As a busy mom, you must maximize your time to ensure that you feed your family in good time as well as handle your other commitments. In such times, cooking can be a little challenging, especially when you have just come from work. You should first acquire a meal plan and know how it works. It will help you incorporate everyone’s favourite meal at least once a week. While still checking favourites, you should also concentrate on delivering high quality and balanced diets for the family. Let’s take a look at some time-efficient cooking solutions for busy parents.
Shop for Groceries Once a Month
Shopping once a month not only saves you money but also time. During this time, you can buy your supplies in larger sizes and prepare for illnesses and emergencies. Sometimes you don’t know the next time you will be going to the grocery store. Once you have reasonably stocked, you will not worry about groceries running out until the month is over. While it seems easy, you must be well organised to shop once a month. You can come up with a list of all your spending every month and get a precise amount of the items you use. If in the last two months you had ten and twelve gallons of milk, you can purchase thirteen gallons for the new month. Get a shopping list and include everything you require so that you can check while at the store. Go to stores with Lidl offers and save during your shopping spree. The first months may be challenging to estimate, but you get the hang of it and save money and time.
Prepare Ahead
Food preparation is among the steps that take the longest time. To make it even easier, you can perform simple preparations such as washing fruits and vegetables before storing them and slicing celery and carrots. Some even go ahead to chop onions and tomatoes, so you only take them out when cooking. If your family loves taking cereals such as beans and lentils, you can boil them and store in the refrigerator for later use. Chicken can be cut up and stored in resealable bags for later use. Thinking in this line, you can almost prepare any foodstuffs so that they are ready for cooking. It is important that you reasonably prepare these foods to avoid wastage. Once you are done with the preparations, you can clean up, so you can easily cook.
Make Use of Your Leftovers
According to research, more than 40% of people stash food in the fridge and forget about it for up to a week. As a busy mom, you can always peer into the refrigerator and purposely recreate the leftovers. Not only does this save time, but it also saves you money. If you had cooked rice yesterday and stored some leftovers, you can stir fry the remaining part using eggs or other vegetables. Leftover dinner can always double up as lunch for the following day. Alternatively, you can craftily recreate the food and pack some lunch for the children as they head out to school. Leftover bread and pastries can be crumbled and baked once more. Your family will experience a new taste, and you will save time. As you prepare your menu for the week, you can always dedicate a leftovers night to eat all the leftovers in the fridge. Everyone doesn’t need to eat the same food during the leftover night.
Freezer Meals
Most food products come in extra-large sizes, and your family cannot consume all of it. You can portion them and freeze them for later consumption. As a busy mom, the freezer is probably your favourite kitchen assistant as it stores your food regardless of the state. Whether you want to store your ice cream or cooked meals, you can always trust your freezer to keep them in the right state. As you prepare freezer meals, you must be very keen on the ingredients as some don’t go so well with thawing. Items such as raw potatoes and green leafy vegetables have high content, and freezing them will only make things worse; you cannot freeze them as they are. When freezing your meals, ensure that they are in airtight containers to control the amount of oxygen flowing into the dish. While shops like Morrisons and Iceland offer a great variation of these products, Lidl offers a great discount on frozen products. Not to forget Aldi which has freezers around the store with exclusive offers on frozen products and a lot of products to choose from. They are of high quality and will save you on your most tired and laziest days when you just don’t feel like cooking.
Conclusion
Moms have it hard in all directions; workplace and at home. In order to ease the difficulty and still prepare deliciously sweet meals, you can follow our time-saving solutions. A bonus tip is to also include the children in tasks such as clean up and food preparation. Help can range from simple tasks such as stirring food to set the table for dinner. Let them know that you can clean as you go, which makes it all convenient for all. By the time you get done cooking, all the dishes are clean. You not only get to save time and money but also teach your children priceless food preparation skills.