Cooking for the Week
If I would have had a blog talking about how I fed myself throughout my life, it would have been wildly different depending on where I lived, my job, my budget, my partner or if cooking for one, my time demands, my kitchen and the tools I had, my health needs, my culture, my access to food being walk-able or drive-able, and the weather to name just a few. There will always be many variables that impact how we feed and care for ourselves around food. Feed yourself in a way that makes sense for you and your life right now. Today.
At this stage in my life, my family relies on recipes we know and love for inspiration, what’s in season and what we need to take care of our nutritional health as a guide to meal planning. We are not food or nutrition snobs. The most important thing is to get cooking and eat meals, either with each other or any one of our favorite people as often as possible. We batch cook and prep large amounts of a few staples on one weekend day as often as we can to save us time throughout the week. We put on our favorite music and get cooking. This makes a big difference for us in how grounded we are in our week. If I have my mini sous chef with me, this takes a bit more time for lessons on helping, spills, potty breaks, etc. and so we slow down and make it fun. Here are a few things that we worked on this morning:
Lentil Sausage Soup-I used this as a guide with as many of the ingredients as I have on hand. For cooking in general (baking is different), I don’t let a few missing ingredients turn me away.
Roasted Asparagus, olive oil, salt/pepper
Baked Sweet Potatoes
Oats made with milk and our mix in favorites. For me fruits, nuts, flax. For the Mr., egg whites, fruit, spinach, nuts. Our little one loves either.
Rotisserie Chicken, shredded and cooked with barbeque sauce
Salad Greens, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, red wine vinaigrette
Toddler Activities:
I set her up a mini version of my cook station, cutting board, non-sharp knife, bowls. She can snap asparagus, wash sweet potatoes, peel onions, transfer scraps to bowl. We practice counting, learning names of vegetables and of course tasting of everything!