Make It as Easy as Possible
We are all busy people and often do not have time to do weekly meal planning and grocery shopping. At the end of a long day we don’t want to look through 150 pages of “main course” recipes to find something for the chicken in our fridge that is about to expire. Nor do we want to use the same tried and true recipe again and again. That becomes too much of a good thing.
So, try organizing your recipes in a ring notebook by meat/ main ingredient. For example, set up dividers labeled “chicken,” “pork,” “seafood,” “ground beef,” “other beef,” or whatever other meats you frequently consume. Now you only have to flip through a couple of pages to find something for dinner. I often make a list of a few specific grocery items I need and then buy an assortment of fresh meats and vegetables. By organizing my recipes this way, I know I will always be able to find a quick and delicious meal within minutes.
Kasey Vejar
Simply Organized, Inc.
Shawnee Mission, Kansas
www.kchomemakers.com
Food is not just fuel that keeps our bodies stoked. Somewhere deep in the psyche, food takes on a significant psychological aura.
In her article “Home for Dinner,” Carla Williams tells of being moved by her teenage son, Joshua, singing “Here at the table with the family I love” from a song he had written.[1] This story spotlights how significant mealtime can be for family bonding. Williams further reports that psychologists at Syracuse University reviewed research over the last fifty years and found that families who had household routines, including eating together, had healthier children, increased marital satisfaction, and less stress. Research by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and other organizations found that children who share family dinners abuse drugs and alcohol less, have more nutritious diets, and perform better in school.
Food Isn’t Just What We Cook
The family is hungry and grumpy, so we fix something. They eat, they are no longer hungry, we clean up, and it is over. Right?
Well, yes and no. The old saying about the stomach being the way to a man’s heart is true not only of men but of children, other family members, and friends. Eating well is one aspect of self care.
In the context of a loving family, the person who serves a delicious and satisfying meal, which the family eats together, is serving not only nutrition but caring and love. In the context of the fast-food drive-through, the employee handing the food out the window is dispensing nothing but calories and flavor, mostly in the form of sugar, salt, and fat. Though the kids may love the fare at their favorite place, these meals lack the personal touch. They go to the stomach but probably fall short of reaching the heart.
Don’t get me wrong. Food is not love. We cannot substitute food for love or draw comfort from it without getting in real trouble both psychologically and physically. Nor does every meal need to be homemade and eaten together at the dining table. According to the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, in America 50 percent of meals are eaten outside the home. Fourteen percent of adolescents say they never eat with their families. Sixty-five percent of adolescents eat meals with their families three to seven times a week. It is easy to see from these statistics and our own experiences that the pull of modern life is away from the family dining table.
The Love Connection
We show love in many ways. Providing a supportive, clean, and orderly home is one way. Making money to meet family needs for clothing is another. So is giving time to help with projects and attend games and plays. And there are hundreds of other ways. But perhaps nothing touches the heart so much as sitting down together to a meal that Mom has provided for the family. Wonderful meals lure the family home for dinner and, later in life, for holidays. In today’s busy world, we need strong attractions to draw the family together, because after a while, grabbing a bite and eating alone in front of the TV can become a habit.
Danielle Lee, thirteen, of Manchester, Michigan, expresses her desires poignantly:
Some families have a nice family dinner, like spaghetti and meatballs and apple pie or something else yummy that the mom cooks in her free time. But both of my parents have to work. Some of my friends’ moms will make dinner, and the dads will come home, and the whole family will sit and talk and have one of those really good meals. I wish we were like that. Then my busy family would have some time to talk to each other.[2]
A meal’s influence starts when family members enter the house and smell the dinner cooking. Perhaps it is late in the day and the aroma of meat loaf or roast chicken wafts through the air as they enter. Or perhaps it is in the afternoon when kids come home from school and smell freshly baked cookies. Or it may be the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread (not unknown in this day of bread-making machines). Are we dreaming or what!
The story is complicated in single-parent households where one parent, usually Mom, carries the burden of day-to-day living, which often includes a full-time job. Not every “mom” is female. Over two million men are single parents. The number of single-dad households has increased 62 percent since 1992. That’s one in every six single-parent families.
Home cooking is wonderful, but not everyone has the time, talent, or interest to make home-cooked meals for the family. In the long run, the family togetherness at the table is more important than how the food got there. Fortunately, although home cooking is special in many ways, in today’s world, there are many good alternatives to cooking from scratch.
The Bare Bones Way
Even when love is strong, the ideal of home cooking is not always possible. Your schedule, the schedules of others, or your own lack of interest or ability to cook may interfere. How can you get the best meals with the least amount of effort? As in all areas of organizing, planning the work and working a good plan are key.
Easy Meal Preparation Ideas
Plan ahead for the week’s meals, noting especially what will be appropriate for your busiest days. Avoid either last-minute trips to the store or repetitious quickie preparations, like frozen fish sticks or chicken nuggets, pizza ordered in, drive-through pickups, or whatever your overused standby choice is.
Once you have the menu for the week, think each morning or the night before about your plan for dinner the next evening. This will dictate what steps you will take to get the food on the table easily. You may need to get something out of the freezer or start the Crock-Pot.
Here are some ideas that will help ease your food preparation efforts and shorten the time you have to spend:
TIME AND ENERGY SAVERS
EASY FOOD SOURCES
Suggested Seven-Day Menu Plan
It takes some creativity to plan interesting and easy meals for a week. The following ideas will get you started, but you will want to adapt them to fit your family’s tastes and your time and energy.
Sunday/Family: Large dish—meat or casserole. Make enough for two days and use the rest on Monday.
Monday/Leftover: Use the meat from Sunday’s dinner for the main dish, stretching it with rice, potatoes, or gravy, or use it in a casserole. Or reheat the main dish as it is. Add deli slaw, salad, vegetable, and bread.
Tuesday: Make a vegetarian or egg dish.
Wednesday/Budget: Make a pasta dish or serve hot dogs and beans, tuna casserole, or some other low-cost dish.
Thursday/Fun food for kids or yourself: Hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, tacos, and the like.
Friday/Quickie or express: Use a boxed helper, such as Hamburger Helper®, or build a meal around a frozen prepared dish.
Saturday/Catch up, entertain, or eat out: Use up the leftovers. In the summer, barbecue.[3]
IN THE TRENCHES WITH SMART HOMEMAKERS
From Gwena:
I recently started a Meal Planning “system” for our family (actually 2). In one I created an actual binder with a month’s menus (my dh [dear husband] gets paid bi-weekly) and we rotate between our most common and well liked meals. The other system I just started since we started homeschooling last week—a friend of mine passes down to me her mom’s used Taste of Home and Quick Cooking magazines. I pull desserts and delectable meals that are quick & easy (with homeschooling 2 young, active boys I don’t have much time for meal planning) to fix. I find if I have my meals planned ahead of time, I am much more likely to actually cook a meal (LOL [laugh out loud], my biggest struggle, besides disciplining our children). I try to choose several recipes for which I already have all or most of the ingredients on hand. One dessert that was delicious and my whole family loved was so simple & quick—Cool Whip, vanilla pudding mix, milk, and broken Oreo-type cookies, and chill it. Yum!! (You put it in separate dessert glasses, and then I stuck an Oreo on top like the gourmet restaurants, tee hee.)
Time-Saver Shopping List
Keep a grocery list on a whiteboard on the refrigerator and require the person who uses the last of an item to write it on the board. Copy them before you head to the store.
It’s a good idea to type a master shopping list for groceries and sundries that you purchase on a regular basis. If you generally use one store, list the items in the same order as the route you follow in the store. This will help you avoid skipping things and having to backtrack. If you use specific brands and sizes, include them as part of the master list. Leave blank spaces in each section for “write in” items—seasonal products, entertainment items, and so on. After you make up the list, make photocopies of it; then post a copy in the kitchen every week. Then you and your family can simply check off the items that are needed. By being specific about brands and sizes, you make it possible for someone else to shop for you without the annoyance of “I hate this kind of ketchup!”
Clean Up as You Cook
Cooking is creative and can even be fun, but the aftermath—the cleanup—can be a drag. As you cook, develop a system of cleaning the utensils and pots as soon as you finish with them. I once went to the home of a friend in rural Indiana for Sunday dinner. When I entered her house through the kitchen, I thought she had forgotten I was coming because all of the cooking things were washed, dried, and put away. The kitchen was spotless. The food was being kept hot in serving dishes. To this day, I haven’t figured out how she did such a thorough job. I assume she washed, dried, and put away all cooking utensils as she put food in the serving dishes, similar to the plan described in the Trenches idea below.
But then there is the cleanup of the dishes after the meal. Some people zip dishes and other utensils quickly into the dishwasher. Others let them pile up. Use paper plates as much as possible, except of course when you are inviting special people over for Sunday dinner.
And certainly, put a spoon rest next to pots you are stirring to keep goop from getting on the stove top. Why make a mess if you can avoid it?
IN THE TRENCHES WITH SMART HOMEMAKERS
Pot Pileup:
The newest habit that I have been able to incorporate has been to wash the pots and pans as soon as I empty them. I used to empty the food from them, and then let them sit on the stove. The food would dry to a hard crust, which would take ten times as long to clean whenever I got around to it. If I can’t wash them out right away, I immediately fill them with soapy water to prevent the food from caking on. Then I try to get to it before the night is over (I rarely wait until the next day—seems that when the water gets cold and the grease floats to the top, I am less motivated to wash the pot than when it’s full of hot, sudsy water). This one simple habit has been a lifesaver for me—the rewards are so great that I feel it is less pain to clean them now, while it’s easy, than the pain of waiting until later and discovering that the pot I needed to use right at that moment is dirty. My once infamous “pots & pans pileup” is now a thing of my past.
Little habits can make the biggest differences!
Decision Time—Choose Your Top 20 Percent
Write yes or no beside each statement. Celebrate your yes answers. Consider how to improve the no answers.
___ I value consistently gathering for a daily meal as a family.
___ I prepare good meals as a regular thing.
___ I plan a menu for each week.
___ I start meals ahead when necessary.
___ I ask for the assistance of others in the family.
___ I know and use commercially prepared food to supplement my own cooking.
___ I have favorite recipes available for use.
___ I have an efficient system for shopping for groceries.
Look at your no answers. Which one or ones do you want to think of changing? How would you make the change? Remember, think of a little change that will make a big difference. You may wish to address several ideas covered in this chapter. Then finish the following sentence.
In an effort to make cooking and all that goes with it less of a burden, I will: