Working Motherhood

Lesson 2: Surviving Meals

How to plan your meals and get them on the table quickly. What you can do to make school lunches more exciting. Discover your freezer - it's not just a place for ice cream.

Introduction

With 5 people in my family, I am bound to find that not everybody likes everything. It is a real challenge to turn out a meal that will please everyone (or at least a majority). Another challenge is getting something on the table in the least amount of time. Nothing is worse than having the kids rolling on the floor with hunger pains or trying to steal snacks when you are trying to get supper prepared.

It gets worse when you are running low on groceries and have to put your culinary creativity to a test. Grocery shopping can be an exhausting experience in itself just by pushing a cart piled high with items and then taking them out to the car and then back into your house to put them away. Nothing is more frustrating to realize that you forgot to pick up an important item or the store has run out.

We have learned to make substitutions at the last minute when we discover we forgot to buy an ingredient or you don't have a sufficient quantity of something to make a meal. Rice is a good standby and can replace potatoes in some instances. How many times have you reached into the bag of potatoes and seen that half of them have gone rotten? I keep a supply of dehydrated onions and when you soak them in water for a short time, they will plump up.

In this lesson, I hope to share some pointers on how to make meal preparation quicker and easier.