Stress Free Holiday Meal Planning Tips Plus Candy Cane Brownies Recipe

As a sponsored member of Collective Bias, I have the opportunity to share our Holiday Meal Planning Tips and how Nestle dishes can help to reduce stress around the Holidays. As always all opinions are 100% my own. #PlanAhead #Shop #cbias

 

The Holidays are fast approaching and that means there will be guests, family, travel and fun! That also means a lot more work making sure the house is clean, preparing for the Holidays and hosting events! And on top of all that, you also have to plan all those family size meals! The last thing we want is more stress! That’s why I’m excited to share our tips to help you have a stress free Holiday by planning ahead!

Holiday Meal Planning Tips

• Make a meal plan for the main entertaining event
• Get an accurate count of people attending
• Assign out dishes to those attending. Don’t take on the burden of supplying all the food and work yourself. Ask friends and family members to bring side dishes such as pies, rolls, jello & fruit salads, green salads, potato dishes and such.
• Plan ahead. There are a lot of dishes you can actually cook a day before the big event. Such as the pies,  jello & fruit salads, green salads and rolls. One of our favorites for Thanksgiving is celery sticks with cheez wiz or peanut butter in them. So you can prep those a day ahead, cover and keep in the fridge.
• Make sure you have cleaned the house a few days before, and enlist the help of your family to help keep it clean for the main event.
• Check and double check each recipe. If it is something you can’t cook the day before, make sure you have all the ingredients on hand and ready to go. Also make sure you have all the “cook times” noted so you know exactly when you need to get it into the oven or fridge so everything will be ready in time.
• Set a schedule. Once you have cook times noticed, set up a schedule saying, “XX dish needs to be started by XX time, XX dish must be in the oven by XX time.” so on and so forth.
• Set up the dining area the day before the event. This will help take a big stress off on the main day when you are needed in the kitchen cooking instead of cleaning. Have the dining area set up with extra tables arranged and set with all the dishes the night before.
• Host easy meals leading up to the main event. The last thing you want to do is cook even more after you are spending the days preparing and cooking for the big Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas Dinner. Make sure you have some easy meal solutions on hand in your fridge to feed your family and guests. Some of our favorites are Stouffer’s Party Size Entries and Digiorno Rising Crust Pizza with Edy’s/Dreyer’s Slow Churned Light Ice Cream for dessert!

Nestle makes meals and entertaining easier and tastier for me during the busy holiday season. They have some truly delicious pre-made frozen meals that take out a lot of work to keeping the family and guests fed and happy with great tasting meals. But it takes the hard work out of the process so I can focus on all the holiday planning and preparation.

This last Halloween, we were stressing over what to have for dinner, since it was such a short time between the kids getting home from school and when we needed to get out to the activities. Then I remembered the awesome Stouffer’s Party Size Entries Mac & Cheese dish! We were doing a pot luck with the Husband’s family, so it was super easy for me to throw it into the oven while I took the time to get the kids all ready in their costumes.

Now after making all those pies for Thanksgiving, the last thing you want to do is worry about another dessert right? Let Dreyer’s Slow Churned Light Ice Cream manage for you! They have two amazing new flavors; Peppermint Wonderland and A Very Merry Eggnog. We are trying out the Peppermint Wonderland for our Holidays this year, and I can’t wait for the Eggnog flavor to hit our stores! It is due to release November 1, 2013!

If you want a great dessert without a lot of effort, and carrying along with the festivities of the Holidays you can always try out our delicious Candy Cane Brownies. They are so simple so it won’t add a lot of stress, but will definitely keep your family and guests happy!

This holiday, don’t overload yourself! Remember to share the load and #PlanAhead with some easy meal solutions from Nestle! For more great meal ideas, be sure to visit Meals.com! And find even more great ideas to help reduce your Holiday stress meal planning by following Nestle on Facebook and Twitter.

What are your Holiday Meal planning tips?

What Nestle recipe from Meals.com is your favorite you want to try?