the end. Serve over rice with cilantro.

Honest note: spring for a good red curry paste. Thai Kitchen is my pick. The brand makes a real difference here.

5. Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken

This is the workhorse. Cook it once and it turns into tacos, quesadillas, salads, bowls, sandwiches, pizza, or dip.

Into the bag: chicken breast, a packet of ranch seasoning, a whole bottle of Frank’s Red Hot, half a stick of butter.

You don’t make a sauce. The butter, the juices, and the hot sauce make it for you while it cooks. High for 4 hours, then shred.

Chicken Freezer Meals Recipes

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Get the 5 dinner freezer meal recipes here!

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Quick freezer-meal FAQ

How long do they keep? Best within about 3 months for quality, safe longer. Date the label so you’re not playing freezer roulette.

Can you freeze raw chicken in a marinade? Yes, and it’s better. It marinates while it freezes and again while it thaws, so it picks up more flavor than cooking it the same day.

Thaw first? For slow cooker recipes, thaw overnight in the fridge for even cooking. The Instant Pot gives you more wiggle room, but a partial thaw still helps. Run warm water over the outside of the bag to loosen it.

Slow cooker or Instant Pot? Both work for nearly all of these. The slow cooker is set-it-and-forget-it. The Instant Pot is for the nights you forgot to start dinner.

The Freezer Prep Day Battle Plan

The recipes are the easy part. The thing that wrecks freezer-meal day is doing it in the wrong order. You end up washing the cutting board nine times and zesting lemons three separate occasions.

Here’s how I make all five in about an hour, with one grocery trip and one cleanup.

Step 1: One grocery list, split smart

Most of the seasonings live in your pantry already. The money is in the chicken. Buy that well and the whole week comes in cheap.

From the pantry (shelf-stable, you likely have these): olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, garlic powder, dried basil, bay leaf, taco seasoning packet, 2 ranch seasoning packets, brown sugar, soy sauce, fish sauce, red curry paste, chicken bouillon, Frank’s Red Hot, rice, egg noodles

Fresh + protein (the actual grocery run):

• Chicken breasts, about 10 to 11 lb total (bone-in for the Greek, boneless for the rest)

• Baby gold potatoes, 1.5 to 2 lb

• Lemons (3) and limes (2)

• Feta, 1 small block or tub

• Carrots, celery, onions (3 onions covers soup + curry)

• Bell peppers (2)

• Fresh ginger and garlic

• Butter

• Coconut milk, 1 can

• Chicken broth or stock, 1 carton

• Cilantro

Step 2: Prep in this order, not recipe by recipe

Do not assemble one bag at a time. Batch the tasks.

1. Label all five bags first. Name and date. Sharpie on the label, not the bag.

2. Zest and juice all the citrus at once. Three lemons, two limes, done. Set aside in little cups.

3. Chop everything in one pass. Onions, carrots, celery, peppers, all of it. Group by bag on the cutting board.

4. Mix the dry seasonings into their bags. Taco and ranch for the tacos. Ranch for the buffalo. Soup seasonings together.

5. Add chicken and veg to each bag.

6. Pour the wet stuff in last. Liquids last means a cleaner counter and no leaks while you’re still working.

7. Press the air out, seal, freeze flat. Flat bags stack like files and thaw faster.

If freezer-meal day is going to become a regular thing, and once you taste that buffalo chicken it might, the Dinner: Done Meal Planner keeps your weekly plan and grocery list in one place so the next prep day runs even smoother.

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Here’s my summer survival tactic, and it isn’t another sad bowl of cold pasta salad.

It’s the Instant Pot.

Why the Instant Pot Is My Fave Summer Cooking Tool

Most “easy summer dinner” advice is just salads and cold sandwiches on repeat.

Fine for a Tuesday. Depressing by Friday.

The Instant Pot gives you an actual dinner.

Braised pork, real soup, food you’re going to be excited to eat!

Three reasons it’s great for summer cooking:

• No ambient heat. It’s sealed, and your kitchen stays cool.

• One pot, minimal cleanup. Nobody wants a sink full of pans in July.

• Hands-off. Lock the lid, walk away, and go sit in front of a fan. Come back to dinner.

It’s also why it’s my go-to for summer meal prep.

You can batch a couple of these recipes on a Sunday without breaking a sweat, then eat from them all week.

Here are the four recipes I keep coming back to!

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Four No-Heat Dinners

Chipotle Chicken Pozole. This is the shortcut version: Chipotle, lime, and deep flavor you’d order out for. It cooks sealed and pretty fast, and the toppings do the rest. If you make one thing off this list, make this one.

Beer-Braised Carnitas. This is the leftover champion. One batch makes a ton, which turns into tacos one night, burrito bowls the next, quesadillas after that. This is a perfect summer meal prep.

Salsa Verde Chicken. A jar of salsa verde does most of the work, and it stretches across tostadas, tacos, rice bowls, and salads all week. It freezes beautifully. Make a double batch, and freeze it for a quick meal later!

Lazy Lasagna Pasta. All the lasagna comfort. No oven, no layering, no hour-long bake. If you’ve got teenagers, don’t expect leftovers. It comes together in about the time it takes to set the table.

Every one of these cooks without heating your kitchen.

The full method for all four recipes is right below!

Four Summer Instant Pot Recipes

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Cook all week without heating your kitchen!

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1. Chipotle Chicken Pozole (start here)

Traditional pozole simmers pork for hours. Not in July. We’re not doing that.

This recipe swaps in boneless skinless chicken thighs, and it’s quick enough for a weeknight dinner.

• Sauté onion and garlic on the sauté function in the Instant Pot.

• Add the chopped chipotles, the adobo sauce, spices, chicken, hominy, and five cups of broth. I use reconstituted Knorr chicken bouillon, so I don’t have to store a pantry full of cartons of chicken broth.

• High pressure, 18 minutes.

• Shred the chicken, stir it back in, and squeeze in some lime.

Top it with shredded cabbage, radishes, red onion, cilantro, and a little sour cream.

A hot bowl of soup that didn’t heat your kitchen.

One tip: Chipotle peppers stain everything, so I chop them on a disposable cutting board. Knorr also runs salty, so taste before you add more salt.

2. Beer-Braised Carnitas (the leftover champion)

This could not be simpler, and it makes a ton, so it’s meal prep in disguise.

• Season a boneless pork shoulder with adobo seasoning, then brown it on sauté mode.

• Add chipotles in adobo, garlic, and a bottle of beer. Chicken or beef broth works if you’d rather skip the alcohol.

• Turn on the meat and stew function for 55 minutes, then a 30-minute natural release to keep it tender.

• Shred, return it to the juices, taste, and done.

This is good in tacos one night, burrito bowls the next, quesadillas after that.

Serve on warm corn tortillas with whatever cold toppings you’ve got.

The tools that make it easy:

1. The Instant Pot I’ve had for 10 years.

2. Chipotle peppers in adobo. Flavor bomb.

3. Adobo seasoning. Works for tons of other dishes too.

3. Salsa Verde Chicken (a meal-prep MVP)

Chicken breasts, a jar of salsa verde, a chopped jalapeño, diced green chilies, and a few spices.

• Eight minutes on high pressure.

• 10-minute natural release.

• Shred, then fold in cilantro, green onion, and lime at the end.

Salt it after cooking, because salsa verde brands vary in saltiness.

This recipe is great for meal prep. It freezes beautifully and works on tostadas, in tacos, over rice, or on a salad all week.

Worth having: glass meal prep containers for reheating leftovers into a quick lunch.

4. Lazy Lasagna Pasta (the crowd-pleaser)

• Brown ground beef with onion and seasonings on sauté mode.

• Stir in marinara.

• Dump bow-tie pasta on top. Pour over water.

• Do not stir.

• Lock the lid. Four minutes on high pressure.

• Stir in ricotta, or dollop it on top so picky eaters can opt out.

All the lasagna comfort!

Zero oven, zero layering, zero hour-long bake.

This is the dinner everyone asks for again, and it comes together in the time it takes to set the table.

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Turn These Into Easy Summer Meal Prep

The reason these recipes are great for the summer meal routine is that they prep ahead like a dream. Two things that keep you out of a hot kitchen all week:

• Batch the carnitas and salsa verde chicken on one Sunday. Both make enough for several meals and reheat in minutes. No oven, no stovetop, no sweat.

• Portion into glass containers so lunches and second dinners are grab-and-go.

Tools and Pantry Staples That Make These Meals Work

You barely need anything beyond the pot. But a few things earn their keep:

• The Instant Pot itself. A 6-quart handles all of these with room for leftovers.

• Knorr chicken bouillon. No cartons cluttering the pantry. Runs salty, so taste first.

• Disposable cutting boards. For the chipotles, so you don't stain your good cutting board orange.

• Glass meal prep containers. The carnitas and salsa verde chicken are built for prep-ahead lunches.

Print the Recipes and Cook From them All Summer!

Summer Instant Pot Recipes

696KB ∙ PDF file

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If the part that wears you down is deciding what to cook in the first place, the Dinner: Done Meal Planner is the system I built to take that decision off your plate for the whole year.

And if you want a whole stack of easy pantry recipes in one place, my cookbook’s on Amazon.

Now go make dinner without melting! Done is better than perfect, especially during the summer.

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So I stood in the kitchen, opened the fridge like the dinner was going to cook itself, and almost ordered $80 of takeout for four people.

That moment right there is where the grocery money actually goes.

Not the price of ground beef (which is insane now, btw).

The Tuesday with no plan.

And I am not interested in spending my one precious Sunday afternoon clipping coupons for 30 cents off a can of beans.

So here’s the system I actually use. No coupons. No four-hour shopping trips. No stockpiling for a bunker.

It comes down to three things:

• A few cashback apps that pay you for the groceries you’re already buying.

• A cheap store (Walmart or Aldi is my pick).

• A plan, so you stop buying random stuff that rots in the crisper drawer.

The apps are the easy part. Let’s start there, because you can set them up tonight.

Start With These Apps (This Part is Free, Do It Today)

If you do nothing else from this whole post, do this.

It’s not going to make me a millionaire, but it does save me an average of $68 a month.

Cashback apps are the laziest possible way to save money on groceries, because they give you money back on the food you were buying anyway. You’re not changing what’s in your cart. You’re just getting paid a little bit for it.

I use four and I stack them every time I shop.

• Fetch: scan any receipt for points toward gift cards. Easiest one. Doesn’t matter where you shop. You snap a photo, and you’re done. My fave one!

• Rakuten: cash back on online orders and Walmart pickup. If you already do pickup or delivery, this is free money. There is a Chrome extension that works almost every time I shop online, too. The money adds up over time.

• Ibotta: straight-up grocery rebates. Add offers, link your store account, or scan the receipt, and it sends money back. This is one of my biggest money-makers.

• Upside: cash back on gas. If I decide to go to the store, I fill up on the way there, so the grocery trip pays for part of itself before I’ve even bought anything.

Now here’s the truth, because the internet is full of people lying about this.

Cashback apps will not make you rich.

Anyone promising you a side hustle from scanning receipts is selling you something shady. But played consistently, it adds up more than you’d think.

I’ve earned $6,525 in cash back across these apps over about eight years. Just from scanning receipts and tapping a few offers on groceries I was buying anyway.

That’s around $816 a year for the effort of taking a photo at checkout. Your number won’t match mine, exactly.

It depends on how much you shop and how consistent you are. But I’ll take eight years of found grocery money every time.

Here’s the thing, though. The apps are not where the real money is.

The real money is in the part nobody wants to hear, because it’s less fun than free apps.

It’s in the plan. It’s the difference between a $101 cart and a $250 cart with the exact same food in it.

That’s the part I’m going to walk you through next: the cheap-store strategy, the ten dinners I made for around $100, the five habits that actually move the number, and the printable recipes and shopping list so you can recreate the whole thing.

Paid subscribers get the rest, along with new meal plans every week. 👇

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If this is the salad you’re used to, you might think you hate salads.

You might think that they’re boring. Or an afterthought tacked on to a meal so you don’t feel bad about eating a dinner with no veggies 😅

Can a salad be a meal? A dinner meal?

These 3 salads definitely can!

They’re crunchy. They’re loaded. Every one of them is filling enough to be a whole dinner.

Your printable recipes are waiting at the bottom of this post!

Let’s go.

A few of the tool links below are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I make a couple of cents, you pay the same. I only recommend products I actually use.

Why these salads work

Summer is peak salad season for an obvious reason. When it’s 90 degrees, nobody wants to stand over the stove.

But most summer salads fall into one of two traps.

They’re either side salads cosplaying as a meal, or they need three specialty ingredients you’ll use once and then watch rot in the crisper drawer.

Everything here is grocery-store-normal. Chickpeas, pasta, chicken, and strawberries. Stuff you can grab at any Walmart or Aldi.

Each has real protein, real crunch, and a homemade dressing that takes five minutes.

1. Crispy Chili-Lime Chickpea Salad

This is my current obsession because of the crispy chickpeas and the jalapeno-cilantro dressing!

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$51.97.

That fed two people dinner all week. No sad beans and rice allowed!

I don’t usually cook for two over here. My kitchen runs on feeding a family of four. But a lot of you have told me you’re cooking for one or two, and in about four years, when both my kids are out of the house, I’ll be right there with you.

This is the first one in a little series I’m calling Table for Two. One Aldi list: around $50 for a week of dinners.

Here’s what I made.

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What did $51.97 actually get me?

Mixed greens for $2.59 (organic), which I’ll take. Coleslaw mix for $1.89. Sweet corn at $2.39. A pound of thin-sliced chicken breast for $4.79 that cooks in four minutes flat.

Quick PSA. Hy-Vee was advertising the same corn for $5 that week. Aldi doesn’t inflate it. If you compare the same items, Aldi usually wins, and it’s not close.

One limitation at Aldi: you can’t buy a single bell pepper or a single lemon. You buy the bag. So you’ll have extra. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I’ll show you why in the prep section.

The four dinners

Mediterranean hummus veggie wraps. Olive tapenade hummus, tzatziki, crumbled feta, and dressed greens with cucumber, tomato, and pepper. I found the olive tapenade hummus at Aldi, and it’s stupid good. Grab it if you see it!

Burger bowls with corn on the cob. Adam calls these burger salads. He’s not wrong. Burgers smashed thin between wax paper, cooked on the stove, piled on greens with a quick special sauce. One pound of beef makes four. That’s two dinners, not one.

Lemon ricotta pasta with chicken. My favorite of the week. Whole milk ricotta, the zest and juice of a lemon, parmesan, and a little starchy pasta water to bring it together. I tasted it and said, out loud, 10 out of 10 to no one. Make this one! Promise me.

Peanut chicken wraps. A peanut-sauce slaw with grated carrot, green onion, and cilantro, plus marinated chicken in a wrap. The same peanut sauce I use for spring rolls. It slaps (as the kids say).

Now, the chicken story.

I bought Aldi’s pre-marinated chicken to test it. Opened the package, gave it a sniff, and nope. Off.

I’m not about to gamble with chicken, so I pulled breasts from my freezer and seasoned them myself.

You can’t always follow a script. Sometimes the chicken smells weird, and you have to move on and pivot!

Here’s why meal planning like this works

I say this all the time.

The reason dinner falls apart at 5:30 is not that you’re lazy or unmotivated. It’s decision fatigue. By the time you’re standing in front of the fridge, you’ve already made a few hundred decisions that day.

So I remove the friction before the week starts. I don’t meal prep full meals. I prep the components.

I map out the meals first, then prep the pieces.

Wash and dry the produce the day I get home. Cilantro is filthy, so soak it and you’ll see the dirt sink to the bottom of the bowl. Wilted green onions come back to life in cold water in ten minutes. Cut peppers go in a container with a paper towel in the bottom and last five or six days.

That’s where your “extra” bag of peppers goes, by the way. Into everything, all week.

The free grocery list and all the recipes are in the PDF below. Take it to Aldi, make the lemon ricotta pasta first, and come tell me I was right.

Cooking for 2 at Aldi for $50

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Download the PDF for the grocery list (with prices) + recipes!

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Want the full cook-along? Watch it here!

And if you cook for a bigger crew, the Dinner Done Club does this every single week for a family of four. Five dinners, the grocery list with prices, and a prep sheet that takes 45 minutes on a Sunday.

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I’m going to be honest with you. This was a low-effort cooking week, and I planned it that way on purpose.

I travel for work about two weeks a month, and this was one of those stretches. When I’m running on fumes, the last thing I want is a recipe with sixteen steps and a sink full of dishes.

This week is easy mode. A slow cooker dump-and-go. A “lasagna” with zero noodle-boiling. Salmon that’s done in under ten minutes of actual work.

Done is better than perfect. Especially this week.

Five dinners. One grocery trip. $100 or less.

For the best Dinner: Done experience, please use a desktop browser.

You can download the PDF below. It includes the menu, grocery list, prep sheet, and all five recipes. ⬇️

Dinner Done Week 102 Easy Mode Final

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How to navigate this week’s plan:

1. Grab the grocery list. Check off anything you already have in your fridge, freezer, and pantry. Don’t skip the pantry staples list.

2. Shop for or order (my preference) the rest of the groceries.

3. Check your schedule and decide which night you’ll make each dish. Put the slow cooker soup on your busiest day. It’s a dump-it-in-the-morning-and-walk-away kind of meal.

4. Cook the salmon early in the week while it’s freshest.

5. Set aside 45 minutes for the prep sheet.

6. Cook and eat.

This week’s dinners:

🍝 Easy Ravioli “Lasagna” Bake

All the flavor of lasagna, none of the noodle-boiling, none of the layering you have to think about. You brown the beef, layer frozen cheese ravioli with the meat sauce, top with mozzarella, and bake.

This is the meal I assemble on a Sunday and bake on a Wednesday. The whole thing holds in the fridge for two or three days, so you can build it ahead and just slide it into the oven when you walk in the door.

My teenagers inhale it. I have never once had a complaint about this dish, and if you have teenagers, you know that is a win.

If you’re short on time, build it in a disposable foil pan so there’s nothing to scrub.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the cheese ravioli: any frozen filled pasta works. Beef, spinach, mushroom, whatever your store has.

• For the ground beef: ground turkey or chicken.

🍔 Burger Bowls

A burger without the bun, in a bowl, with the toppings piled on top. The special sauce is the focal point, so make it first and let it sit in the fridge while you cook.

I make the patties and the sauce ahead on prep day. Then on burger night, it’s just cook, assemble, eat. Fifteen minutes, maybe.

Make your patties thinner and wider than you think they need to be. They shrink when they cook, and nobody wants a burger the size of a hockey puck.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the ground beef: ground chicken, ground turkey, or Beyond Meat.

🐟 Lemon Basil Salmon + Parmesan Orzo

This is the one that looks like you tried, and you did not try very hard.

The lemon-basil butter comes together in one bowl, the salmon cooks in one pan, and the orzo is a one-pot side.

I live in Eastern Iowa, so I buy frozen salmon. It’s almost always fresher than the fish that’s been sitting in the case. Walmart sells a 2 lb. bag of skinless filets that thaws fast in a bowl of cold water. Just cook it within a day or two of thawing.

The lemon-basil butter can be made ahead and stored in the fridge. It will firm up, so let it soften or re-melt before you pour it over the salmon.

For the orzo, I skip the broth cartons entirely. I reconstitute chicken bouillon, one teaspoon per cup of water. No cans taking up space in my pantry.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the salmon: shrimp, cod, halibut, or chicken breast.

• For the orzo: any small pasta, or serve the salmon over plain rice if you’re really pressed.

🧀 Swiss Chicken Bake

Ten minutes of hands-on work, then the oven does the rest. Chicken, Swiss cheese, a creamy sauce, and a buttery stuffing topping. It tastes like a casserole your aunt would bring to a potluck, in the best way.

This is another one you can fully assemble up to three days ahead and bake the night you want it. That’s the kind of meal that saves a travel week.

The recipe calls for a splash of dry white wine. If you don’t keep wine around, mix 2 tablespoons of white vinegar with water to make half a cup. It works.

I serve this with green beans simmered on the stove with a little butter, salt, and pepper while the chicken bakes.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the white wine: the vinegar-and-water swap above, or just chicken broth.

• For the side: any vegetable you’ve got, or dinner rolls if you want to go full comfort.

🥣 Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup

A hug in a bowl, and the single laziest dinner on this list. You put everything in the slow cooker in the morning and you do not think about it again until dinner.

Shred the chicken near the end, add the egg noodles, and let them cook in the broth for the last half hour. A squeeze of lemon at the end is what makes it taste like more than the sum of its parts.

Don’t skip it.

Adam handles dinner on the days I’m traveling, and this is the one I leave him. He cannot mess it up, and I mean that as the highest compliment a recipe can earn.

Serve it with saltines and sliced cheddar and call it done.

💡 Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the egg noodles: any pasta, or rice.

• Toss in a bag of frozen mixed veggies if you want to stretch it further.

Let me know if you make any of these.

And if there’s something you want to see in a future plan, leave a comment. I want this to be as useful as possible for you.

Tell me what you cooked this week!

I was on Substack, scrolling through my feed, and the photo pulled me in.

Something was off.

The basil leaves are too perfect. The lemon wedge is extremely large in comparison to everything else.

Also. Is there lemon in pesto? I thought I was going crazy.

No.

Traditional pesto doesn’t have lemon.

I looked at the written recipe. There is no lemon listed.

The block of Parmesan is uncanny. A wedge of Parmesan doesn’t look like that.

There is a huge bowl of pine nuts in the background. Pine nuts are expensive. This is a budget page.

Why would a huge bowl of pine nuts be in the background of the photo when pine nuts are $42.88 a pound?!

Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof.

It was AI-generated.

And I was pissed off before I read a single ingredient.

Not because the photo was ugly.

I checked out because, instantly, my trust in that creator was gone. Poof. Vanished.

Here’s what you need to understand.

The way most creators think about recipe photos is wrong. And in a world flooded with AI, that wrong thinking is about to cost them everything.

The old way of thinking treats a recipe photo as sacred. It must be perfect.

Food blogs have been around for decades. Long before AI-generated images were even a thing.

If you were a food blogger in the early 2000s, you had to have photography skills.

You needed a DSLR camera. You had to know how to shoot in manual. You had to have a nice lens. Know how to shoot a flat-lay in natural light.

The message was: your food needs to look appetizing. Make it pretty. Make it pop. Make people hungry enough to click.

The photo was your wrapping paper, and prettier wrapping paper is always better.

This is the logic that makes an AI photo feel harmless. If the photo is just decoration, then who cares how you got it? You needed something attractive at the top of the post. AI gives you something attractive. Problem solved.

I understand the temptation.

Here’s what they think:

• They actually cooked the dish.

• They have a real photo.

But their kitchen lighting was bad that night, or the plating looked sad, or the photo came out grainy.

So they think: my real photo looks amateur. An AI photo looks professional. The professional one will make my audience trust me more.

It feels reasonable. But it’s also completely backwards.

In a world filled with AI-generated images, we need real photos

Contrary to popular belief, a recipe photo’s real job was never to be pretty.

It’s job was to be proof.

Proof that you actually made the recipe you’re telling me I should make.

When you put a photo at the top of a recipe, you are making a claim.

You are saying, “I was in my kitchen. I bought these ingredients. I followed these steps. This is what happened. Here is the evidence.”

The photo is like a receipt. It documents that a transaction was made.

This is the world most creators don’t realize they’re operating in. They think they’re in the decoration business. But they’re actually in the evidence business. Every single recipe photo is proof that they cooked that dish.

AI food photography is not a shortcut. It is an erosion of trust with your audience.

Here is a photo for you to compare. Pizza tortellini.

Put the two side by side.

In the 2002 food blogging world, a photo’s value is how good it looks. In the 2026 world, a photo’s value is whether it’s true.

In 2026, AI is fabrication. Plain and simple.

What is the definition of fabrication?

fabrication /ˌfabrəˈkāSHən/

Deception: The act of inventing false information, data, or stories in order to deceive someone; a lie or falsehood.

Look at the photo on the left. The pepperoni is TOO glossy. The tortellini has an uncanny shape. What is going on with the lift of the spoon and the cheese? Who knows.

The photo on the right - you can tell it’s perfectly imperfect. The basil garnish is a bit browned at the edges. Which is exactly what happens when you put fresh basil on a hot dish. The fork has bits of onion on it. The tortellini shape looks real.

The photo on the right is what I trust.

The actual photo is attached to a recipe. As soon as I see that, I trust the creator. It is evidence that they have made the recipe they are telling me to make.

Here’s the problem. People think a better-looking photo is always better.

I can tell you exactly when an AI food image doesn’t bother me.

A mood image gets a pass. A cozy header photo of a coffee cup and a blanket on an article about winter meal planning is setting a vibe. It isn’t attached to a specific recipe. It isn’t promising you a result. It makes no claim, so it can’t break one.

I have a good friend who has been a food blogger for 16 years. I asked her if she has ever used AI-generated photos for a finished recipe.

“I hate it. It’s so dishonest.”

There it is. A Veteran food blogger.

An image that’s attached to a recipe is evidence. And it has to be real.

This is also why AI food photos on Pinterest drive me up a wall. A Pinterest pin isn’t a mood board. It’s a clickable promise. There’s a recipe on the other side of that image. The photo is making a claim about something.

An AI-generated one is an absolute lie.

There’s a test, and it’s simple.

Is the photo making a promise? If yes, then it has to be real.

Here’s the thing: people think a better-looking photo is always better.

It isn’t. And that’s the part creators get wrong.

I commented on a creator’s food photo once. I pointed out that it was clearly AI-generated.

Their defense was the most common: the original photo was poorly lit, so they used AI to make a better one.

Wait. What?

They had a real photo. They made the food. The evidence was right there on their phone.

And instead of posting the dimly lit proof, they deleted it and replaced it with a fabrication.

They didn’t fix their photo. They replaced a true thing with a false one.

A poorly lit real photo still does its job. A grainy, slightly sad, badly styled real photo still proves you cooked.

“Badly lit” and “fake” are two completely different problems.

For the record, editing a real photo is not the same thing as using AI to generate a fake recipe photo.

This week, every photo in my meal plan was shot on my iPhone. I adjusted the lighting and sharpness in Canva.

That’s making real evidence look its best. I cooked the meals. I took the photos.

Generating a photo with AI is essentially manufacturing evidence that never existed.

iPhone photos are a clean receipt. AI-generated photos are a forgery.

Once I catch one fake photo, I question everything.

Here’s what happens in my head when I spot an AI-Generated recipe photo.

My first move is to go back through that creator’s recipes and find every AI photo they’ve used.

Then I think about this every time they post.

Every recipe that creator posts from now on, I approach with suspicion. I don’t trust the photo until I’ve checked it. Every new post starts in a hole and has to climb out.

That’s the cost of eroding trust, and it’s bigger than most creators realize.

The fake photo doesn’t discredit one recipe. It discredits your entire catalog. Everything you’ve published. Everything you ever will.

Because once I know you’ll show me one fake thing, I have no way of knowing what else is fake.

Did you actually test this recipe?

Did you even write it, or did AI?

The photo was what I could verify. You took that away.

You don’t lose one reader on one recipe.

You pay a trust tax on every recipe for the rest of your time as a creator.

And that tax does not get refunded.

Real food photography is about to become the premium signal.

I’ll be honest about the thing that worries me.

Right now, those of us who are tech-savvy can spot AI food photos fairly well. There’s almost always a tell. The penne that bends wrong. The cilantro that isn’t cilantro.

But plenty of people can’t see it at all. My boomer family member looks at obviously AI images and believes they’re real. And the technology is getting better every month. There may come a day when none of us can tell.

That worry is exactly why honest creators need to plant their flag right now.

The window where your real photo visibly reads as real is still open. Use it. While the tells are still detectable, every authentic, slightly imperfect photo you post is doing double work. It’s documenting your recipe, and it’s building a reputation as someone who shows up with real evidence.

The trust compounds.

The reader who learns today that your photos are always real, that your recipes always work, that you actually cook every single thing you publish, is the reader who will still trust you when the technology gets good enough to fool everyone.

You’re not just posting a photo of dinner. You’re building the kind of credibility that survives the day the photo stops being proof.

The creators using AI to fake it are borrowing against a future they won’t have.

The creators keeping it real, bad lighting and all, are building something that lasts.

A slightly imperfect real photo isn’t the amateur option anymore.

It’s your whole brand.

For the inaugural issue of Dinner: Done, we are doing a week of family favorites! These are meals I make over and over, and my entire family eats them without fail.

This week’s menu features a clever hack for leftover taco meat (use it in chili!), creamy chicken and dumplings, a super quick Instant Pot bourbon chicken, and my kids’ favorite meal - glazed salmon with rice and cucumbers.

The best part? All for just around $85! (excluding pantry staples)

For the best Dinner: Done experience, please use a desktop browser.

You can download the PDF here, which includes the menu, grocery list, prep sheet, and recipes. ⬇️

Dinner Done Club 101 A Week Of Favorites

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How to navigate this week’s plan:

1. Grab the grocery list. Check off any items you’ve already got in your fridge, freezer, and pantry. Don’t forget to check for the pantry staples as well!

2. Shop for or order (my preference!) the remaining groceries.

3. Check your schedule and decide which days you’ll make each dish. Note: this week, tacos need to be made before the chili so that you’ll have leftover meat.

4. Set aside 45 minutes to complete the prep sheet.

5. Cook and eat!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click and buy — at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

This week’s dinners:

🍚 Salmon + Rice Bowls with Cucumber Salad

Easy, quick, delicious, and healthy. Garlic-soy salmon filet with fluffy rice and an addictive cucumber salad. This is my kids’ favorite meal, hands down. They request it at least once a week!

As I live in the Midwest, I prefer buying frozen salmon as it’s typically the freshest for me. Walmart sells a 2 lb. bag of frozen, skinless salmon filets that works great. They are also individually packaged, so you can thaw as many as you need. I prefer skinless salmon, but you can typically save some money by buying skin-on filets.

Salmon thaws quickly in a bowl of cold water. You can also thaw it in the refrigerator. Ensure you cook it within 1-2 days of thawing.

The glaze for the salmon can be made ahead and stored in a jar in the refrigerator. If you’ve got a bit of extra time during prep day, cook 1.5 cups of the rice as well and store that in the fridge.

I don’t recommend making the cucumber salad more than 1-2 days in advance, as it can become soggy depending on how thin you slice the cucumbers.

💡Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the salmon: shrimp, cod, halibut, or chicken breast.

• For the white rice: brown rice, quinoa, or couscous.

🍗 Chicken + Dumplings

An easy, weeknight version that has all the classic flavors with half the work. We take a shortcut by using diced chicken breast and frozen mixed veggies.

I didn’t grow up eating chicken and dumplings, but I did grow up having dumplings in my potato soup (anyone else, or is that a unique experience?). As an adult, I’ve learned to make this on weeknights because it’s easy enough to throw together, and literally no one in my house complains.

You might think it takes a long time to make dumplings on a weeknight, but the dry ingredients can be prepped ahead of time. Then, all you need to do is whisk in the heavy cream and drop them into the stew. My favorite tool for stirring quick doughs is a Danish dough whisk - highly recommend getting one! You also might think it’s quicker to use an ice cream scoop for the dumplings; however, the batter is so thick that it’s actually easier to use 2 teaspoons.

If you want to make this dish even quicker during the week, you can prep the stew portion ahead of time and refrigerate. When it’s time to cook, heat it back up on the stove until simmering, then proceed with the dumplings.

💡Need ideas for substitutions?

• I haven’t tried it myself, but I think you could easily make this dish vegetarian by adding potatoes and more veggies instead of the chicken, and swapping veggie bouillon for chicken bouillon.

🌮 Crunchy Taco Supremes

A crunchy taco supreme from Taco Bell will run you $2.89 each. For the price of 5, you can make this dinner for your whole family (12 tacos).

The secret to fast food taco meat is that it’s so fine and tender. We replicate this at home using an Instant Pot. If you don’t have one, you can also simmer the meat mixture on the stove for 15-20 minutes.

There will be quite a bit of liquid when the meat is done cooking, so make sure you use a slotted spoon when serving up the tacos.

It’s hard to beat a crispy ground beef taco, but you can also use this same recipe to make taco salad, soft shell tacos, burritos, etc! I’ve been using this recipe for years, and it is my go-to for taco meat. You can double or triple the recipe and freeze the extra for whenever you need a 15-minute meal.

For the Taco Bell rice, you’ll need 2/3 cup tomato sauce from the 29 oz. can. Save the rest in the fridge for when you make the chili.

💡Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the ground beef: ground turkey or chicken.

• For the crispy taco shells: flour tortillas, corn tortillas, or Doritos (for walking tacos).

🌶️ Chili and Cornbread

You’ll need the leftover meat from taco night for this chili. If you don’t have leftovers, you can brown a pound of ground beef, drain it, then proceed with the recipe.

Chili is something I rarely use a recipe for, and the flavor also depends on the acidity/sweetness of the canned tomatoes used. Because of this, I encourage you to adjust the seasonings to taste.

I like to serve this chili with cornbread. We prefer a sweeter cornbread; my favorite brands are Duncan Hines Dolly Parton and Famous Daves.

You might have leftovers, and that’s good, because chili gets better the next day! You can use the leftovers to top a baked potato, or combine with cooked macaroni for a quick chili mac.

💡Need ideas for substitutions?

• For the ground beef: ground turkey or chicken.

• Instead of saltines, I actually really love my chili with Fritos!

🥡 Bourbon Chicken, Rice, and Broccoli

Bourbon chicken became popular in mall food courts in the 80s and 90s as American-Chinese fast-food chains expanded across the US. I never grew up eating this dish, but I make it now for my kids, and they love it!

This is the quickest dinner you’ll make all week. It’s super simple because you literally combine everything in the Instant Pot, and it cooks in 6 minutes. You can also make this into a freezer meal by combining everything in a gallon Ziploc bag and freezing it. When you’re ready to cook, thaw it overnight in the fridge and pop it into the Instant Pot at dinnertime.

I serve this with white rice (cooked in my absolute workhorse of a rice cooker) and steamed broccoli. The grocery list calls for frozen broccoli florets, but if you prefer fresh, that’s cool too.

💡Need ideas for substitutions?

• If you’d rather not cook with alcohol, you can omit it or substitute for an equal amount of apple juice mixed with a tablespoon of vinegar.

Let me know if you try any of these recipes! Thanks for being here. 💕

If you have any feedback, please leave a comment! I’d love to make this as useful as possible for you.

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She’s thinking about college visits. She’s applying for scholarships. She’s in extracurriculars and keeping a 4.0 GPA. She already knows she wants to be a physical therapist.

I told her that as long as she stays in-state, her dad and I will cover her college costs in full. Even through a doctorate if she wants it.

She acts like this is all normal.

Like, of course, her parents would support her.

Nobody ever said anything like that to me.

Nobody ever asked what I wanted to be.

Nobody ever told me I could be anything at all.

I grew up in a church that taught me my only job was to obey.

I was nine.

My mom had just gone through a divorce and found a high-control, fundamentalist church. Non-denominational, but if you need a comparison, think Pentecostal on steroids.

The schedule looked like this:

• Sunday morning service.

• Sunday night service.

• Wednesday night service.

• Thursday night youth group.

• Saturday morning prayer breakfast.

Five days a week, my childhood revolved around that building and those people.

I remember specifically having to wear t-shirts under my spaghetti-strap tank tops.

• Wear modest clothing. Boys cannot control themselves. We must not tempt them.

• No bright nail polish.

• No piercings beyond a single set of earrings.

• Absolute abstinence until marriage.

• Nobody ever talked to us about sex.

• Nobody talked to us about periods.

• No talking back. Ever.

Men made all the decisions. Women were allowed to speak in church but could never hold a leadership position. The message wasn’t subtle.

Men are the head of the home.

Women submit.

Divorce was highly frowned upon. Even in cases of abuse.

That wasn’t a hypothetical for me. Abuse was my real life.

The most respected man in the church was a monster at home.

My first stepdad was a deacon. He was close friends with the pastor.

At church, he was charming. Respected. A leader.

At home, he was a completely different person.

He beat us with a wooden paddle that had an angry face drawn on it in Sharpie. He had labeled it “The Board of Education.”

When we misbehaved, we had to sit in a metal chair for hours. Sometimes the punishment was the paddle.

Sometimes it was both.

One time, I was watching Hanson on TV. A boy band from the late 90’s, for those of you much younger than me.

He got so mad that he dragged me through the house by my arm and dislocated my shoulder.

He would take the battery out of the car so my mom couldn’t go anywhere.

He turned the water off to the house.

This was control. Calculated and deliberate control over every part of our lives.

And when my mom went to the pastor for help?

She was told to stay.

The church didn’t fail to protect us. It actively protected him. He was their guy! A deacon, a friend.

The girls at home who were getting beaten with a Sharpie-labeled paddle didn’t matter as much as keeping up appearances.

This went on from the time I was 9 until I was 15. The entire window where I was supposed to be figuring out who I was and what I wanted to become.

My mom didn’t leave that marriage until after my dad filed for custody and won.

She lost her kids before she left the man who was hurting them.

The church told her to stay.

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Nobody ever asked me what I wanted to be.

Not my mom.

Not the church.

Not even my grandparents, who were the safest and most loving part of my childhood. They saved us from a lot. But they were also from a generation that didn’t normalize higher education, especially for girls.

My mom’s approach to parenting was “get these kids to 18, and they’re not my problem anymore.”

College was never discussed. Career was never discussed.

The assumption, if any, was that I’d grow up and be a wife and a mom.

It’s not like my dreams were crushed, they were just never planted.

While other girls were thinking about what they wanted be when they grew up, I was making breakfast for my younger sister and getting her to school. I started doing that in fifth grade.

I was ten years old, parenting a five-year-old, because nobody else was going to do it.

I was a good student.

A people pleaser.

School was my escape.

But nobody looked at that good student and said: “Hey, you’re smart, you could do anything you wanted!”

I didn’t really choose my career. I chose the fastest way out.

I started working 32 hours a week when I was 16.

First, as a telemarketer. Then retail.

When that store closed, I became a CNA (certified nurse’s assistant) at 17.

My parents provided food, clothes, and a roof. That was it. If I wanted anything beyond basic survival, I had to earn it myself.

While working as a CNA, I realized I liked taking care of elderly people. And I knew I could get through nursing school in three years.

So that’s what I did.

Not because I explored my options and landed on nursing. Because it was the fastest path to an income.

The fastest path to never depending on anyone else.

I had watched my mom jump from marriage to marriage looking for someone to take care of her.

I watched her stay in an abusive marriage because she had no viable financial options.

I recognized the pattern. And I chose to break it.

But here’s what I think, many years later.

I didn’t get to choose.

I got to survive.

Education didn’t just give me a career. It set me free.

I stopped going to church when I moved in with my dad at 15. But leaving a building is not the same as leaving the belief system.

I was raised with the salvation gospel. We were the only ones going to heaven. Everyone else was going to hell.

Then I got to college in a bigger city, and suddenly the world was a lot bigger than a town of 20,000 people.

I became aware of the billions of people in the world who are Buddhist. Catholic. Muslim. Hindu. Good people living meaningful lives.

And I started asking the question nobody in my church could answer: why can’t those people get into heaven too?

It all unraveled from there. Education gave me the tools to think for myself.

And once I started thinking for myself, none of it made sense anymore.

The submission, the silence, the rules about spaghetti straps and nail polish.

A deacon beating little girls with a paddle, and the pastor telling their mother to stay.

A woman, not protecting her own children from abuse and coercive control.

None of it was from god.

It was from men who needed to control women.

And the church was the tool they used to do it.

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I’m smart. I’m hardworking. I could have worked for NASA.

This realization has only hit me in the last couple of years.

I don’t regret my decisions. I did what I had to do to survive, and I built a life I’m very proud of.

I have a career. A husband who’s my partner. Two kids who are going to have all the opportunities I didn’t.

But I’ve met so many smart, successful women in the last few years.

Women whose parents told them, “You can do anything.”

Women who got to explore their interests, choose their major, and take their time.

And I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel a twinge of jealousy.

Not jealousy of what they have, but jealousy of who they got to become.

I’m smart. I’m hardworking.

If someone had planted the seed when I was 10 that I could do anything I wanted, who knows what I would have done.

I could have been a doctor. A lawyer. I could have worked for NASA if I wanted to.

But nobody told me I could.

So I never even considered it.

The question “What do you want to be?” was never asked. And you can’t answer a question nobody asks you.

My daughter will never wonder if someone believes in her.

She’s 16 and planning for college with more confidence and initiative than I had at 22.

She knows she’s smart and capable. Because her parents have shown her every single day that her ambition matters.

That her education matters.

That her future belongs to her.

That her parents are right behind her.

I couldn’t pay for my daughter’s college if I hadn’t broken the cycle.

I couldn’t promise her a doctorate if I’d followed the path my family laid out for me.

Every opportunity she has exists because I chose to do it differently.

I was a 10-year-old making my sister breakfast because nobody else was going to do it.

My daughter is a 16-year-old scheduling her own ACTs because she knows exactly who she wants to become.

This is the difference that’s made when all of a sudden, a generation decides to do things differently.

She had an associate’s degree in secretarial work that she earned before I was born. She worked at an insurance office for a little while. Then she quit after I came along and didn’t work again for over a decade.

She was 32 when my dad cheated on her, and they got a divorce.

My younger sister was two.

My mom had no career. No savings. No recent work history.

No financial identity outside of being someone’s wife.

My uncle told me recently, “Your mom never recovered after that divorce.”

He’s right. She didn’t.

This is what all the SAHM influencers don’t want you to know.

Millions of women are one bad day away from the same exact situation.

They just don’t believe it yet.

This is what they tell themselves.

“My marriage is different. We’re solid.”

I’m sure my mom believed that too.

She was trusting. She genuinely thought they had a good thing. There were no warning signs she could see. She was completely blindsided.

Infidelity is still the number one cited cause at 22%. Financial stress is second at 19%.

Your marriage might be wonderful, and I genuinely hope it is.

But building your entire financial future on the assumption that it will ALWAYS be wonderful is a hope.

And, as I tell people when leading projects at work, “hope is not an action plan.”

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“I can always go back to work if I need to.”

I feel like this myth does the most damage.

After my mom’s divorce, she did what she thought she had to do. She went back to school. She got another associate’s degree. She graduated and got a job.

And she ended up right back where she’d started a decade earlier. A secretary at an engineering office. Same level and same pay bracket.

Ten years behind every woman who’d stayed in the workforce.

The “I can always go back” plan sounds reasonable in theory.

In reality, the workforce doesn’t pause and wait for you. Your skills decline. Your network disappears. Your resume has a gap that hiring managers absolutely notice and will point out.

My mom never reached financial stability on her own. Not once.

“He’ll take care of me, even if things go wrong.”

My mom got $150 a week in child support in the early 90s. That was actually decent for the time.

But my dad was a self-employed truck driver. There was no pension to split. No 401k. No equity in a house. She walked away with $600 a month and whatever she could earn on her own.

Which, after a decade at home, wasn’t much.

She was one of the lucky ones. Less than 25% of single-mother families actually receive child support at all.

It gets worse with age. Women who divorce after 50 see their standard of living decline by 45%. For men, it’s 21%.

Divorced women have roughly 50% less retirement savings than married women.

The safety net most women think they have is fiction. Even when the system “works,” it’s not enough to build a life on.

Your kids grow up. Then what?

I want to be careful here because I’m not talking about my mom on this one. I’m talking about a pattern I’ve watched play out with women in my own family.

Women who poured everything into being a mom. Every ounce of identity, energy, and purpose went into their kids.

And then the kids grew up.

And there was nothing. No career to go back to. No sense of self that existed outside of someone else’s schedule.

No answer to the question “what do you do?” that didn’t start and end with their children.

I saw that pattern early and it scared me. I couldn’t wait to go back to work after maternity leave. Not because I didn’t love my kids.

Because I knew I needed an identity outside of them.

When your entire identity is “mom,” you’re not just financially vulnerable. You’re existentially vulnerable.

“This is what a good mom does.”

After I had my first kid, a male family member said to me: “Well, I guess if you want someone else to raise your kids...”

I didn’t respond because I knew it was bullshit.

But that comment? That is the sneaky guilt trip disguised as concern that keeps women out of the workforce and financially dependent on someone else’s income.

The culture that glorifies stay-at-home motherhood is the same culture that provides absolutely zero safety net when it doesn’t work out.

No pension for the years you spent raising kids. No career credit for managing a household. No guaranteed income when the person you depend on decides to leave.

I’m not entrusting my financial future to a man. Even if he’s my husband.

That’s not a statement about my marriage, because we have a great one and will be married for 20 years this year.

But I’m a realist.

What I chose instead (and what I’m teaching my kids)

I watched my mom jump from marriage to marriage, looking for financial security she never built for herself. When her first marriage failed, she remarried quickly. When that one failed, she remarried again.

She never worked again after that job as a secretary at the engineering office.

She passed away in 2021 from Covid.

She never broke the cycle.

I broke it on purpose.

I have a 16-year-old daughter who wants to be a pediatric physical therapist. I have a 13-year-old son who wants to be an engineer. They both know college isn’t optional.

I tell them: no one is coming to save you.

My kids watch how their dad and I live. They see what education and two incomes create. More opportunities. More stability. More choices. They see it compared to families around them with fewer options, and they’re connecting the dots on their own.

One of the reasons I CAN help pay for their college is because I work.

Being a working mom is hard. In fact, it’s brutal when you have babies and toddlers.

But you know what’s harder?

Being 32 with two kids, no income, no career, and a $600-a-month child support check.

I know because I watched it happen. And it sure as hell isn’t happening to me or my daughter.

You are not imagining it, and you’re not overspending.

You’re not suddenly terrible at budgeting.

Your grocery bill is genuinely, measurably, provably higher than it used to be.

And the next few months are not going to be easier.

I know that’s not exactly a fun thing to read.

But I’d rather give you the real picture than let you feel like you’re the problem, because you’re not.

Let me break down what’s actually happening, and more importantly, what can you do about it right now??

The State of Your Grocery Cart in 2026

The USDA is projecting that grocery prices will rise about 3% overall this year. That sounds manageable until you look at specific categories.

• Beef is up about 15% compared to a year ago. Ground beef now averages $6.75 a pound nationally.

• Coffee is up nearly 20% over the past year.

• Sugar and sweets are projected to jump 6.7% (more than double their historical average).

• And fresh vegetables (which actually dipped a little in 2025) are headed back up.

The good news:

• Eggs are expected to deflate by 22.2%.

• Dairy is expected to decline by 0.9%.

So there’s that.

But here’s the part nobody’s talking about clearly.

Food economists point out that prices are “downward sticky”.

This means that they tend to rise quickly but almost never fall in a sustained way.

That’s not doom and gloom.

That’s just the new math we’re working with.

Three Things Making This Worse Right Now

Tariffs are hitting your cart harder than the headlines suggest.

• Tariffs are basically a tax on imported goods. And a lot of what’s in your grocery cart is either imported or made with imported ingredients.

• Bananas are virtually all imported, so higher prices largely reflect tariff-driven cost increases.

• Canned foods are also more expensive because tariffs on imported steel raise the cost of tin cans and packaging.

• Ground beef relies on imported lean beef trimmings. Tariffs have added inflationary pressure there, too.

• Italian pasta importers may now face a combined tariff of around 107%, which could more than double costs for consumers.

• The average household is expected to absorb about $600 in additional costs this year due to tariffs, according to the Tax Foundation.

• But lower-income households bear a disproportionately higher share of that burden as a percentage of their income.

The conflict in the Middle East is about to hit your produce aisle.

• This one is just emerging, but it matters. About one-third of global fertilizer ingredients transit through the Strait of Hormuz, and some farmers are already reporting fertilizer cost increases of 30 to 40%.

• Agriculture is also very energy-intensive. About 2% of all U.S. energy goes into farm production. When fuel costs spike, so does the cost of growing, processing, and shipping your food.

• We probably won’t feel this fully at the register for a few more weeks. But it’s coming.

Walmart is replacing all its price tags with digital screens.

• Walmart expects digital shelf labels to be installed in all 4,600 U.S. stores by the end of 2026. As of March 2026, roughly 2,300 locations already use the technology.

• The “official” reason? Efficiency. A Walmart team leader in Ohio says the labels have cut her time on pricing duties by 75%.

• Price changes that used to take days now take minutes.

• The concern: those same tags make it technically possible to change prices at 9 a.m., change them again at 2 p.m., and change them again before the dinner rush — with no incremental cost, because it can be done with the press of a button that updates both the label and the checkout lanes simultaneously. Inc.com

• Walmart says they’re not planning to do that. They also just received two AI pricing patents — one describing an automated markdown system and another outlining a demand forecasting engine that uses machine learning to ingest purchase history, payment methods, and customer identifiers to generate pricing recommendations.

• I’m not saying panic. I’m saying pay attention.

• Senators Ben Ray Luján and Jeff Merkley have introduced the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act, which would ban grocery stores larger than 10,000 square feet from using the technology. So, this is a story that’s still developing.

So What Can You Actually Do?

Here’s the part where I stop being a news anchor and start being useful.

Buy ground beef now and freeze it.

If you see it for less than $6/pound, buy more than you need and freeze it. Beef prices are projected to rise 9.4% this year. Analysts say farmers have been dealing with droughts, high interest rates, and shrinking herds.

This is one of those rare times when stocking up is the right financial move.

Build a pantry buffer on staples.

Canned beans, pasta, rice, oil, canned tomatoes.

Buying a few extra cans when they’re on sale is smart math right now.

Especially with tariff uncertainty still in the air.

Shift your protein mix.

With beef at $6.75 a pound, this is a great time to lean into eggs (finally cheaper), canned fish, chicken thighs, and beans.

I know nobody woke up this morning excited about more bean recipes.

But your budget will thank you.

Take pictures of prices when you see a good deal.

With digital price tags coming to more stores, your best defense is documentation.

If a price changes between the shelf and the register, you have proof of what you saw.

Some states legally require stores to honor shelf prices. Know your rights.

Watch the sales on items that are still cheap.

Pork is actually projected to get slightly cheaper this year, and eggs and dairy are still in a good window.

Stock up on those while the stocking is good.

The Bigger Picture

A lot of things are converging right now.

• Tariffs.

• A conflict affecting fertilizer and fuel.

• A (nefarious??) tech overhaul at the country’s biggest grocery retailer.

• And a federal food assistance program that is expected to cut approximately 4 million people from its rolls once changes are fully implemented (which disproportionately impacts children).

That last one matters even if you’re not directly affected.

• When millions of families lose food assistance, they don’t just stop eating.

• They shift to food banks, lower-quality food, and skipping meals.

• That ripple moves through communities in ways that touch everyone.

None of this is your fault. None of it means you’re failing.

It means the system is genuinely harder right now. And working within a harder system still requires a plan.

One dinner at a time.

Have a question about what to stock up on or swap out right now? Drop it in the comments! I read every single one.

Sources:

• USDA Economic Research Service — Food Price Outlook, 2026

• CNBC — Walmart digital price tags will be in every U.S. store by end of 2026

• Michigan State University — How tariffs are affecting food prices

• CNBC — Household tariff costs: Why some families will pay more than others

• KATU News — Grocery prices poised to rise as Iran war drives fuel and fertilizer costs

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — Many low-income people will soon begin to lose food assistance

• GOBankingRates — Tariffs on groceries in 2026: What to expect

• The Daily Iowan — Iowa City consumers and grocers face financial pressures from tariffs