Dinner at my house
Yesterday, I was reading a post on Laura Vanderkam's blog, in which she wrote about how she spends very little time cooking.
Readers chimed in and shared about dinnertime at their houses, and I thought about leaving a comment, but then decided it might be fun to just write a blog post comparing and contrasting our eating habits with those at Laura's house.
Laura and I are fairly opposite sorts of people, so I'm not surprised that we differ a fair amount in this area. I plan more than Laura does, and I definitely spend more time in the kitchen and create more dishes than Laura does.
(I can't really recall a time when I had dinner on the table in 10 minutes, actually. And as my dish-doing kids can attest, I always create more than two dirty dishes!)
Laura outlined the basic of what they eat for the three meals of the day, so here's my version.
Breakfast
For breakfast, my kids kind of pick whatever they want...oatmeal, cream of wheat, yogurt (which I make myself once a week or so), fruit (like a banana with peanut butter), toast, or occasionally leftovers. Sometimes I make a food that requires more than minimal effort on my part (baked oatmeal), but for the most part, breakfast is pretty simple.
I usually eat eggs scrambled with onions and other veggies with an avocado and/or tomatoes on the side. I suppose this takes me about 5-10 minutes to make.
And when the weather is cold, almost all of us drink hot tea.
Lunch
Lunch is a fairly simple affair as well. I often make a smoothie, especially in warm weather, and I frequently add spinach or avocados along with the yogurt and frozen fruit. We eat leftovers when they need to be used up, and when we don't have leftovers, we eat sandwiches (usually on homemade whole wheat bread), and other things like fruit, beef jerky, cheese.
So, lunch requires pretty minimal effort, as long as you're not counting the time I spend making bread every few days or the time I spend making yogurt once a week.
I know I could save myself some time by scratching those two chores from my list, but I really kind of dislike store bought bread.
(I would basically rather not eat bread if store bought is the only option, because I think if you're going to eat bread, it should be really awesome.)
I don't really like store-bought yogurt either, except for the really sugary stuff that is a bit pointless to eat.
And of course, homemade bread and homemade yogurt are significantly cheaper than storebought, so that inspires me to make them from scratch.
Dinner
Dinner is where I think we veer the farthest from Laura's family. Laura makes meals in 10 minutes, whereas I generally spend about an hour a day making dinner.
Laura's husband travels a lot, and I can totally see how cooking for one adult and three small kids would be completely uninspiring. But Mr. FG doesn't travel much, so there are pretty much always six of us at dinner and that probably helps me to be inspired to cook.
Having six people at the table motivates me, but I also think what stands between me and ten-minute meals is that I like to eat more interesting things than can be thrown together in 10 minutes. I would get really, really bored with a quickly cooked sauce-topped protein and a side of veggies (although I might be healthier than I am now!)
I like soups and meatballs and things that are roasted and salted and marinated and that have spices and rubs, and that kind of stuff just does take more than 10 minutes.
Plus, we have had a pretty no-nonsense policy at our house about what is served at dinner from the time our kids were little (You can eat it or not eat it, but nothing else will be served), so I know that what I make is going to be eaten by all six of us pretty much every night. If I thought I was going to be the only one eating what I cooked, then that would probably change things a bit.
Also, dinner is the one meal that I plan. Breakfasts and lunches just kind of happen without planning, but when I don't have a plan in place for dinner, I am sorely tempted to just order pizza. If I were awesome at whipping up meals at the last minute, I suppose I wouldn't be so dependent on a plan, but the fact of the matter is that I just function better with a plan.
So for me, the time it takes to write up a menu plan is definitely worth it. If I don't spend an hour doing that, we can easily spend way more than an hour's worth of wages ordering pizza and Chinese!
Sometimes I get annoyed with how much time I devote to cooking each day, but I suppose it would help to look at it as a conscious choice. I could make simpler, less time-consuming meals, and I could make less stuff from scratch, but I'd have to spend more money and put up with a less-enjoyable eating experience.
______________
How about you? How much time do you spend preparing meals every day? Are you more like Laura or me?
I've recently been making more smoothies and have heard about putting in avocados. How much do you typically add in?
I usually throw a half in, or a whole one if it's a small avocado. I'd suggest starting small and you can add more as you figure out how much you can tolerate.
Great, I'll give it a shot. Thanks!
Cooking for one is the hardest, because I basically ONLY eat leftovers. I try to make things interesting with combination meals, spices, etc. This week, for example, I'm having vegan chili but serving it with (non-vegan) cornmeal pancakes instead of cornbread/dinner rolls. It's been a busy week, so admittedly I've eaten out both days so far - usually I bring a second leftover meal for lunch or make something quick, like a sandwich.
Upsides: my biggest time investment is the hour or so up front making the meal(s), and days thereafter are minimal investment of reheating (stove or microwave, depending on how hungry I am!). The dishes part, on the other hand...
Downsides: I'm the only one available to do dishes! My machine is terrible at washing dishes and I live in a rental, so the machine serves as a very large and fancy drying rack. I'm trying to make a habit of more one-pot/-pan meals because of the dish factor.
I am definitely more like you Kristen! I usually spend an hour to an hour and a half on dinner!! But that's prep work, baking, everything. I do try and make everything from scratch too. It's just better! I do make a meal plan as well. Just as you said, we would be ordering take out if I didn't. Takes away that temptation. BTW, that chicken looks super yummy!! Thanks for your blog, I so enjoy reading it!
"Sometimes I get annoyed with how much time I devote to cooking each day, but I suppose it would help to look at it as a conscious choice. I could make simpler, less time-consuming meals, and I could make less stuff from scratch, but I’d have to spend more money and put up with a less-enjoyable eating experience."
Thank you! That statement really sums up how I feel about cooking for myself. Dinnertime is one of the most enjoyable times of day for me and I need my meals to be full of flavor. Right now my little $1 herb plants are thriving, so I plan a lot of meals around herbs. But, there are times, I do wish to just have a meal appear fully cooked ready to eat!
I would say I am a combo package. On nights where children have activities or we will need to be away from home, I focus on crock-pot cooking which is pretty low on time. But on nights when I know I am going to be home, I tend to spend an hour or more cooking. That usually works out to be 2 nights fast and 5 nights slow. I also try and cook double and freeze things like lasagna and chili for those nights when we don't have time.
I'm like you, I tend to spend about an hour in the evening making supper, with a few easy options for busy days. But I almost feel like that's my "down time" or my creative time. I know I need to get my older boys in there helping/teaching them, but I really enjoy that time to myself right now! 🙂
I agree that 10 minute meals fall pretty flat. I went over and read the article, and I laughed because we used to eat like that. The cost of convenience foods was just too high - for our finances and our health!!
I spend about 30-45 minutes on weekday meals, and about an hour on the weekends. Like you, I have a husband that is usually home for dinner. He farms, so during spring and fall I still cook the same and deliver him food wherever he is.
It's really interesting to see how other people live. Thanks for sharing!
For breakfast I just set the table, everyone grabs their own breakfast. Usually it's cold cereal (they like it and my husband is addicted to Grape Nuts) but I also freeze waffles and pancakes or zucchini or banana bread. The one exception I make is that I cook an egg and cheese sandwich for my 18 year-old every morning otherwise he would never eat breakfast. That takes me maybe 3 minutes?
Lunch... I pack my husband's lunch and that's usually leftovers from dinner so that's 2 minutes top. My kids pack their own lunches.
Dinner... 30 minutes or less, that's my rule 🙂 I do dinner menu planning once in a while but that takes me forever and makes me spend more money. I have tons of recipes and cooking books so now I just grab some meat in the morning and defrost it, think of a recipe and try to find things around the pantry/freezer that will work as substitutes if I don't have all the ingredients. So, maybe 5 extra minutes per meal (I'm really well stocked!).
Thank you for writing this, Kristen. With 7 in our family, 5 of whom are growing children who eat more every day, I often wonder if meal prep is worth the time it takes. Like you, I like variety and really prefer our homemade things over anything I can buy as far as taste and expense are concerned. And I think it's important for my children to learn to cook and appreciate a variety of foods. Thanks for encouraging me to stay the course with cooking homemade, healthy, and tasty food for my family.
I'm trying to find a balance between cooking from scratch and not spending forever in the kitchen. Recently I did a time sheet to help me spend my time better and I was shocked how many hours a day I'm in the kitchen, either cooking or washing dishes. While I do enjoy cooking most of the time, I don't want my life to be in the kitchen. I'm trying to learn ways to keep cooking from scratch for the most part, but not spend as much time. Eating leftovers, cooking simpler meals, etc... I wrote a blog post about it awhile ago, although I'd like to make a sequel. http://purposelyfrugal.com/2013/11/05/cooking-from-scratch-when-lifes-busy/#.UzwM-6i-2So
Hi Kristen - do you think your breakfast and lunch patterns will change as your children get older? I would imagine their appetites would increase considerably!
I don't know! Joshua and Lisey are teenagers now, and they do definitely eat more than they used to. But it's not so much that the foods they eat are changing, it's just that they eat more of them.
Looking back from the other end of the spectrum, ( my 4 kids are grown), I would say this: meal planning and cooking from scratch is most definitely WORTH IT. This is your family, THEY (and you) are also worth your efforts. I menu planned, spent an hour on average, every night making dinner, and somehow even with just the two of us now, I still do! On weekends my husband barbecues, and we eat leftovers. Breakfast and lunch is every man for himself except Saturday mornings, when I make biscuits, pancakes or waffles, or try a new recipe I've seen. I also bake from scratch twice a week. I love it. It relaxes me. Now I have to modify this a bit. With four kids, yes, life happened and of course we ordered pizza and hit the drive thru our share of times. Do not stress over this. My kids loved it because it was such a treat! Money was tighter then with one income and they thought it was just great....
Cooking at my house has taken on a new twist over the past 18 months, and I love it! I am part of a food co-op with two friends...we each take a day, and cook the main dish for all 3 families. Then we deliver the dish to each family, (either with baking instructions, or hot and ready to eat) at our convenience during the day. We alternate meals with chicken, "other", and beef each week. It makes my cooking day busy, but the other two days are great! All I have to do is make a veggie side and we're ready for dinner!
I especially like it because as dairy farmers, I am in in the barn each evening, and when I come into the house, it's time to eat! If I haven't planned a meal, or if it's not a co-op day, it makes for a long evening and hungry, grouchy family members!
I spend a lot of time in the kitchen! Over the last few years I've been moving as far away from processed foods as possible, so that means making most everything from scratch. The time I spend in the kitchen is the price I pay to save money and provide wholesome food for my family. It's well worth it to me!
I think I'm a hybrid, too. I work full time and we often don't get home until 6:00, so I usually have 30 minutes or less to get dinner on the table. I love cooking, though, and try to stay away from processed food as much as I can, but I do rely on convenience foods. (I think there's a difference between processed and convenience.) I buy mostly frozen vegetables (including chopped onions!), quick-cook rice or frozen rice, bagged salad, and I plan ahead because, well, with 30 minutes to get dinner on the table, you HAVE to plan ahead. One trick is to make thin cuts of meat that cook up in less than 10 minutes. I will slice pork chops and chicken breasts in half (horizontally) and then pound them and put them in a freezer bag with marinade. I thaw them the night before and can cook them on the stove, on the grill, or under the broiler. We also eat tilapia or other smaller fish filets, which saute super quick. Instead of making a full meatloaf, I make meatloaf "patties" that cook in less than 10 minutes in the oven. I also make homemade chicken nuggets and then flash freeze them and keep them in a bag in the freezer. And I pre-make hamburger patties. Super convenient. And we eat our share of pasta and jar sauce. I use jar pasta sauce for homemade pizza (make the dough the night before and throw the pizza together when we get home). And I will sometimes use my crockpot, although there are only a few crockpot meals my family will eat, and we're out of the house for a LONG time, even for a crockpot. Bottom line--I do my best to straddle the line between quick, homemade, healthy, and frugal.
I always cut my chicken breasts like that too, just because I think it's so much simpler to cook them through that way. And they also have more surface area then, which usually equals more flavor.
I like the idea of freezing the meat with marinade! I slice them thinly as well...I think it keeps the chicken from getting too dry...but I'm going to have to try the marinade trick. Thanks!
Freezing meat in marinade also helps protect against freezer burn (no exposed meat).
Hi Beth,
I would like to share with you a time-saving idea for meatloaf that I frequently use. I make my meatloaf mixture as per usual, but instead of using a regular loaf pan, I use a muffin tin. I make a small indentation in each one and fill it with some sort of sauce and some cheese. You can then vary each mini-meatloaf as desired, such as BBQ sauce, or any other kind of sauce you like and you can play around with the type of cheese used. They can be quite individualized according to taste, and the bonus is they freeze really well! I don't have kids myself, but I can see that kids might get a real kick out of them.
Do you freeze them prior to cooking, or after?
I freeze mine after. I think that once they are cooked and "in formation" it makes them easier to freeze. I hadn't thought about freezing them before cooking. I'm not sure how well that would work out, how well they would retain their shape etc...
I spend at least an hour to make dinner/supper. I cook mix meals-Filipino and American. If my family don't want to eat heavy meal, I just cook tuna dinner and it's a quick fix. I love being in the kitchen.
I usually spend an hour or more cooking dinner as well. Although my husband and I really enjoy my cooking, my 3 children hate just about everything I make. This is further complicated by one child who can't have dairy or soy and another child that is failure to thrive and is about a half breath away from needing a g-tube for nutrition. Just yesterday I told my husband in a fit of frustration that I can't wait until I'm cooking for just the two of us again. Not that I'm wishing my children away, but sometimes its just so discouraging and frustrating.
I'm pretty sure I can't make a meal in 10 minutes...nor can I make a meal without dirtying a plethora of dishes 🙂
Kim,
I had a one pound baby who also had a failure to thrive diagnosis. Mine didn't eat any real food until he was 5 and even then, we would have to really encourage him to eat. Enjoy the time with your beautiful children. Mine is now 13 and was eating ramen noodles and tortilla chips for dinner last night. He's still really skinny and I try to be careful not to judge what he chooses to eat.
Susan - We are going in the opposite direction as my daughter is almost 5 and hasn't had a tube yet. My big fear is that if they put one in she will quit eating food by mouth all together. She is on growth hormone which is causing her to grow in height (but not weight) so she looks like a famine victim right now. She gets to eat whatever she wants, whenever. Unfortunately, this is really hard for my other kiddos to understand that different rules apply to her (making my dinner dilemna even harder). I'm glad your son was able to get off the tube and thanks for sharing.
I like you Kristen make a plan for dinner. Breakfast is usually the same every morning (breakfast burrito) that my husband makes during the work week but I make on the weekend. We wing lunch as well. However, without a dinner plan, I would surely go crazy after work and spend my entire grocery budget on take out as you stated. I find that by making my two week dinner menu I am more prepared to get dinner done and my grocery budget is minimal (thank you Aldi) because of planning. I also find if I do not utilize my slow cooker during the week, I spend typically and hour on dinner. So yes, I am totally in love with slow cooker dinners (you can make a lot and there is left overs so you knock out a couple of days with minimal effort). 🙂
I am much closer to Laura regarding cooking, but I am trying to eat better. I drop off my son for the school bus at 7AM and I am at work until I pick him up from the late sports bus at 6PM. We end up at home at 6:30-7PM. My son has to start his homework and we closely watch his math. Last night, I threw some premade chicken enchiladas in the microwave while my son ate grapes while doing homework. I ate dinner and reviewed his math homework at the same time, while discussing complementary and supplementary angles. My husband ate dinner last night, but doesn't always (too late, too tired, ate a late lunch). I am not motivated to cook when I may be the only one eating (my son ended up making his own Ramen noodles to eat with tortilla chips). I do cook a couple of times a week, but mainly on the weekends. I freeze the leftovers for a second meal later on. FYI, I have been making my own yogurt for the last couple of months and love it!!!
I'm with you on the limited time and cooking ahead 🙂
I definitely fall more into the Laura camp these days. I love being organized and cooking dinner - and trying new recipes.
But right now I have a full time engineering job and 2 kids - 8 years and 20 months. The 20 month old is impossible. I cook big meals on the weekend (when he is napping), and microwave leftovers during the week, with a veggie on the side. When we run out, I make sandwiches or "one-pot pasta".
Seriously on Monday after work, he was happily playing with cars and a race track for 15 minutes. The SECOND I went into the kitchen to wash lettuce he wanted to be held and not put down.
It's a phase. Will be easier in a couple of years.
Yes. This is such an important thing to remember about parenting: pretty much everything is a stage!
"The Food Network would be more realistic if they put a small, crying child at the feet of each chef."
https://twitter.com/HonestToddler/status/326451465856102400
Kristen- thanks for posting this, and for linking to me! Interesting to see how people think about this. I would say this is not an either/or situation. There are very quick meals that are quite healthy and there are meals that take a long time to cook that aren't particularly healthy. When my husband is not around, I'd prefer to do something fast and spend the extra time hanging out with my kids, rather than putting them in front of the TV for a long time so I can do something more elaborate. Eventually they'll grow up and we'll be able to do more in the kitchen together, so this won't be the same trade off.
Oh, definitely! Like I said in my post, I think your meals are really healthy. I just think I would get bored eating them. 😉 The way you cook actually reminds me a little bit of the way Mr. FG cooked during his bachelor days.
Unfortunately, I think I've spoiled him after 16+ years of cooking for him, and he too would be bored with his old style of cooking!
I'm definitely more like you. I love to try new recipes. I love food and new flavors. Some are hits and some are misses, but I like cooking.
We are almost just like you on eating! I have thought of all the time spent on dinner but it is so worth it. Dinner meals are huge in our family and if we don't get to eat together we are all very disappointed. Summer generally has quicker dinners with all the grilling garden veggies. Tonight is pizza, which I believe is your reciepe and my family loves it so much it is worth the time!
I would love to have an hour to prepare dinner...but I'm running in after work, picking my son up from tennis, etc. So, I usually prepare several meals on the weekends so we have leftovers. Or, after we eat dinner, I cook the meal for the next night.
My idea of meal planning is pretty minimal: a list of main dishes to make in the next few days/week/couple of weeks. I make sure I have the ingredients and that's it. The hard part for me to remember not to make a production every night. My schedule is less cooking-friendly than it used to be (night classes) but old habits die hard. I try to remember to include not-really-cooking options, like sliced turkey or cooked ham.
It takes me 1.5 - 2 hrs each week on coupons, shopping lists, and meal planning. The time I save in the evening from knowing exactly what to do, more than makes up for the planning time. Maybe not exactly minute-for-minute, but definitely in stress and hassle.
That's so true, I also need to remember that not every dinner has to be a production! Old habits DO die hard....
Maybe I'm making progress - last night's dinner was honey ham, boxed mac & cheese, sliced cucumber, and canned peaches.
Well, maybe not. The reason the meal was so minimal is that I was utterly bushed from an unusually intense and long day at work. Deli-type meat is a common fallback for me, when cooking just ain't happening. Dinner veg is usually raw and simple so nothing new there. Canned peaches is, again, a fallback. You know I'm utterly beat when I'm too tired to cut a watermelon into slices! The mac & cheese was, well, just because.
I do enjoy cooking and wish I had more time for it. I do like cooking from scratch and can't think of the last time my kids ever had soup from a can, I do bake my own bread and make dressing, pancakes, baked good, etc, from scratch. I work full time and do try to make a decent, well balanced meal, when I get home from work. I find planning is the key, but if i'm exhausted (or just plain lazy) by the time I get home, we might end up ordering pizza and this happens about once per week. Luckily, we have a great pizza place right around the corner and can order by the slice,which keeps it on the cheaper side. I've been know to serve popcorn and lemonade in front of the TV while watching a movie-of course, my kids love that! One of my friends and I were discussing the "Worst" dinner we have fed our kids-she told me about a friend who confessed to serving a can of refried beans and pretzel sticks, which I thought was hilarious! I'm sure we can all attest to 'one of those days!' Right now, neither of my kids has any big after school activities going on (just finished up hockey season!), so I'm making more of an effort to doing some cooking most nights. And I always cook a nice meals on the weekends. When softball season starts in a few weeks that will make family mealtime a bit more complicated and we'll be doing more "quick meals."
You mean popcorn & a movie *isn't* a normal dinner?!? I wuz raised wrong.
I know whose house I'd rather eat dinner at ;).
Me too! I live alone and have always cooked. I LOVE cooking and eating good food, and I can be a little cheap sometimes and it's much cheaper to eat at home than to eat out. I also work shiftwork, so I've been known to make one dinner and eat it for 3 nights in a row at work (but it better be good for me to do that!).
Wow, you are doing GREAT! You give your kids REAL, WHOLE, healthy foods for the most part. You show them the value in a little work to put a healthful meal in the table, and that food does not come from a box. There's little added sugar (except some of those breakfast choices--ahem!), breading, and frying in industrial oils going on. Good stuff!
When you feed your kids as well as you do, the occasional treat like the cinnamon rolls doesn't cause harm. And the work that goes into making them helps keep them an occasional treat. So it's all good! Your kids are thriving--a testament to the healthy home they are growing up in.
I totally agree with you. I spend 30-60mins in the kitchen each day. I'd love to spend more (and do on the weekends!), but with work, gym, and dog play dates, I'm eating around 830pm at night as it is. Because there is just two of us, I can make 4 portions of dinner and then eat leftovers for lunch the next day. Breakfast is grab whatever (oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, hardboiled eggs, etc). I plan all my meals a week in advance (including snacks) and only shop at one store. So I would argue that planning cuts down a lot on my time investment as I only have to do food related errands for about 45 mins per week and spend no time looking through fridge trying to figure out what to eat when I come home starving. As for dirtying a lot of dishes...as long as I clean them up right away, it doesn't really seem like a lot. 😉
Unless I have friends over, I am cooking for just myself. I still make a meal plan and a shopping list to save myself money on groceries. Otherwise I spend too much.
For breakfast during the week I usually have an English muffin with Peanut butter (which I keep at the office) and a piece of fruit. On weekends I typically have eggs and toast. Sometimes cold cereal.
For lunch I eat typically eat whatever is around: left overs from dinners or I make a sandwich or a salad. Sometimes I bring cheese, crackers and fruit. During the week I buy lunch out once a week or so. This is more out of laziness or hurriedness because I didn't bring a lunch than from a genuine desire to eat takeout.
I usually choose 2 dinner meals per week and have leftovers, or repurpose them into other meals for the week. I make one of the meals on the weekend and one during the week. The weekend meal may be time consuming but the weeknight meal must be quick and easy. For example this week I made spaghetti sauce from scratch on the weekend and a quick black bean soup on a weeknight.
I really enjoy cooking and am bewildered when people tell me they don't cook for themselves, or wouldn't if they didn't have a family to feed. I suppose feeling like you HAVE to cook would make it less appealing. But since I would only be hurting myself and my pocketbook by eating takeout all the time, why wouldn't I feed myself good homemade food???
I tried to menu plan, but I just got frustrated and gave up. I tend to wait until my son goes down for a nap, then I poke around in the freezer and pantry to find something to make for dinner. I do try to avoid using the same ingredients multiple days in a row, so our dinners are fairly varied. However, I'm bad about remembering to pull out meat, so we eat a lot more lentil based meals than my husband would prefer (he's a meat and taters kind of a guy!)
I spend more time than Laura does too. I have a feeling she'll be cooking more, not less, as her children get older. Little kids are so easy to please (if you've done your work right and they're not picky!) and eat very little.
With me, I'm cooking for 8, and three of those are teenaged or adult males. While they don't care much about variety, they eat a lot! Also, I am the one who likes variety. I get bored cooking and eating the same things.
I thought there was a good variety of quick meals on Laura's site. Way more than I did when I had really little ones. I think a great meal can be prepared with little time, or hands on time anyhow. Marinating in the fridge or bread rising is not work to me so that is no biggie. Love the frozen steam veggie bags and my crockpot for roasts or stews in winter. The grill in the summer is always easy and quick too and my kiddos like anything grilled so that a salad and watermelon and dinner done.
I do agree...but I know that quick cooking has some pretty severe limitations (no roasting, for example), and I know myself well enough to know I would be bored without stuff like that.
But that's me! I think everyone should do what works for them.
I think I misunderstood this who thing because I consider roasting quick cooking and having to hover over a risotto time consuming. Meaning the hands on time is not much, although you do have to be home to do it so I get why someone would think it was time consuming.
I know many of us take pride in our cooking and it is our thing that gives us a sense of accomplishment or is the hobby where we let our creativity flow just like painting or scrapbooking. That is how I am so I do spend more time cooking because it is my fun hobby and I am home during those hours. My scrapbooks are pathetic on the other hand. haha
I agree...as long as you were going to be home anyway, things like roasting don't eat up much time. I feel that way about making bread. It does take a few hours from start to finish, but most of it doesn't require me to actually do anything!
I definitely fall on your side of the question. I have a husband who eats pretty much nothing but protein and two small sons (4 years and almost 2 years) who eat WAY more than I would think such small bodies could handle. Plus my mother-in-law, but she's not home much and doesn't eat much when she is. 🙂
I make eggs every. single. morning (can you tell I get kind of tired of them?), lunch for whoever is home (sometimes I make soup, usually it's leftovers or tortillas and cheese or whatever), and dinner every night. Living where we do, in a rural area with very limited restaurant options pretty far away, there's really no point in not cooking. I can make dinner faster than we can go get it if I use one of my fallback quick meals (eggs or something with ground meat or sausage that cooks fast)
My dinner preparations are broken up throughout the day usually--thanks to the aforementioned small children and their limited patience with me in the kitchen--so I do some in the morning, some during naps, some during relative ly peaceful playing in the afternoon. But it usually ends up being around 45 minutes or an hour. I can stuff in the summer, which is sort of like pre-cooking, but I really don't like the taste of leftover food, so I'm not into planned-overs. And I can't stand the taste of almost any commercially prepared food, so basically, I've built my own cooking prison. 🙂
It's okay, though, because I really, REALLY love to eat, so it's worth it to me.
My husband is the cook at our house, and tonight he made us the yummiest ever fish cakes using the recipe I got from your blog. We both love fish, and we really loved the fish cakes! We used hake, which we found to be a little strong just steamed or broiled, but it was perfect for the fish cakes, so thanks!
I keep myself as organised as possible and try to come up with ways to save time when cooking. This is what I do:
- I create a weekly menu every Wednesday night. Takes about 30min of my time;
- based on the menu I put together the shopping list and do the shopping for the whole week each Thursday night. That way I skip the weekend craziness at the local supermarket. Having the shopping list means the time I spent in the supermarket is very efficient. I am usually back home within 1h.
- I only cook every second day, because we have the same lunch and the same dinner two days in the row. No, it's not boring at all, but it saves lots of time and is also cheaper than cooking every day;
- Having the menu planned and shopping done based on the menu means I don't waste any food. And I mean any. I buy only what I need in the required quantity.
I wish that I could say I was more like you, but I'm not. It is just my husband and me. I usually get home around 6:30 PM (and I'm hungry!), and he doesn't make it until 7:30, 8, or even 8:30. I could overcome the timing issue if I enjoyed cooking. But I don't. I'm perfectly capable of doing it, and I enjoy baking from time to time. I just don't like to spend my time on cooking. It also doesn't bother me to eat the same things frequently. My husband has recently gotten into cooking, but he likes to be "gourmet" - which typically takes a lot of time.
In the perfect world with the perfect me that lives in my head, I would meal plan and create healthy meals and pack our lunches. I don't know if this is one of those things I need to just buckle down and try to do even if I don't enjoy it or if I should just accept that it isn't who I am.
Ha ha, I have that perfect world in my head, too!!! Sometimes our food life is like Kristen's, and sometimes like Laura's. I generally plan but sometimes we deviate, depending on what sports season it is and how wiped out I am from work. I think it's wonderful to be flexible. A little Hamburger Helper never ruined anyone. :0)
It depends completely on whether it's during the week (pretty fast) or on a weekend (I can get fancy). Ten minutes is pretty speedy; unless we're having some homemade soup from the freezer and a salad, it'll take longer than 10. I think tonight's dinner - a slab of turkey ham, fresh corn on the cob, and sauteed asparagus - took between 20 and 30 minutes. Two veggies on a weeknight is an anomaly here, it's usually just one.
On the weekends I can easily spend an hour or more making dinner. I love doing marinades and sauces and all that, but after I work a 10-hour day it ain't happening.
I average about an hour on dinner. Breakfast and lunch just sort of happen for us also. I do however try to keep my open for sales on one box meals to use when I get off track and need something quick and easy, I know probably not the most healthy but it's a back up I use sparingly. Since I will be homeschooling all three kids next year and will have a little one less than a year old not sure how well my current plan will work. I like the idea of crockpot meals but haven't been able to get a good enough plan together budget wise.
Our breakfast and lunch are about the samedas yours. I do more smoothies in the summer, usually for snack time. Dinner is pretty fast for me, but mainly because I use a Cuisinart electric pressure cooker. It is wonderful! Last night we had brown rice and veg. I spent about 5 min starting the rice in the pressure cooker and then came back later and cooked the frozen veg.
I'm terrible at meal planning, I'm a very moody eater. It depends on the weather, if I'm hungry, tired, etc. When I shop,, I have a list of what we are very low or out of, and then I just buy basics. We eat out at a restaurant about 2-3 times a year and fast food probably 3-4 times a year. I don't cook meat, so that makes it a lot faster. When I make bread, I use Food Storage Made Easy .com recipe and it makes one large pizza and two loaves of bread. I use your recipe for yogurt, but I make a lot and we don't go through it very fast. I don't like frozen food, except fruits and veg. We don't buy processed foods and I cook from scratch.
I don't know how people do ten-minute meals. I don't think I ever make ten-minute meals unless it's cereal for breakfast or a frozen lunch for me. Even if I'm just making sandwiches and sliced fruit for the kids, it tends to take me more than ten minutes to go from nothing to a meal on the table.
I'd say it probably usually takes me, for most meals, 30-60 minutes between the time I actually start gathering the raw materials and the time the meal is on the table. But not a lot of that is usually hands-on time, so it's not like I'm trapped in the kitchen the whole time. I just have to kind of be in the vicinity to keep an eye on things. There are faster meals, like pasta and sauce or pizza, where it takes maybe 15-20 to get the food on the table, but usually that involves doing something earlier in the day, like making the pizza dough or making a pasta sauce. I don't mind time spent cooking, most of the time.
Oh, we do have a few go-to, no-cook summer meals--an avocado salad, bread with fruit and cheese, pita with hummus and olives and carrot sticks--that take pretty much no time, but those are pretty much reserved for nights when it's just too hot to even be near the stove.
I only have myself to feed so I do a mix - I DO enjoy cooking when I have the time and a recipe I think or know will be awesome - would be even better if I had friends over to help eat it...but anyways...most of the time I stick with fast or convenient. I'm trying to get away from convenient (meaning I buy the meal frozen or canned and heat it in the microwave type thing) but I know with 12 hr rotating shifts with overtime sometimes stretching out or being sudden (like a call at 6 to be there at 7) that I can't rely on time-consuming meals.
What's been sorta working for me this year has been buying a lot of fruit that will last a bit (apples and cuties usually) and sometimes something else that is more perishable(the precut watermelon, a weakness), strawberries, avocado/tomatoes in smaller amounts. I buy eggs from a guy at work who raises chickens...carb balance tortillas and sometimes whatever kind I can find, the occasional package of bacon to add for breakfast tacos but I like the tortillas with egg/bacon/potato or I make quesadillas - today's was shredded cheese and canned pinto beans that I smashed and cooked in olive oil. I've also resorted to canned soups and sandwiches the past month. a 'fancy' meal for me is usually cooking pasta and making spaghetti! I've done stuff homemade that was very good - an artichoke chicken dish that was awesome and I froze some that I'm still eating on. I also like to make chili in the crockpot adn a salsa chicken dish I can eat on corn tortillas or make into soup. If I were a stay at home mom I think I'd tend to plan better dinners since others would enjoy them and I'd be able to make it a priority- on my current schedule someone else would likely be cooking while I was working!
"I also think what stands between me and ten-minute meals is that I like to eat more interesting things than can be thrown together in 10 minutes. I would get really, really bored with a quickly cooked sauce-topped protein and a side of veggies (although I might be healthier than I am now!)"
Me too!!! My boyfriend could totally eat a chicken breast with a side of frozen veggies every day. It grosses me out just thinking about... I would get so bored! (and probably lose weight! haha!) I very much hope that when we have kids one day they aren't picky eaters, because having to cook two meals would be terrible and would probably result in the adult meals being a lot more boring. I LOVE to cook (and eat).
I live on my own, and I don't particularly like cooking for the sake of cooking, so it's often hard to justify putting together big meals. I do a lot of crock pot cooking, usually on the weekend, and then have leftovers the rest of the week, interspersed with take out.
Growing up in a big family with 4 kids, I've only really learned how to cook in large batches 🙂
When we were growing up, my mother didn't make multiple meals - the kids ate what was on the table, or went hungry. Suppers were very traditional in my house - a meat, potatoes in some format, a vegetable (always canned) and a salad. Dessert was not a common thing. The only acceptable deviation from this formula was spaghetti or lasagna 🙂 According to my father, "rice is for pudding" so there weren't a lot of rice dishes served at my house.
Usually after we got home from school my mom would send one of the kids out to the freezer to "find something for dinner" - we'd bring back in pork chops, or a roast or some chicken. That would get thrown in the oven, and then around 4:30pm we'd start cutting up potatoes to boil, and someone would grab a can of beans or corn and get that into a pot on the stove. Dinner was served between 5 and 5:30pm.
We eat good, well-balanced meals each night due to A LOT of planning ahead (freezing) or crockpot meals. We manage to eat a "good" dinner together probably 5 nights per week. The other nights are quick meals or take out.
Do your kids participate in any activities? I ask this because between 2 kids we have baseball, basketball, 4 dance classes and Girl Scouts each week. They love these activities and I think the participation in team sports/activities is so very important for kids, so it makes my craziness with getting dinner on the table worth it 🙂
We spend one evening a week at church because of our involvement with the band, and we also take a martial arts class once a week and both of those activities are things we do together as a family...so we have a lot less in the way of extra-curricular activities on our plates than you, which does make dinnertime a lot easier.
That's great you manage to eat together so often despite the many activities.
We definitely float somewhere in the middle. I left my crazy high-paced job about a year and a half ago so we could "simplify". Turns out we were unexpectedly expecting our third baby which threw things into a tail-spin as I learned how to not rely on eating out. It hast taken some time to learn how to be more deliberate and thoughtful about what we eat and how we eat it. Now a year and a half later with a working hubby and three kiddos (ages 6, 4 and 10 months) we are definitely enjoying less stressed and less expensive mealtimes. I try to plan for the week as much as possible and have found that a balance between the 30 minute or less variety of meal and something that may take longer (i.e. crock pot meals) work well for us. I get a break on the days when we have something simple planned, but we usually get more leftovers on the days that take longer to prepare. Win-win! 🙂
Hi! I love your blog but haven't ever commented before. Thanks for writing on such practical topics! I stay home with 3 kids (4, 2, and 1). I cook around 3 severe food allergies (milk, eggs, and peanuts), so I pretty much have to make everything from scratch, including bread. I also agree with you about wanting to have more interesting meals that require more time. However, since I have a picky husband who only likes to eat sandwiches and burritos (I'm only slightly exaggerating), and since we run most of our errands in the evenings, I usually opt for a simple dinner like burritos or sandwiches or breakfast-for-dinner or a simple bean dish. I cook one or two more interesting meals for lunch during the week and eat the leftovers on the other days. I have the same policy as you do with the kids, so they just have to eat what I cook!
I do spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking or baking or cleaning up (no dishwasher in our old farmhouse). Sometimes it seems like a lot; but overall, I am thankful that my kids' allergies have forced me to learn the discipline of planning (I plan EVERYTHING, including snacks). Also, I think we eat much healthier and much more economically than we would if I ever had the option of eating out. (Before the food allergies, I struggled with managing our finances as well.) I think it is good to understand that food doesn't just happen: it takes time and hard work. I appreciate food, and indeed all the blessings in my life, so much more!
Oh, wow...three allergies. That would be tough! But I can totally see how it would save money because you just don't have the fallback option of eating out.
Wow, that last paragraph of your post really hit home for me. I feel the same way. This post was so encouraging to me. I wanted to take a minute and let you know that you have really touched my life and encourage/motivate me in so many different areas. THANK YOU