Monday Q&A | Am I June Cleaver? + Cooking for Two on a Limited Budget
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
I've been getting your blog for about 2 months now and really enjoy it. I'm a fulltime working Mom with one 10 year old. I feel very humiliated by all of your great homemade food. I loved the turtle rolls you made. I have never even considered making bread products before (isn't that what Pillsbury does?) I probably cook once a week and then I use partially prepared food (pre-chopped onions, bagged lettuce etc.)
Do you ever just make hot dogs or grilled cheese for dinner? or is everything always homemade? Are you really like June Cleaver?
-Susan
Aww, I'm so sorry that my blog has made you feel that way. I hope that nothing in my tone is to blame for that, and if it is, I do apologize! I try to make it very clear that I don't think everyone needs to live their life exactly the same way I do (not everyone needs to make bread, and not everyone needs to make yogurt).
What matters is spending your time on things that are valuable and important to you (you can read more about that in my post about cutting schedule clutter). For you, that might mean that you don't need to cook dinner every night and it might mean that you need to keep your meals very simple.
To answer your question, there are definitely nights where I don't produce a lovely homemade spread. On busy nights we sometimes just grill bratwurst, steam some beans, and call it a meal. Or when my menu plan hasn't worked out well, we sometimes will order pizza.
And every Friday night, I feed my kids something ridiculously easy (this past Friday they had toasted rolls, cheese cubes, and several kinds of fruit) and Mr. FG and I eat takeout.
On average, though, most nights I do cook a meal that's relatively homemade. But again, that might not work out for you. I have the advantage of having been in the kitchen since my early teens, so cooking meals from ingredients isn't at all foreign to me.
If you're wanting to cook more meals at home, I'd suggest the following.
-Start small. If you normally cook at home once a week, try cooking twice a week. If making a homemade main dish is hard, then don't stress about using prepared side dishes (I usually prepare SUPER simple vegetable sides, like raw veggies salads or simple steamed, buttered, and salted veggies).
-Keep it simple. Try making spaghetti or breakfast for dinner, or try the Tropical Island Chicken recipe I shared.
-Make a plan. I hate the process of menu planning, but the payoffs are insanely awesome. I've written a number of posts about menu planning that might help you.
-Practice. Cooking, like most any other skill, requires practice. The more you cook, the better and faster you'll get at it.
I love your site! But I am old & only cooking for 2. How can I save on groceries with hardly any income?
-Janice
I do kind of remember cooking for only two people...it's been a while, though! I cooked for my family of 6 when I was a teenager and I now cook for my own family of 6.
If it was just Mr. FG and me and I had a very limited grocery budget, this is what I would do to feed us reasonably nutritiously on that budget (if you throw nutrition to the wind, of course, you can subsist on stuff like ramen and boxed mac n' cheese!).
Drink water. Water is nigh onto free from the tap (get a water filter if your water is icky-tasting), and most flavored beverages and juices are unnecessary, nutritionally speaking. If you're low on funds, drink tap water! (in case you missed it, I am not a fan of bottled water).
Eat simple, basic foods. Frozen plain chicken and fish aren't terribly expensive, and they usually come in bags that allow you to take out only the amount you need (which is great for a two-person household!). Buy a bag of rice instead of boxed rice mixes, buy apples instead of snacky apple chips, buy oatmeal instead of instant oatmeal packets, make a simple pot of soup instead of buying canned soups, and so on.
If I were desperate for money and unable to do a lot of cooking, I'd probably eat a lot of oatmeal, eggs, rice, beans(the legume sort), chicken, tuna, and inexpensive produce (most veggies are inexpensive, and bananas, grapes, apples, and seasonal fruit can be very cheap).
I wouldn't buy desserts, snacks, cold cereal, beverages, or much in the way of pre-packaged food.
Consider switching grocery stores. If your budget is very limited, take a look at any other shopping options you've got. For instance, if you have an Aldi or Save-A-Lot, give it a try!
Watch sales. If your grocery stores have sale flyers, check out the front page especially. This is where the best bargains are to be found. Plan your meals around what you can get cheaply that week.
Buy generic brands. Almost all of them have money-back guarantees and most generic products are pretty darn decent. At the least, they're worth a try.
Buy some frozen foods. Frozen vegetables are great for small households because they keep so well and I already mentioned that frozen meats can be handy too. Also, don't be afraid to freeze the foods you make...a lot of soups and other main dishes freeze well, so make a batch, eat some, and freeze some.
Also, I know I've mentioned this before, but if you haven't joined Swagbucks yet, do! You can earn free points that can be redeemed for Amazon gift certificates, and you can buy a lot of different grocery items. That might be a handy way to add a little more cushion to your grocery budget (if you want to know more about Swagbucks, read the post that contains my thoughts about the program).
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Readers, I'm sure you've got some great advice about learning to cook at home and about cooking for two on a limited budget, so comment away!
Today's 365 post: Mr. FG comes from frugal stock too, apparently
Also, go check out the new chore system I'm trying out with Joshua, and sign up if you want to try it along with me.
My husband and I are on a very limited budget (disability pension, and I am not able to return to work yet). I had to spend years making a grocery budget stretch for my family, and that has become more than necessary now! I buy in bulk, and we eat oatmeal, dried beans and split peas, potatoes, onions, apples, turnips, squash - whatever is seasonal, will keep well and is cheap! We rarely eat meat (maybe once a week, and I make it stretch!) We have both lost some excess weight. We are blessed to be renting a lovely little house in the country and soon will start a garden. Even if you live in an apartment, you can grow cherry tomatoes, some peppers, lettuce in a sunny window in pots or window boxes. I buy all our flour when it is deeply discounted (loss leader) and store it in my refrigeraotr's freezer, and we habe only homebaked bread. I use powdered milk for cooking and buy other dairy products when they are on sale. It is a bit of work, but shopping wisely and learning to bake will pay off.
A good way to get new recipes into rotation is by trying them out on the weekend. Once you find something that goes together quickly and easily, then use it for a weekday evening.
For cooking for two, I'll often just make a recipe for a family of four and eat the other half for lunch or freeze it to save time later.
We, too, just have one child (also a 10 year old)--and I've been all around the block with this shopping/cooking quest. Before finding Kristen's blog, I just shopped at Giant, cooked most of our meals (some home-made completely--some convenience foods--some half home-made with bagged lettuce, etc.). My grocery bill was $175 + per week.
Then after reading Kristen's blog, I started clipping coupons, shopping in three different grocery stores each week (Giant, Safeway, and Shoppers)--making everything from scratch, and got my grocery bill down to $100. I was thrilled. But tired. All of that clipping, comparing sales, ads, running around, etc. made me very tired! Especially since, like you, I work full-time.
Then, I started making a menu on a regular basis, shopping only at Shoppers Food Warehouse, stopped clipping coupons--and my food bills were still just $100! So, I was still ahead--and not so ragged out from all of the running around to grocery stores. But I still found all of that cooking tiring...again, like you I work full-time.
Sooooo...I just did it yet another way. Again, I stopped clipping coupons, planned my meals, only went to Shoppers--and bought some partially prepared items. Meaning bagged salads, pre-washed greens, etc. So, I'm still cooking, but it's easier! Far easier. And my grocery budget is slightly higher at $110-ish. Which is still well below my high of $175 + (some weeks it was as high as $200). But the extra $10 or so is so worth it--because it's much easier.
Some easy-ish meals I now make are turkey burgers (I buy the Shadey Brook Farms pre-made kind) with salad on the side (with bagged lettuce, of course). Pre-made frozen meatballs and spaghetti with steamed bagged green beans, etc.
That's my story 😉 Good luck!
My husband and I both work full time and eat meals from scratch 6 nights a week. While we both cook, my husband is the "Chief Bread Maker" and preps our weeknight dinners on Sundays. I plan the menus and buy the food, and he spends a few hours prepping crockpots, making soups and sauces, roasting chicken, etc. We spend $100-125 a week for our family of 3 and eat mostly organic at home. Cooking many meals at the same time cuts back on time (i.e. you can chop onions for 3 meals at once), and we make recipes for 6 and freeze the other portion for future dinners. Thus also gives us the flexibility to go away for the weekend without totally blowing the next week. I hope this helps!
I love fresh produce, but it's hard to get through it if I buy too much. Generally, I limit myself to one type of main fresh fruit or vegetable a week generally. One head of broccoli or cabbage can last for several meals, and a single pineapple makes a wonderful dessert for the entire week of dinners.
Alternately, if I'm in a salad mood, I'll buy two different fresh heads of lettuce for about $3. This yields almost twice or thrice the meals of one $3 pre-bagged lettuce. Just wash, dry, and bag the leaves when you get home for your "homemade" bagged salad mix. (These will last, in terms of freshness, for about 1.5 weeks.)
I also make large batches of main dishes that freeze well or can be reinvented, like a roast chicken (=Sunday dinner, chicken soup, casserole or chicken salad...) or pasta bake (divide the portions and freeze). I end up cooking only once or twice a week, then reheating and reinventing with minimal effort the other days of the week.
I do the same thing with salads--buy say some Romaine lettuce AND green or red leaf or even spinach. I wash them as soon as I get home (unless we're in a crunch for time), spin them dry, pat out the excess water that spinning couldn't get and then chop and package them up in ziploc bags (which I reuse each time). I also have found that adding a simple cotton towel (I usually use a cotton napkin or tea towel) to the bottom of the bag will help to absorb the moisture the lettuce will naturally let out and this helps to avoid wilting, soggy lettuce. I never package them without it anymore. 😉
I'd like to comment on your first question from Susan. We too are a busy family. 2 teenage boys and a family business. We do eat out a lot, and we do eat packaged foods, but we have found ways to make more at home. I buy the frozen bagged boneless skinless chicken breasts & tenders and bake the whole bag in the oven. That usually gives me 2 meals, minimum. I bake, in the oven, a whole pound of bacon (that's only 1 meal for us LOL). I also use my crock pot quite a bit. We eat simple meals like salads, spaghetti, mac & cheese, lazy lasagna. It has taken time, lots of time, but we have slowly started moving away from more packaged foods, and making more ourselves. It's a process, I've been there and am still there. Take a step at a time. If you have a day you don't have much to do, say saturday or sunday afternoon, use that time to cook some things and prepare ahead some things you will be using later in the week. I used to make homemade bread all the time....when I was working 2 full time jobs. Now with just 1 full time job I don't make it at all. Go figure. 🙂
For Susan - my husband & I both work full-time outside of the home, we have a 2-year-old, and we eat homemade most of the time (though we do have our Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese or pizza nights, too!) A couple of quick ideas:
1. Plan & Prep - like Kristen mentioned, menu planning is key. Then, on Sunday afternoons, I do as much of the prep work for the week as possible. I chop onions & other veggies & put them in individual portion-sized containers per the recipes, or brown the ground beef or put chicken in a bag with the marinade. My cooking time (and, consequently, all those dishes I would normally have to clean!) are significantly reduced during the week. It's also necessary to check your weekly menu throughout the week, so you can take out meat a day or two before in order to thaw. Which brings me to tip #2...
2. FREEZE (almost) EVERYTHING! If I make taco meat for Thursday on a Sunday, for example, I don't trust it in the fridge for 4 days. I cook it, freeze it, and then on Thursday...look at that...my dinner is already made! I'll also freeze my veggies, too, if that seems like it is necessary. My freezer is ridiculously full of random stuff...but that also means if for some reason I don't feel like sticking to my menu plan for that evening, there's probably some soup or chili in there or SOMETHING that will give me the night off of cooking.
3. Make is fun for you & your 10-year-old. I know you probably feel like your time together is limited, and if you make "cooking time" your "together time" it can be more enjoyable for you both. Enlist them in helping, turn on some music, and talk about your day. It's less of a chore when you do it with someone you love! Plus, it's never too early to start learning great cooking skills!
Then, of course, don't feel guilty when it doesn't work out. Everyone needs a pizza night, or cereal for dinner, or a week where you buy the pre-shredded lettuce and pre-made taco meat. Life goes on, and you're still doing a great job!
Susan-- I say do what you can to spend the most quality time with your daughter. What will matter more in the long run? That you made a loaf of bread, or that you spent that time instead with your family? Just my two cents 🙂
I cook for two and work full time. About five years ago I started to move towards more homecooked meals. It has been a slow process but I make most of our food. We are lucky in that we a have local market 5 blocks from our house where the in season produce is almost always cheaper than anywhere else in town and the rest is from ethnic markets or Sam's (their meat prices are worth it ussually.)
We eat a lot of rice. I make stir frys with what used to be the meat for two of us in one night (2 pieces of chicken ect.) now it makes dinner plus 2 or 3 lunches. We save money by not wasting food and by not eating lunch out.
(I also feed around 10 people every Sunday for an average of $5 by using rice or other fillers in a dish.)
With regards to swagbucks, I found a site that actually displays codes once they come in. http://sbcodez.com/ they will post codes as it comes in, which makes it easier than doing searches. Shh. 🙂
That's super I did a little searching and found another Swagbucks blog that posts codes as they come out. http://ezswag.com for anyone who interested.
Susan - YOU get to decide what's best for YOUR family. Both of my parents worked full time, and we ate packaged food, and who cares? One night a week was spaghetti - and I suspect that was my favorite meal night. And Pillsbury from a can was a huge treat.
Right now, I work fulltime, and my husband's a student, and there's no way I'm cooking a whole meal from scratch after I get home from work. No way. Our compromise is to cook mostly on the weekends. But, if we get home one night and have no food already made, it's a pasta night. Yum.
Good luck!
Susan, do what you can. I love to cook-that is my 'me time' when I've made something fun then I am recharged to spend time with my kiddo. This is not for everyone-your little one will remember time with you and a happy mom. Grilled chicken, or a pork chop or spaghetti with sauce from a jar eaten with a happy parent is going to be the tastiest meal.
I'm still new to this parent thing and now realize that you just do the best that you can and do what works for your little family. Comparisons will only make you unahppy and more than a bit crazy.
Magdalena mentioned this a bit--one of the best reasons to cook more from scratch is that it's better for you. Trade in some of those high sodium rice and pasta mixes, or HFCS laden baked goods for something that tastes like real food. Less meat, more veg and fruit will help not only your pocketbook but your weight and maybe even your blood pressure or cholesterol. I started helping cook dinner one night a week when I was 10. By high school I was responsible for dinner one night a week. It was time I enjoyed spending with a parent, and I learned a very useful skill at the same time.
We eat mostly from scratch but I will resort to Annie's Mac & Cheese or a frozen pizza on occasion. I run hot and cold on baking bread, Kristen makes it look so easy, but I find it harder to schedule when you don't work at home. But I'm working on it!
Thanks for the info on swagbucks! I got 30 sb for signing up and donated sbs for the relief effort in Japan.
Susan, my best advice is use a crock pot and rice cooker. When making lunches the night before after dinner, prepare the food for the next day. If you have family near by you could also rope them in as well..like each weekend you make 3 of something and exchange. Again whatever you cook make enough for a family of 6 if it freezes well and the smaller portions are for the rest of the month.
Breakfast for dinner is also awesome, make your own pancake mix and keep it handy, french toast, with eggs are a treat when you are in a rush in the morning.
Good luck!
I started cooking when I was really young. By the time I was in high school, my mother worked full-time. I got home before she did, so I made dinner most nights. This continued while I was in college because again, I was home first and why should my Mom make dinner when she got home. I now have my own family. My husband does not cook and my daughters can make several dishes on their own. Still I cook most nights because I enjoy it. We always sit down together for breakfast and dinner except when work schedules do not allow. I work nights, so sometimes I need to leave before my husband gets home.
Cooking dinner need not be a stressful event. I do not prepare a menu plan but decide in the morning what I will cook for the evening based on what I have in my pantry. I have a freezer full of meats (bargan chicken, beef, pork and fish). My shelves are filled with rice, pasta and canned veggies. My veggie bins are filled with whatever was on sale at my local fruit markets (this week: 2 lb/$1 sweet peppers, potatoes, onions, celery). I have leftover veggies from last week, so no big deal when they don't have lettuce or other veggies on sale. The sales and my pantry dictates what I will cook. That works for me. Not everyone else.
Dinner prep has always included my daughters in the kitchen doing their homework or talking about the day or helping out with the process. Dinner can be made in less than 20 minutes: spagetti with sauce and salad, stir-fry with rice, chicken and rice, grilled pork chops or grilled chicken with veggie/rice or potatoes, grilled chicken salad, oven omlet, pasta stir-fry, chicken fajitas or super-easy pan fried fish of any kind. All of these meals take less than 20 minutes start to finish. When you have a well stocked pantry, getting the food at rock bottom prices, not only can meals be prepared quickly but also cheaply.
I just started reading TFG, and I love it! I actually just did a post today on feeding two for $60 a week, although it could be quite a bit cheaper if you didn't buy most of the things organic. Just thought I'd share!
Best,
Emma
Janice - When I was an impoverished graduate student, my now-husband and I ate very very cheaply. We survived on breakfast for dinner. sausages (usually the cheapest meat), and pasta. For meat we pretty much only ate chicken, and would buy, cook, and use every morsel of the whole chicken (including making chicken stock from the bones). Now that we are much better off financially, we still cook in a very similar way (though a lot less carb heavy). We eat a lot of dried beans (which are cheaper and lower in sodium than canned ones), tofu, salads, and eggs. We also freeze anything and everything. Salads can be a very cheap meal if you chop your own lettuce, keep your protein/meat to a minimum, and make a substantial carb for the side (for us, it's almost always homemade cornbread which is easy and fast).
My hubby & I typically spend less than $75 a week on groceries (including household items & toiletries). He's allergic to chicken and is very much a meat eater so I buy steaks, salmon & pork in bulk & freeze them because it's cheaper this way. I also watch the local ads and will make trips to that store just for meat when it's on sale. One way we've cut down on our grocery spending is by eating PROPER PORTIONS. One serving of meat is typically 4 oz. How many steaks come in 4 oz sizes?? Not many--most of ours are 9-11 oz each. So 1 steak will make 2 meals for him or 1 meal for both of us. We actually started this simply because we were wanting to revamp our eating and become more healthy. But it has turned out that we're saving so much money by doing this. Meat is by far the most expensive purchase we make at the grocery store, so by stretching it the way we now are (the proper way) we've cut that expense in half! And our waist-lines show it too! 😉
I've also stopped buying so many prepared foods--bag lettuce, granola bars, individually packaged oatmeal, etc. I bake my own bread and have recently even started making my own whole wheat pasta. And each Sunday I make a large pot of soup or something similar for us to take for lunch each day. Huge decrease in our sodium intake by not eating canned soups & frozen meals; and I feed both of us lunch for around $5 or so each week rather than $15+ each.
I work 40 hours a week in a clinic, and my husband works full time as well and we both have 45 minute commutes each way, so while it's very time consuming to cook/bake the way that I do, it's so worth it in terms of the nutritional value and monetary value you get from it. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!
I second the proper portion comment! I'm very careful to keep our meat portions 3-4oz, depending on the meat and the dish. A pound of meat means 4-5 portions, or 2 meals for the two of us adults. So important when meat is so expensive!
I agree! And I never realized how BIG our steaks/salmon/chicken breasts/pork chops/etc were until we wanted to lose some weight and I bought a scale and started actively weighing our food! It's ridiculous how we can condition ourselves to overeat by such large amounts!
On learning to cook at home:
1. Start small - Add one more homecooked meal to your easiest night of the week.
2. Lower your expectations - Homecooked means prepared and eaten at home, not that you grew every ingredient and milked the cow yourself! Bagged salad, precut veggies, canned beans (vs. dry), prepared spaghetti sauce, frozen pasta - all of these are tools to help you get a healthy meal on the table in a reasonable amount of time.
3. Dedicate a few hours to prep work on a day off (say Saturday or Sunday) - read your recipe(s), make sure you have the ingredients you'll need, and do some of the work ahead of time, like cutting up veggies, cooking rice (it freezes well and can be microwaved to reheat), or anything that takes more time than you'd like to commit to on your cooking day.
4. Mise en place - a fancy French term for making sure everything is ready to go. There is nothing more depressing than getting partway through a recipe and realizing you forgot to thaw some meat or chop some veggies. Read your recipe before you start, get out all your ingredients and measuring utensils, and focus all your attention on what you're doing, especially if this is a first or second time through a new recipe.
5. Throw a recipe party! Some friends and I did this for a college friend (I finished college in 2004, this is not ancient history!)- she was preparing to get married and had never cooked a day in her life other than Easy Mac in the microwave. We all contributed two of our favorite, easiest recipes, and the host put them all in a cookbook for her. At the party, she made two of the recipes out of the book with the contributors helping her as necessary. She came away with 24 easy, fairly quick recipes, two of which she'd already made successfully! Asking your friends to help you learn, especially any friends who already cook, will mean you have someone specific to call with questions!
6. Food Network's website - there are tons of instructional videos, especially some of the Alton Brown videos, which can help you learn specific techniques or tricks to help you shave time and effort off recipes. The ones on using a knife are especially valuable, since slicing and dicing quickly can reduce a meal's prep time significantly.
7. YOU WILL MESS UP. Don't be surprised, and keep a sense of humor. Everyone makes mistakes as they learn how to cook. Those of us who learned at an early age just made them at the age of 8 or 10 instead of 30, 40, or 50! Learn from those mistakes, and know you WILL GET BETTER. Cooking takes practice, which means messing up now and then. Throwing away food that's inedible is frustrating and upsetting, but it means you're that much closer to becoming a good cook!
I've found that if I plan certain meals together, I can do a lot less work. For example, I'll plan to make chicken with rice and vegetables one night & plan to make a casserole that also uses rice the next night- that way, I only cook rice once (make enough for two meals the first night) and I have ingredients for two recipes.
Another time saver for me: I buy 5-10lbs ground beef/turkey when it's on sale & cook all of it in a big pan. Then I portion it into sandwhich bags & freeze it. That way it's ready to use in a quick meal or casserole.
And lastly, a quick, easy, relatively healthy dinner- we do baked potatos with scrambled eggs and salsa if I don't have the time/energy to make anything else.
When I was newly married and cooking for myself (and my husband!) for the first time on a very limited budget I bought some student cookbooks from a charity book shop and from there I built up a range of meals that were cheap and easy to make but well balanced too.
My best advice to the food budget question is to skip buying "lunch only" foods - lunch meats, special items for lunches, etc. and to just cook larger quantities of dinner, using leftovers as lunch for the next day. it cuts back on expensive uni-tasking foods and usually ends up being better for you any way (deli meat is hideously salty as a whole!).
Kristen,
I think this is the best post you've ever had on this blog. I love the easy how-to suggestions from others on making dinners that are frugal and quick!
Karen
One way that our family of four eats for less money is by having dinners that incorporate beans and lentils. Dried beans that you soak and cook are so good for you and so inexpensive. I cook 6 cups of dried beans every week in my crock pot, that way we're never without for whatever we'd like to eat - dinner, lunches, and snacks. I recently forgot to cook beans for the next day's meal and did a soak after dinner and cooked them in the crock pot overnight! (I have a timer on my crock pot.) I woke up dreaming of food - of course - but there were wonderful smells in our house in the morning! Lentils are even easier to cook because you don't have to soak them and they cook in about 45 minutes on the stove top.
I love to cook but I seldom have much energy for it after coming home from work during the week, especially since I'm usually starving. So I do what many others have already suggested, I cook large items during the weekend and I freeze leftovers if I'm not going to eat them right away and this generates easy future meals.
One thing I also find really handy for myself is making a large pot of brown rice and another pot of chickpeas (cooking any kind of bean yourself gives you cheaper and tastier beans in my opinion) during the weekend, and then you can just heat up the portions you want throughout the week. A pretty easy thing too is to season some fish or chicken pieces and roast them. While they are roasting you can prep and steam some vegetables. For chicken I like to use chicken thighs or drumsticks (cheap!), pour generous glugs of soy sauce over them, sprinkle with salt, pepper and garlic powder and bake at around 400F for 25 min (drumsticks) to 40 min (thighs).
Why does everyone think June Cleaver was the best woman ever, the one we should all aspire to be like? She was just the norm for then and she had the luxury of not "needing" to work outside the home. Yes, people call me June Cleaver but I do work as secretary for my husband and my son, so, no, even if I do bake bread and cookies and make meals from scratch, I'm not really June Cleaver! 🙂
Having never watched an entire episode of the show myself, I can't really say! lol
I do know that she wore a dress and heels, and I can safely say that I do not resemble her in that way.
Kristen--I've seen a couple pictures of you in a skirt and other pictures of heels.....that counts, right? 😉
Susan - please, please, don't feel badly that you don't bake bread for your family! That's how Kristen does it and it works for her, but it's not a requirement of being a good parent. Nor is cooking every day. If you'd like ideas on how to add these things to your schedule then I'm sure we'll offer a lot of "this worked for me" comments, but there's no need to make yourself feel badly because someone else - in different circumstances and with different responsibilities - does it differently than you do.
Janice - I have three suggestions.
1. Soup.
Do you cook soups? Soup can be made very inexpensively (it's the classic use for leftovers), in advance, frozen for later, stretched with inexpensive ingredients, be very simple or quite elaborate. And homemade tastes so much better and is so much better for you than canned. I eat canned as well as homemade soup, but find even good quality canned stuff to be salty. I happen to like "A Feast of Soups" by Jacqueline Heriteau, but any cookbook you buy or check out of the library is fine. If you get recipes online, I strongly recommend you read the comments: anyone can post any recipe online - good, terrible, badly written, leaving out key ingredients, etc - reading the comments will help you avoid the stinkers.
2. Eat less meat.
You may be doing this in which case, skip to #3. If not, meat is the most expensive ingredient most of us eat. And most US'ans eat more than we need for health, so we can afford to eat less. Mark Bittman has a good 'less meat' cookbook that focuses on eating more produce, whole grains and beans, but it is not a vegetarian cookbook. It's called "Cook Like Food Matters."
3. Plan ... at least a little.
I'm not a good meal planner and even if I do plan to cook a specific thing on a specific day, life often gets in the way. So my version of a plan (although I hestitate to use such a formal word for such an informal thing) is to decide to cook a certain 2-3 dishes that week, and prep for that. My prep is usually buying missing ingredients and prep produce in advance (wash broccoli, chop some onion, etc). The rest of the weeks' meals are last minute decisions such as omlets, leftovers, something I made in advance and froze, ... well, you get the idea.
4. Leftovers.
OK, I was wrong, I have 4 ideas. Eat your leftovers or use them in another dish. You probably knew this one already. It goes with making only as much as you can eat, eh?
Exactly what you said to Susan (which is what I was trying to say). I am always sad when my blog makes someone feel bad or guilty...it's SO not what I'm trying to do. I just want to be helpful, and I definitely don't want people to think they have to do just what I do!
I love the chore chart...I am going to use it on my 12 yr. old son. Thank you!!