Put an end to the headache of planning meals!
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We spend more than one hour per day organising our family life! And planning meals can prove to be a real puzzle!
As super organised as we are, we still spend over an hour a day organising our family life! And making it so that our little tribe eats well and enjoys eating well is quite a job! We took a look at the cooking question and came up with some good meal planning ideas for organised parents in order to save a little bit of time every day.
Forward planning: Audrey prepares the weekly menus on Thursday and gets her shopping delivered on Friday. “It’s nice to have a well-stocked fridge heading into the weekend! I complement it with shopping from the farmer’s market on Saturday: my partner does that with our daughters. It’s some nice quality time with their dad!”
The secret to successful menus: two “best-seller” meals such as pizza, home-made burgers, lasagna… that the kids love, and every other meal using the golden rule of combining carbohydrates and vegetables with protein (but not necessarily meat every day, depending on your diet ). Begin by listing the carbohydrates and then add the various vegetables that go with them: rice-ratatouille, potatoes-green beans, quinoa-broccoli, semolina- tomato sauce…
⁃ Adult meals: Do the two of you eat together after the kids? You don’t feel like tucking into some plain pasta and cooked ham? Pity, because baked in the oven with some grated cheese and smoked bacon it’s pretty good! Cook additional vegetables or carbohydrates and adapt the recipe to save some time.
⁃ Cook large amounts and freeze them! Marie only cooks on a Sunday: “I love to cook, but it’s not possible during the week because I get home too late and so does my husband. So, I double or triple the amounts and take them out of the freezer the night before. We eat well every evening and it’s more economical”.
⁃ Cook enough for 3 days: a current trend! Cook everything that will keep for a few days in advance and in large amounts: pulses (lentils/quinoa…), vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, aubergines… and assemble them just before serving with something fresh and some nice seasoning: the key is to make good combinations. Pre-cooked lentils can be reheated with baby onions and bacon, quinoa-spinach-beetroot-goat’s cheese, bulgur-avocado-mozzarella.
⁃For dessert: alternate between yoghurts and fruit during the week without having to think too much about it. If you don’t have any dairy products at home, cook the fruit and serve it with a coulis or some ice-cream on Wednesdays as a treat! Our friend Sophie, a nutritionist, gives us this tip: make fruit salads. Children eat fruit that is already peeled and ready to eat.
There you have it – you are ready to save some time on planning and preparing meals. Why not complete all these good tips by sharing your own ideas with us! Many heads make smart work!!!
Enjoy your meal!
For all you organised foodies who crave more:
⁃ How to simplify the shopping
