Another huge part of homemaking is meal planning and cooking... some of us are naturals while others struggle in knowing how to even get started...
The biggest tip I could ever give to any young or newly married ladies is to always try to have dinner ready (or at least in the process of being prepared) when your husband gets home from work...Now I know some husbands may not want to eat right as soon as they get home. They may have something to do first or simply want to “settle” for a while after coming home before eating dinner and that’s totally fine. Each family has differect dynamics.You do what works best for your family... for example, if your husband gets off at 4:00 pm but you all decide your family’s nightly dinner time is 6:00 pm each night, that’s wonderful! I am simply advocating that you have a plan. By lunch time each day, you should already have an idea about what you are fixing for dinner that evening. It is too stressful to wait until everyone is starving before you even think about what to fix.
So I am a firm believer in a weekly meal plan... if you aren’t intentional in your preparation and when your husband comes home and asked “what’s for dinner?”, that just might be the spark that starts an argument or at least causes some contention in your home (especially if you have had a hard day or the kids have been fussy or you have just gotten busy and didn’t realize how late it had become). The next thing you know, your husband is home and everyone is hungry and looking at you like “FEED US!” and you open your fridge or pantry and stare at the ingredients inside but don’t have a clue what to fix... this can make us ladies feel grumpy and make us have a bad attitude because deep down, we know we dropped the ball... it’s our responsibility to be a “keeper at home”—Don’t get mad at your husband for coming home with the expectation of being fed. Your husband works hard and he deserves to come home to a meal already planned and being prepared for him.
If we love our husbands and want to please them and if we desire to be a Godly woman committed to Biblical homemaking—it really isn’t too much to ask of us to make the time to prepare in this area...
Meal planning doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to make complicated recipes that take hours to make. You don’t have to be some expert chef. There are hundreds of simple, easy but tasty recipes out there that your family will love if you will take a few moments to look.
If you don’t like to cook that much, or you are in an especially difficult/busy season of your life, the slow cooker is your best friend! Usually, just a couple minutes of preparation in the morning will provide you with a warm meal that evening with very little effort on your part. (This tip is great if you are pregnant or having health issues that seem to drain all your energy. By the afternoon/evening, your body just doesn’t feel like standing at a stove cooking. So using a slow cooker may be a wonderful solution to your dilemma. )
You can be as detailed or as vague as you want to be with meal planning... you can plan every breakfast, every lunch, every snack, and every dinner to the exact day of the week. That works well for some people. Or you can just get a variety of ingredients on your shopping list and throw meals together spontaneously... I, myself, prefer somewhere in the middle— when I meal plan, I get general ideas of what we will be having that upcoming week... I plan approximately 6-7 dinner ideas ( if I plan on eating out once that week, I write that down as well. It’s part of my meal plan). I look in my fridge and pantry to see what ingredients I have on hand, then I decided what dinner meals I want (usually, I will ask my husband on Saturday or Sunday if there is a recipe/meal that he would like to have in the coming week.) - after deciding those 6-7 dinner meals, I will make a grocery list of the ingredients I am missing to make those meals...
For breakfasts and lunches, my husband has 2-3 different “set” breakfast and lunches in rotation. He eats breakfast and lunch while at work so I plan accordingly and always have the ingredients on hand for those 2-3 different breakfast/lunches so that’s simple for me in that category.
Now for myself and the kids—since we are home all the time, I do not really plan our breakfasts and lunches to the exact meal but rather, I have 3-4 breakfast options available each week (waffles, eggs/toast, cereal etc.) and about 4 different lunch options (chicken nuggets, salads, pizza rolls, sandwiches etc) or we eat leftovers from the previous night‘s dinner if we have any... if the kids get tired of the same rotation of meals, then the next week, I switch it up a little and get them something different so they can have some variety as well...
Another perk of having a meal plan and buying only what you need that week is that it is much easier to stick to your grocery budget. If you know exactly what meals you will be preparing that week, you don’t have to have extras of this and that, just in case...Usually, young newly married couples have a tight household budget anyway (at least in the beginning, until they get the kinks worked out or are able to advance in their employment) and by simply making a plan and sticking to it, you can really help your husband in this area of your household management...
So all in all, meal planning isn’t all that hard— we just have to be intentional and take the time to be prepared and it will actually save us time and stress (and hopefully, money as well) in the long run...
I encourage you to try this tip for a few weeks and see if it improves your home.
**🌺** I am going to add a BONUS post and share one of my tried and true slow cooker recipes that my family loves!! So make sure to check out that post as the
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-Tiphanie