Welcome to a new series:  Tested Tried & True.  Family meals that pass the test: Taste, Ease, Budget, Time.  I’ll admit, this is a very selfish endeavor, but I’m also hoping that someone else will benefit from my selfishness.

I’m a mom, a wife, a business owner, a foster mom, an adoptive mom, a volunteer, a sister, a daughter, a friend and so on and so forth.

I am not a stay-at-home mom, I work full-time running our real estate brokerage (outside of the home).  While helping our clients and building our business are very important, being a wife and mom is also important. I always find recipe blogs and such all over the web with all sorts of spins on them – but one of the main things I always notice is that the moms are mostly stay-at-home moms. They have worked their meal planning, grocery buying and meal cooking into their full-time at home endeavor.

My goal is not to make sure my kids have perfectly balanced meals, always available healthy choices, that our meals are gourment, that every meal costs 52c per serving, that we always eat meatless, that we always buy local or organic . . .

Rather, my goal is that I feed my family without resorting to pre-made meals as often as possible, that I save as much as I can without spending hours every week or month focused on savings (aka couponing, refunding, shopping various stores, etc), that my kids get as much protein as possible but that they also get filled up (they are all growing boys after all), that what I make for them is as quick and easy as possible, that they like what I’m feeding them, and that I have fun while I’m doing all of this.

Sound like a tall order? In my mind, it’s so much easier than my “not my goals”.

I’m on a mission to find more ‘core’ meal choices – meals we can tweak to our tastes and make in multiple batches and freeze for future eating. You know what a ‘core’ meal is right? It’s that base rotation of meals (say 6-10) that you know how to make, you can make quickly, that you keep ingredients on hand for and that your family all eats up quickly.

I like quick, inexpensive, easy and yummy. Give me that over gourmet any day.

So, what does this mean for you? Ha ha ha! I’m going to bore you to death talking incessantly about our meals – sharing our recipes (successes and failures) and giving you family reviews of each one.   I’ll share photos, video’s and more.  You may tune in, or tune out. Here’s hoping someone, somewhere finds something that works well for their busy family.

~Christina