Planning your cooking

Making sure that your family receive nutritious and healthy cooking can be an expensive and time consuming exercise if it is not planned correctly. Planning your cooking ahead will ensure that you buy all the necessary ingredients at one time and thereby eliminate the need to run to the grocery store every day. Going to the store more often inevitably leads to buying much more things than what you originally needed.

It is a good idea to make a menu of all the cooking you are going to do for the period which you are shopping for. When are planning your cooking ahead you need to take the family schedule into consideration. When you have sports and PTA meetings on a particular day rather plan a light meal that is easy to clean up for that day. Weekends you will most likely spend more time at home and you will usually be able to cook a big meal on sunday. If you have extra time on a sunday you can also cook ahead for the coming week.

You can also cook ahead during the week. You can for example defrost a chicken the night before and leave instructions for the kids to do some preparation work such as peeling potatoes, making salads etc. You can also save time by doing your cooking all in one pan. Put a roast in a roasting bag with potatoes, carrots, onions and seasoning and leave instructions for the kids to place in the oven at a designated time.

Finally remember to include a open day in your planning to reward yourself by taking your kids out for supper.