Today I want to talk about things that we prepare in our kitchen for the week. I’m not talking about meals and meal prep, I’m talking about other things, snacks, for instance, maybe protein to add to breakfast, sauces, salad dressings, bone broth, perhaps sides for family members who don’t eat wheat or who have to eat gluten free, and then I have to replace their food with something else. And then there’s the meat and veg that I cook to warm up throughout the week.
I’m mainly going to be talking about all the things that we prepare at the beginning of the week, but I may just mention some others. This preparation really helps me because then I’ve got snacks organized, I’ve got a good breakfast supplement organized when the kids make their own breakfast, we’ve got homemade sauces, and we’ve got all the things that really help with the health and with the flavor – the yumminess – of our food.
So, the first thing I’m going to talk about is snacks. We try to do these beforehand at the beginning of the week. My kids are partly old enough; half of them are old enough to make these on their own, so that really helps. My oldest daughter often makes some muffins for the week. We grind some spelt flour from spelt grains for them because my hubby doesn’t eat wheat. These aren’t the cheapest muffins, but that’s okay, as they’re very nutritious. Sometimes they’ve got chocolate chips in them, and sometimes we do banana muffins, sometimes we do apple cinnamon muffins, but usually we just do honey spelt muffins. These are great because then I can put some in the freezer – I leave out just enough for one snack, and I put the rest in containers in the freezer. That’ll cover snacks for a couple of days in the week.
Most days we’ll have greek yogurt for snack, maybe with some homemade granola and maple syrup or honey or blueberries. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to have a different snack, and that’ll be the muffins with some kind of protein. They’re already high in protein, so we don’t need too much extra, just something like an added piece of cheese.
Another snack that we like to make at the beginning of each week is gummies, simple juice and gelatine gummies. It works best with a concentrated juice like a dark grape juice. I have a video on how to do this on YouTube. Just search for gummies family food for moms. The video’s also on the website under episode 4: Easy Nourishing Snacks for Moms. So, look on familyfoodformoms.com/episode-4-easy-nourishing-snacks-for-moms, and you’ll see the recipe and the video inserted there.
So, gummies are great because you have them in the fridge. I put them in a big glass container. Don’t bother to make them in molds, as that takes too long. I just cut them anytime – I cut a big slab out of the glass container, break it up, and everybody has a bit. That’s amazing for a quick protein sweet snack when you need one.
I love to make either an almond butter bar with dark chocolate, or a no-bake cheesecake. The no-bake cheesecake recipe is also on our Family Food for Moms YouTube channel, and also on that same blog post on the website – episode 4 – so you can see how to make it. The cheesecake is creamy, delicious, and easy to make. You don’t have to bake it, and you can just grind a little bit of homemade granola to sprinkle on top instead of crust. It’s amazing. Whenever you, as a mom especially, feel like eating something healthy, with high protein, but yummy, during the day, you can just grab a scoop of this amazing cheesecake or a piece of the almond butter bar. We will be doing a video on that soon. I don’t have one yet, but I’ll put the recipe at the bottom of this episode. So, those things are very delicious.
The other thing we like to prepare in advance for snacks is homemade granola. It’s always good to sprinkle on top of a yogurt snack. And, as I mentioned, you can grind it up and use it as a sprinkle-on crust for the cheesecake. You can even mix it with a bit of butter and make an actual crust at the bottom, and that will be amazing. Then they’ll be gluten free too, so you don’t have to worry about having gluten in your pie crusts.
So, those are the snacks that we usually prepare each week, and it’s so great to have those in the fridge and ready. It has really saved me so many times when I was rushing, when I hadn’t had much breakfast, and when I needed something to keep me going. Also when the kids are needing a quick something in the middle of school, when they’re using their brains a lot, those all help.
Then the next thing I like to prepare beforehand is things that will help with breakfast during the week. So, often the kids do their own breakfast using eggs. They’ll make an egg omelet or fried egg and toast, but I think that’s not quite enough protein. I’ll try to have either beef sausages, chicken sausages, or bacon cooked in advance and, again, put in a glass container in the fridge. Then when they’re making their breakfast, they can just grab a few of those tiny little sausages and warm them up as they’re cooking their eggs. That really helps them get a good solid breakfast. So, I kind of count up how many sausages total will be needed for a couple of days, and then I make sure those are in the fridge. I do this maybe twice a week to be ready.
Some days we have high protein cottage cheese pancakes. Those are high in protein, and they also contain eggs, so then we don’t need the sausages for those days. My oldest daughter makes the batter for those pancakes in advance. She makes it the night before and puts it in the fridge, because then it’s nice and thick for making the pancakes on the mornings of the days we have them. The pancakes are a Trim Healthy Mama recipe using cottage cheese, oats and eggs as their primary ingredients. They work really well as a good high protein breakfast. We’ll have them with grated cheese on top, or a little bit of honey and butter. We really love those.
The next category is sauces and dressings. Something else we like to make each week is barbecue sauce. My middle son is now good at making that. We like to make homemade barbecue sauce because the store bought one is full of so much junk. Ours has got honey in it, it’s got tomato puree, a little apple cider vinegar, and a few other things. So we cook that up and then it’s great for using on anything on the grill; chicken kebabs, sausage, beef sausage, and chicken. Anything is made better with this barbecue sauce basting.
I might also make a marinade for meat to be stored in the fridge, to use with things like a chicken and pineapple kebab with sauce.
Then there’s something like mayonnaise. I don’t personally make mayonnaise at the moment because I can’t get olive oil that tastes good, and I don’t like the taste of the avocado oil mayonnaise, but if you were to make something like that, that would be very useful during the week for sandwiches and shredded chicken. We do use mayonnaise from the store at this point.
Then something like a salad dressing. If you wanted to just make a dressing, an olive oil and balsamic salad dressing, or a Greek or Italian one, It’s easy to just shake it up and put it in the fridge.
Also, there’s bone broth. Sometimes I buy it, and sometimes I make it, but I try to make it as much as possible, and then it’s so delicious. So, you can do that once a week after cooking a piece of meat on the bone by just leaving the bones in the crock pot, adding water, some onions, some carrots, some bay leaves, some pepper, et cetera. Then add a little apple cider vinegar to help soften the bones. Leave that for about 24 hours to simmer on low, and that makes a great bone broth, and you can leave that in the fridge to use in soups and stews, and as gravy with roast meat during the week. You can thicken it to make the gravy and add salt.
Next there’s extra sides for those maybe who don’t eat wheat or gluten, just extra things that I wouldn’t cook with the main meal. So, in our case, my hubby doesn’t eat wheat, and I don’t like to eat too much pasta or rice. I’m not that fond of those, or of bread either. What we do is we cook up a few roast or baked potatoes to keep in the fridge, or perhaps a batch of rice, so that when we’re having a meal then my hubby and I can easily grab those sides instead of what the kids are having. Our five kids will often have pasta with chicken or mince. In that case, we’ll have potato with chicken or mince with a bit of cheese on top. Or, if they’re doing a pie with pastry, like a chicken pie, or if they’re doing something with tortillas or something with bread, then we’ll usually use some potato or rice in its place, or sometimes we’ll do salad in its place.
I’ll sometimes also steam up some vegetables like butternut squash, sweet potato, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, or stir fry vegetables; anything that’s quick and easy to warm up, to use in place of the wheat or the starch in a recipe. If I don’t cook these in advance, I find I’ll forget about them. Then, when I’m busy with the crazy busyness of the week, and we have something like pasta for lunch, and I’ve forgotten about what my hubby can eat instead, it really helps to have that in advance.
I also love to eat fresh artichokes – they’re my favorite thing in the whole world. So, I like to steam some of those every day, well, almost every day, but it sometimes takes quite long to steam, and I forget to put them in the steamer in time. Then, having a few that are already steamed and can be quickly warmed up in the steamer for five or ten minutes, that really helps me.
So, those are the main things that we prepare for the week. Then I’ll also cook some meals early in the week, because I find as the week goes on it does get busier. I’ll just put a few things in the fridge ready to reheat and use. I don’t like freezer meals very much, but if we just have a few cooked meats in the fridge it’s really helpful. Sometimes we do use the freezer. Like I’ve mentioned before, we pack extras into frozen lunch containers, glass containers with lids. We’ll package a little portion after a meal that will be left over as a lunch for my hubby and I in the future. But in this case, we have days when each of the kids help a little bit with cooking for an hour or so. Then maybe I’ll get them to make some bolognese with ground beef, or other mince that we’ll use with nachos. Sometimes they’ll make meatballs in a tomatoey sauce.
Sometimes we’ll do corned beef in the instant pot, which is great to slice to have on bread for lunch. Sometimes my son will make chicken curry, his signature recipe. Sometimes we’ll do a roast in the crock pot. Chicken and lamb work well in there. I like to make beef in the instant pot, as then it seems to be more tender. Chicken breasts are great also to shred for a lunch, maybe with mayonnaise and sourdough. I also like to have a few chicken breasts in the fridge as a snack for my sons. One of them goes to gym a few times a week and he likes to take a piece of chicken for a snack.
So, those things are helpful. Then I can just add fresh veg, or some extra rice, or whatever we’d like to add when it’s time for dinner.
And lastly, I also try to take things out of the freezer for the week ahead. If we need bread, often I’ll have sourdough in the freezer as we can’t always get hold of it easily. See? I’m not one who makes sourdough at this point in my life, I’m too busy.
And also meat. I like to take the meat out of the freezer near the beginning of the week when I think of it. We do have two fridges, so this is hard if you don’t have enough fridge space, but it’s really helpful to me to have the ground beef defrosted, to have the ribs defrosted, to have the roast defrosted, or the chicken breasts, or whatever. Then it’s not a whole big thing when I decide to make it; it’s already there, and then I can just look into the fridge, see what’s ready to cook, and cook it, even if it’s for a bit later in the week. That helps hugely with the flow of food. There are no blockages, like things not being defrosted in time.
So, I hope this has inspired you. Think about what you’d like to do at the beginning of the week that would make your life easier, and that would help you to eat better, to eat more protein, and to eat healthier during the week. I’d love to know some of your ideas of what you cook in advance in the week. You can email me on karyn@familyfoodacademy.com.
I hope you have a wonderful week, and I really appreciate you being here with me. See you next time.
