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Honey, What’s for Dinner?
by Marie Cole
If you have no problem providing a variety of healthy delicious meals,
then this article is not for you! However, if you’re like the majority
of us, standing with the refrigerator door open waiting for something to
volunteer to be cooked, then read on!
I, too, used to panic about what to make for dinner. I don’t care to
admit the number of times I opted for the fast food lane, or ordered a
pizza, or even just made fish sticks and French fries so I could have
something on the table quickly, even if my choices were not providing a
steady variety of healthy foods for my family. I was overusing my supply
of quick and easy recipes to the point that my kids would groan when I
told them we were having tacos one more time!
Since that time, I have finally found my groove in the kitchen, although
we do still occasionally (much less often!) go out for a meal. This has
been a tremendous blessing to our family, because just about the time we
purchased our new home, the recession hit. My husband’s hours were cut
to just twenty-eight per week, and finally he was forced to take another
job elsewhere that payed almost twenty-five percent less. Thankfully,
the Lord had in just the year prior to our move, been preparing me to
handle a drastically reduced food budget. It now wasn’t just a matter of
nutrition or taste – we literally couldn’t afford to eat out more than
once a month!
How do I do it? The answer is that I now have a plan. I don’t wait until
5 PM to decide what to make for dinner most of the time, but even if I
do, I have a wide variety of dishes in the freezer that I can choose
from that can be thawed in the microwave and on the table in less than
thirty minutes. Proverbs 21:20 tells us that a wide variety of choice
foods and oils can be found in a wise person’s house, but the fool
quickly “devours” all that he has. I determined that I was going to be
wise, and try to keep a wide variety of “choice” foods on hand!
As I thought about how to plan for our meals, I quickly realized that
the problem was that I felt so guilty about the multitudes of times I
wasn’t ready for dinner, that every time I cooked I felt like I had to
make a gourmet meal! No wonder I was so discouraged in the kitchen! An
active homeschooling mom with kids involved in a variety of activities
has no time to be a gourmet cook every night, and yet that was the
standard I had set for myself! I was setting myself up for failure!
MY PLAN
Now, I do have the luxury of making something really complicated if I
wish, but most of the time, I rely on a variety of types of meals. Four
nights a week, I make something that I have put up in the freezer. That
means that I use about sixteen freezer meals a month, which is not such
a daunting amount to put up as a full month’s worth. Also, this means
that at my typical cooking session, when I put up about sixty entrees, I
have a supply that will last me about three months! I often tease my
husband that he married a woman who only cooks four times a year, but to
be honest, now that I don’t have to cook, I find myself wanting to!
One night a week, I let the kids choose what they want. Sometimes they
choose something from the freezer, other times it’s pizza or hot dogs,
and sometimes, to my delight, they choose Dad’s Hamburgers! As I have
started getting their palates used to more sophisticated choices than
macaroni-n-cheese, they have started requesting recipes that are not
your typical kid fare. They particularly like a dish I came up with
called “Spaghetti Pie,” which has four kinds of cheese, pasta, and a
great spaghetti sauce.
So far I have accounted for five nights a week and have really spent
very little time in the kitchen! On the day I teach piano, I like to put
something in a crock pot early in the day that can cook itself while I
teach first my own kids in our homeschool and then the neighbor kids at
the piano. My favorite thing to make is Steak Soup, which is mostly what
I call a “dump” recipe: I dump all of the ingredients in the crock-pot
and then turn it on! The advent of diced frozen onions and bell peppers
has made my life so much simpler!
That leaves just one night a week when I really have to think about what
to make. Sometimes I go all out and cook a Sunday Special! Sometimes I
just pull out another freezer meal, make something simple that we enjoy,
or I might even go out to eat, if my husband and I both feel like it and
our budget permits. The difference here is that I have a wide variety of
choices, and no longer go out to eat out of desperation!
I really do love to cook, and now I find that I am enjoying the time I
spend in my kitchen, because it is a stress-free environment for me! You
see, I had it backwards. I was feeling like I had to prepare these
elaborate four-course meals every time I cooked to balance the times we
were eating fried foods and pizza. Now, I realize that with a little
forethought and planning, I can easily provide dishes that my family
enjoys without pulling all of my hair out in the process!
STOCKING YOUR FREEZER
If you don’t feel up to tackling a full freezer cooking day, complete
with 8 or more recipes, and yielding forty or fifty entrees, then just
start simple. For the next four weeks, plan to make two or three recipes
each weekend, and quadruple them. That will yield, at the end of the
month, anywhere from thirty-two to forty-eight meals, enough to last a
few months! After your initial month’s investment, you can keep the
freezer easily well-stocked by simply tripling a meal once or twice a
week. Or designate one week a month as your cooking week. Each night
make a different meal, and triple or quadruple it. Eat one and put the
rest up in the freezer. I very, very rarely ever make just one batch of
anything anymore. When I make cookie dough, I make enough for twelve
dozen cookies, bake one or two dozen, and freeze the rest in rolls. If I
choose to make a casserole, I always make at least two, and more often
four or five of them. It really doesn’t take any longer to triple a
recipe than it does to make just one batch, and you only have to wash
your cutting board and mixing bowls one time, rather than three or four!
Just doing this makes a tremendous difference for our family!
MAKING YOUR OWN PLAN
Analyze your schedule. Are there nights when you have baseball practice,
piano lessons, or church obligations? Those are the nights you will want
to use freezer meals. Is there a day when you are busy for most of the
day, but have your evenings free? Make a crock pot recipe in the morning
that day and enjoy the time with your family in the evening! Is there a
day when you are free for most of the day? That could be the day you
choose to bless your family with a freshly homemade meal. And don’t
forget to let the kids join in with meal planning: it teaches them
valuable lessons about nutrition and how to run a household. It’s even
better if they can participate in making the meal that one night a week,
or if they’re old enough, prepare it by themselves.
Once you’ve decided when you’re going to make what kind of meal, you can
even go so far as to designate that on Monday night, we’re eating a
poultry entrée from the freezer, while on Tuesday it’s beef, and
Thursday is a meatless entrée. By doing this, you’ll be providing
variety in both taste and nutrients.
Research (1995, APA study) has shown that kids who are well-adjusted
(meaning good grades, good relationships with peers and parents, and
less incidences of drug use or depression) share one thing in common.
They eat dinner with their families five times a week or more. It seems
to be such a simple thing to eat with your family, and yet it can reap
such great rewards, far beyond the meal itself. God knew what He was
doing when He told Moses to tell the people to impress His commands upon
their children while they were going about their daily business. It is
not the fact that you are providing gourmet meals to your kids that will
benefit them in the long run! It is the simple fact that you are all
gathering together for a meal and making time to enjoy the most
important part of any meal – the conversation!
Bon appetit!
Marie Cole is the author of “Exiting the Fast Food Lane: Freezer Cooking
Guide” and the co-owner of Freezer Pleasers, a company devoted to
helping women not only with freezer cooking, but also active in women’s
Proverb 31 ministry. To contact her, visit her website at
www.freezerpleasers.com.
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