For moms that work how do you do dinner??
Moms View Message Board: General Discussion: Archive September 2006:
For moms that work how do you do dinner??
Okay ladies I need a little help. I have worked second for three years, plus I had my mil for three years. Once I started working first, if I was busy my mil would start dinner early. I having a little trouble organizing with this. But I am totally up to the task. I am so enjoying doing my own thing, in my own house.
I will give you an example tonight we got home around 5. Dh and ds have boyscouts at 6:30. I had chicken defrosted. I quickly as I could peeled potatoes and it was not close to be done by 6 so I told dh he and ds better run out and get something on there way to boy scouts. How do you do it? Plan meals for the week, do a lot of prep work before. I plan on doing a pot roast tommorrown in the crock pot for other busy night.
I just want to try and "cook" as much as possible. My dk's because of my work schedule have ate more boxes of macaroni and spahettio's then I would have liked. But now I am in control and I want to do it right. Suggestions please???
Mondays and Thursdays are our really busy days here. Monday is Tae Kwon Do for both dks and Thursday is chorus and Tae Kwon Do (we literally have 1 hour between the time chorus ends and we need to leave for Tae Kwon Do) so there is very little time for cooking. I have two ways I handle meals on those nights:
Mondays I make sure I do all my prep work ahead of time and I put it in the refrigerator. I have a half an hour in the morning between the time the kids leave for school and I leave for work. In that time I cut my veggies, get the meat out to thaw, measure out my seasonings into little bowls (I have 8 little custard cups I use for this), and I put the pantry items and measuring items I need on the counter next to the stove. If I can mix something ahead of time, like meatloaf or veggies I'm going to cook together such as onion/garlic/bell pepper, I go ahead and put them together.
Thursdays, since time is really tight, I usually use the slow cooker and time it to be done so that we can eat in the limited time between activities. I occasionally use my bread machine too.
HTH
You can also freeze pre-cooked meats like ground up beef, boneless chicken breasts, steak slices. All you'll have to do is defrost in fridge the night before.
You can freeze spaghetti and sauce in freezer bags then reheat in boiling water. This works for stews and rice casseroles. Add a fresh veggie/ salad and crusty bread.
We have been running like crazy too this year. I love the CRock Pot! I will put a roast in before I leave for work with potatoes, carrots, garlic, and onion and it is ready to eat when we are all I have to do is slap a salad together. There are a lot of great crock pot recipes online. Also I agree with the freezing, double your recipes when you cook and freeze half in an aluminum throw away pan. I also have a friend who cooks her meat for the week on the grill on sunday and all she has to do is fix some quick sides.
Crockpot works well, when supper has to be ready, when you get home. You can even get it ready the night before and plug it in, in the morning.
I have teens, so, now we pick out easy things for them to make, and they can get it started! On Monday, they made this:
Chuckwagon Chili Mac
and
Pumpkin Pie Milk Shake
The chili mac was delicious and the leftovers tasted wonderful tonight, too. The shake is more of a smoothie and was delicious, too.
I have a hard time with this also. I have found anything you can do the night before is great. I have found that when doing chicken you have to have at least an hour before dinner will be ready and sometimes longer, so chicken is not good on those nights where you have to have dinner ready at a certain time so you can go to scouts or whatever. On those nights things like spagetti and a salad is good. Something that takes beef or even pork chops because they can be cooked rather fast. Around my house we don't eat until 7:30 most nights because DH doesn't get off work until 7. Good luck it is a hard routine to get used to but once you get in the routine it is pretty easy.
I love the crockpot, too. I know what I am going to make the next day and plan for it. I know tomorrow tonight I am doing a chicken bake so I have the chicken in the fridge thawing today. Tomorrow morning I will wake up and assemble it and DH can toss it in the oven when he gets home. And if your DH doesn't do this type of thing, it's time he started. If you are working too he can meet you half way on the household chores and that includes cooking.
We try to eat together as a family every night but if it doesn't happen at least we have food prepared and avoid take out as much as possible. On really busy nights, we have soup and sandwiches.
Even on the days you aren't going to be eating something in the crock pot you can use it to make the next night's meal. Put some meat in and then use it to make italian beefs or barbecue the next night. Cook a huge batch of chicken and use it to make chicken and noodles one night and chicken enchiladas or tacos another night.
Good luck. I know how hectic it can be.
I work 90% in the home, but work for my kids from 3:30 on I had a wonderful group of women that met once a month, there were 8 of us, we each brought 2 meals for 8 families and walked away with 16 meals for the month, when you have leftovers and the occassional meal out, you were set for the month with only cooking one day! We are working on re grouping with stricter guidelines for ingredients, we got some pretty "cheap" meals and some low nutrient meals which didn't work for us, our criteria now is 2 High quality, home cooked, meals that span a good nutrition line as well. We are having our first swap again the first week of October, I can't wait
For a busy night, Manwich is good. Just brown the meat, add the manwich sauce, and heat a few more minutes. I usually had a veggie, too, and buns to put the Manwich onto.
Baked chicken breasts in the crockpot are easy. They are crispy on the outside and stay very moist on the inside.
The crockpot is wonderful. And, when you cook, as much as possible cook two meals. By this I mean make a double recipe of spaghetti sauce and freeze half; make a double recipe of meatloaf, put half into a regular meatloaf pan and divide the other into smaller, half-size or mini-loaf pans and freeze - they will cook faster that way. Make two pans of lasagna, but don't bake the second one - freeze it, put it in the frig to thaw on the day you want to use it, and bake when you get home - or, just make a double recipe of the sauce, make sure you have your cheeze grated ahead of time, and cook the noodles, assemble and bake when you get home. If you make chili, again, make a double recipe and freeze half (my boys loved spicy chili served over rice, with chopped lettuce, chopped tomatos and grated cheeze on top - sort of like a taco over the rice.
You can do the double recipe thing with almost any cooked food that re-heats fairly well. And for things that don't re-heat well (meatloaf being one of them, imo), freeze it in smaller sizes (like the smaller loaf pans, or my mother used muffin tins), put them in the frig before you leave for work so they thaw, and they will cook a lot faster in the oven. For stew, I'd use the crockpot, ditto potroast (which you can brown the night before, and throw it into the crockpot while you're getting ready for work).
Peeling potatos does take longer - how about substituting pasta or rice, or one of the package rice mixes for potatos on evenings when you don't have a lot of time before they have to leave.
I tried to plan meals a week ahead, to make shopping easier, when I was single-parenting with three boys with teen-age appetites. I tried at least twice a month to spend 3-4 hours on a Saturday or Sunday just cooking, the main courses for several different meals, and freezing them in portion size freezer bags to re-heat in the microwave, doing the veggies and starch while I was doing the rest of dinner prep.
Tunnia is right - do your prep in the morning, even if it means getting up a half hour early, so that when you come home everything is on hand and you don't have to deal with chopping, cutting, etc. while you are dealing with things on the stove. Potatoes, for example, can be peeled in the morning and stored in the frig a bowl, covered with water so the surfaces don't brown, until you come home. If you're doing mashed potatoes, cut them in smaller chunks and they'll cook faster. If you want baked potatoes, pre-bake them in the microwave (about 5 minutes per baking potato, but check your microwave cookbook), then put them in the oven to finish off for the last 15-30 minutes, along with whatever else you have in the oven.
Try to plan meals that are either fast to fix - like chops, with a sauce you've prepared ahead - or that you can do all in the oven except the veggie and salad - like potroast, meatloaf and baked potatoes, oven-fried chicken, etc.
And, while I understand your desire to get away from macaroni&cheese or spaghetti-o's, believe me - as long as you are all sitting around the table like a family and spending pleasant family time together over your meal, your kids won't remember what they ate but will remember that you ate together like a family.
And, on the nights when you get home at 5 and people have to leave at 6:30 - then by all means have macaroni&cheese, or even pizza. That way you aren't stressed trying to fix a meal and get it on the table in 30-45 minutes, your dh and kids aren't stressed worrying about whether they will be able to leave on time, and you'll all still eat together. The sitting down together and being a family is the most important part of it.
Here's a website for "make ahead meal" recipes:
busy cooks
|
Members
