<p>I am one of those moms that cooks from scratch. That is how I was brought up.
Recently, I had a revelation that you have to be a stay at home mom to be able to feed your family well/healthy. Do you agree?
I am not a stay at home mom, I work part time, but am striving to have good three meals at the table each day. And I feel exhausted. It takes so much effort to buy good produce this days, so much effort to cook healthy. How are you dealing with this?</p>
<p>Indeed, i prefer home made stuff to store bought. Though sometimes we weren’t able to buy things cheaper for the already made stuff.</p>
<p>Unforcenently since i live in the dorms, i can’t do that anymore. So i suffer until i go home.</p>
<p>I think things taste better if you are the one to make them, if you know what i mean.</p>
<p>This is a constant battle. I try especially to not have so many unhealthy things around the house. Jetison the artificial sweeteners, diet pop, margarine, low-fat made out of crap stuff, etc. I also try to serve fresh uncooked veggies often (why do we think they should be cooked?). When I can, I buy organic produce and meat from a butcher shop (less processed). </p>
<p>Even though we often have to resort to less than ideal food/meals, we try to keep up the fight on as many fronts as possible.</p>
<p>OP, it seems to me a compromise is in order. We strive to put dinner on the table each day (at least before empty nest). Lunch can be left-overs, sandwiches, fruit, cheese etc. Breakfast tends to be cereal, yogurt, and fruit. Usually everyone forages for breakfast and lunch on their own. It doesn’t seem necessary to cook 3 meals a day. Having members of your family put together a meal will foster independence and self-sufficiency.</p>
<p>You can do it when you decide some things are really important and some things can slide. Dinner with the family was important to me. We tried for at least 5 nights a week with a Mom that wasn’t a monster 
Also agree with GTalum about the other meals. You have healthy choices available for them. How old are yours? </p>
<p>Although I have retired from cooking for the most part (DH IS retired and took it over) I had dinner on the table most nights for all the years the kids were growing up while I worked part time. Not all nights were totally from scratch. Some started with a frozen base with other fresh items added. Crock pot was a life saver. As were pastas. I made fresh sauces in the summer when tomatoes were abundant and froze them for winter. When fresh vegetables weren’t good we had frozen. There are many more organic varieties now. </p>
<p>I never really found the shopping part to be that bad. No harder than shopping for other items. I always scanned the ads each week to see what was fresh and on sale and planned meals around those. Then you are just picking up what you need instead of wondering through the produce section.</p>
<p>The key is to have a routine. </p>
<p>It takes me less than three minutes in the morning to make smoothies (from start to clean blender). I buy frozen fruit in large bags, plain yogurt in big tubs, orange juice, and protein powder. If you have time for nothing else, it’s still a good start.</p>
<p>My husband makes his oatmeal in the microwave: 1/2 cup regular oatmeal, 1 cup skim milk, raisins, cinnamon–and he eats it right out of the pyrex cup measure he makes it in.</p>
<p>Lunch is peanut butter on toast, a glass of milk, an apple or other fruit. Takes three minutes and that’s only because I insist of slicing the apple and toasting the bread. (I keep good quality bread in the freezer, where it doesn’t go stale. But it does need to be toasted.)</p>
<p>Dinner–well, I love to cook, but… Friday night, when we had kids at home (oh wait, we have one of them at home again…), was always pizza night. Always. </p>
<p>I make huge batches of turkey and black bean chili and freeze them in 2-person batches. Since I make it with lots of tomatoes, onions, and peppers, it’s actually quite healthy. As my husband always says when I’m feeling too frazzled to take the time to cook: “I’m sure there’s chili in the freezer.”</p>
<p>I love to prepare “scratch” meals, and we do tend to do this on the weekends. During the week I’m in love with the concept of a TV show that was/is on called “semi-homemade”. There are so many well prepared conveniences these days that allow a family to put together great meals. As an example, I love to make pesto and we do when basil is in season or it’s the weekend and we have the time, but there are jars of really good pesto that you can purchase and keep in the cupboard. It doesn’t have to be the canned soup caseroles these days. You can pull a healthy great meal together in 15 minutes or so. </p>
<p>Eat “seasonably”…lots of salads in the summer, pastas, sauces, squashes, root veggies and soups in the winter. It makes it so much quicker in the stores than when you’re searching for something in the off season and quicker to pull meals together.</p>
<p>Another thing we do all the time is make up “batch” food on the weekend. Big batches of chilli, pasta sauces, soups, pulled beef or pork or chicken all make quick and easy mid-week meals. Stirfry during the week is super easy. In winter sometimes I’ll make an extra lasagna and freeze it. It’s quite relaxing to make food for the future on a lazy winter weekend. All day long food is great, too, things you can put in the oven all day or in a crockpot before you head out to work especially in the winter. Inexpensive roasts work well for this for stew or pot roast. Eggs make a great dinner and who says they have to be for breakfast or brunch! You can open cans of crab meat and have crab cakes ready to go into the pan in 5 minutes (the recipe is on the side of the Old Bay tin.) I have maybe 10-15 go-to meals that I can throw together when I’m tired. </p>
<p>Finally everyone makes dinners in our house… all three boys can prep and make food and my H is especially great at opening the cupboard doors and pulling dinner together. He’s even better than I at eyeballing ingredients and figuring out a meal. Or if a roast is in the oven or crockpot, leave a note and have someone else “finish” the meal. I can’t stress enough that being able to put a meal on the table is not a “female trait.” A well stocked pantry is essential. I have a chalk board in the kitchen and if someone uses up a staple or a spice they must write it on the chalkboard so it gets replaced (I do the grocery shopping).</p>
<p>But yeah, it’s challenging. When the kids were young they used to whine that we “never went out for dinner” and for the most part we didin’t. Yet we insisted we eat dinner together even if it’s late and after athletic practices and after school stuff. I don’t get home from the office until after 6 anyway. And there were the days when I crawled home from the office and flopped onto the couch and the boys took care of the food. I also have “I’m not making dinner” periods in my life that can last weeks. We have occasionally eaten cereal for dinner…no one is “perfect” and delivery pizza is always an option, not healthy but pizza once a month isn’t a crime.</p>
<p>It reminds me of when my son asked “why don’t we ever go to Bojangles like other families?”</p>
<p>If you want scratch-like meals without all of the prep, check out the prepared meals section of the best supermarket near you. Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods have decent healthy options without a lot of salt and unpronouncable ingredients. If you don’t have either of those chains near you, you can read the labels on the options available in the stores that you do have.</p>
<p>I hate to cook, but I also agree that scratch is best. It took me a while to track down healthy options for my family. Trader Joe’s has a number of palatable, microwaveable main dishes which means all I have to do is fling a salad together. Whew!</p>
<p>Yes, I think it’s a lot easier to cook from scratch if you’re not working outside the home. I have found there are some things I’m willing to compromise on—jarred marinara—and some things I’m not—no soup from a can for me. I started paying more attention to the total time it takes to make a recipe when I started working part time. There were certain things that from prep–to clean-up took 3 hours. Not realistic if you’re starting at 4:30! </p>
<p>My oldest ds is a junior in college this year, and I have to say that after years of asking,“Why won’t you buy toaster strudel?” I think he finally gets it. He is in his first apartment, and he’s eating a lot healthier than the people around him and he really cares about the quality of his food. It was worth the extra effort because now I know he learned to make the effort for himself too.</p>
<p>Google “Once a month cooking”. Some folks swear by it. Basically you dedicate one weekend a month to a cook-fest and freeze in portion controlled containers. Defrost, reheat as needed. All the benefits of home cooking and the convenience of frozen. </p>
<p>I have not tried it yet, as I am a SAHM, but it does look tempting sometimes.</p>
<p>I honestly have neighbors that eat out every night during the week. They’ve done this for years and years and years. The kids were fascinated by that when they were young. The grill or eat-in on the weekends but never, ever during the week.</p>
<p>I have had a hard time finding Trader Joe’s items that aren’t high in sodium (based on a post above). But here are some things we do:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Ditto on the smoothies. And we have a Rocket blender (like a Magic Bullet, but it was cheaper, big sale at one of our department stores lately) that makes them super easy to use. And I watch for ways to make them more healthy (eg, I took worknprogress’s cocoa-banana recipe and added some cinnamon, and that is often part of my breakfast)</p></li>
<li><p>I cook a lot of the same stuff I used to before we ate a more healthy diet (taco salad and spaghetti would be a couple of examples), but now I use ground turkey or very low fat beef, and whole grain pastas.</p></li>
<li><p>Making an freezing ahead are very good ideas. Or at least cook a lot on Sunday night so we can have leftovers on Mon or Tuesday (and maybe some in lunches).</p></li>
<li><p>Cook and freeze on the weekends. Sometimes only to a certain point in the recipe (eg, I make black bean/brown rice enchilada filling and freeze it, then pull out the filling and put together the enchiladas on a weeknight).</p></li>
<li><p>Some stuff I just don’t do from scratch. I work full time, single parent, fairly big house to take care of. So stuff like enchilada sauce and spaghetti sauce comes from a jar. I buy bagged salads (our store has recently added several varieties). But I try to watch the salt and sugar content.</p></li>
<li><p>Menu planning is key. Every weekend I set down with the coupons and the calendar and plan out the week’s meals and make the grocery list, then go shopping. Usually I do this early Sunday am and go to the store on the way home from church.</p></li>
<li><p>We have some backup plans for if it is too crazy and we have to pick up fast food. Subway chicken sandwiches and Arby’s market fresh turkey sandwiches are what we get if something like school conferences makes it too nuts to cook.</p></li>
<li><p>We love pizza, and probably have it once every two weeks. But we have moved away from so much high fat meat (and no extra cheese) to more veggies.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>momofthreeboys, I thought we lived on the same street, but then I remembered that our “eat-out” neighbors never grill anything and eat out or bring take out food on weekends, too! How do I know? We like to garden and work in the yard on wekends, so I always hear the kids and dad loudly arguing about what they would eat, e.g., Ezell’s or Chinese! Their mom is a SAHM, and both kids are in school from 9 am to 3 pm :eek:</p>
<p>Our family has eaten out almost 4 times this week and now we’re craving for a home cooked meal. Like other posters, we have days that are designated for homecooking and eating out. When I do sit down to plan my meals, I make sure I mix up the time consuming ones with the easy ones. My friend also turned me on to slow cookers and I do that once a week. I also grocery shop twice a week because I tended to overbuy when I went once a week or I’d change my menu.</p>
<p>I have to be “inspired” to cook something from scratch so I’ve checked out foodgawkers.com that someone on cc recommended and I’m hooked. We’re cooking asian style bbq tonight!</p>
<p>Kelowna–I used to cook from scratch pretty much all the time, when I worked part time. Switching to full time has really slowed me down. I do a lot of the semi-scratch kinds of stuff discussed above. But I’d love to have time to do real scratch–canning, freezing, baking, stock-making, etc. I do most of those things sometimes (haven’t tried cannng yet), but on a very irregular basis. It’s not going to happen regularly till I quit my job.</p>
<p>I think if I had the time to do this right, food would actually cost less. I’m factoring that into my future career change decisions.</p>
<p>Lots of good advice here and I agree with the posters who said good time management is a key to making it work. Cook in quantity and quality when you have time; do prep when you have time - I make the dinner salad while everyone is eating breakfast, I wash and properly store greens, fruits and vegetables immediately after I return from the market, so I can serve them quickly.</p>
<p>Another thing that works for me - my kids like homemade pancakes and waffles, so when I usually double or triple the batch and freeze in a gallon-sized zipper bag between sheets of waxed paper. They go in the toaster just like Eggos, but are healthier and better tasting.</p>
<p>All my cooking is from scratch. I work a 40 to 50 hour week and tend to do most of my cooking on Sunday or Saturday. I mentioned this example in another thread—last Sunday, I made a large roasted pork shoulder and stretched it into five meals. I also make large recipe soups and stews on the weekend and freeze them. Through the week I also have a slew of techniques that enable me to cook on the fly. Poaching fish,braising chicken, or grilling meats or veggies with a minimum of fuss or prep time (1/2 hour tops). In college I worked as a sous chef, so I don’t really cook by recipe as much as by classic technique. This enables me to whip up something with what is readily available (in my pantry or at the market)</p>
<p>Cooking from scratch does take planning and it IS a lot easier if you are not working full-time. When DH had his heart attack 14 years ago, I was on a consultative basis from my home. We made significant changes in how we were eating. I felt so lucky having the time to just think and plan and experiment with our meals. I don’t think cooking from scratch is such a big deal if you have had the time to plan, shop, and have the necessary things in your home. </p>
<p>I make most of my things from scratch, but I do rely on prepared foods as part of the ingredients in some of my recipes. I am careful to buy high quality, low fat, low sodium ingredients and I think it just makes it so much easier. </p>
<p>When DH first went vegetarian, I would spend one day a week making vegetarian broth. I would buy all sorts of stuff at market and simmer the veggies and put the broth in containers until I was ready to use. It wasn’t a lot of work, but it was an extra step and honestly, kind of expensive. One day I read the ingredients on the box of Pacific’s low sodium vegetable broth and I decided from that day forth, my soups would start with prepared broth. Saved lots of time and it was worth it. </p>
<p>Ditto on canned beans. Dry beans are cheaper and they do taste better, but I rinse my beans really well and I think my hummus and my bean soups taste pretty good with this bit of cheating. I will do beans from scratch, but I don’t get too concerned if I use canned. </p>
<p>What I do know, is with a little help with some prepared items, eating at home and regulating what goes into our meals keeps us healthier and keeps more money in our wallets.</p>
<p>Speaking of broth and soups…I keep a large resealable bag in the freezer. When I am chopping onions, carrots, herbs or celery—I take the left over odds and ends and in to the freezer bag it goes. By the end of the month, I have quite a collection that makes the basis for a great broth.</p>