With
proper meal planning, you can free up your time and energy to BE with
your family enjoying good, healthy food. Eating a scrumptious meal,
talking, laughing, and interacting with your family will create family
bonds that endure. Fight to keep mealtimes for your family – it will
make a difference now and for generations. “Kitchens are made to keep
families together”
· Meals are an important part of
family life, yet thinking of what to make for dinner can sometimes feel like drudgery
· We spend a large percentage of
our time thinking about meals – what to make, how to prepare, grocery list, grocery shopping etc.
· Food pulls us together like nothing
else can – we are more relaxed in conversation
· Meals are a fundamental act of
service and mean a lot to our families
Lynne
likes to plan themes for each dinner. This is what they do in their
house, although think about how YOU function and what themes YOU would
like. Ask yourself what is going to work for
my family and me?
Sunday
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Monday
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Tuesday
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Friday
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Saturday
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Traditional meals
Phil
grew up with meat, potatoes, rolls, etc. Lynne grew up with spaghetti
sauce, ravioli, pasta, etc so they alternate between the two.
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Leftovers
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Mexican or Italian
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Soups (winter)
Meatless meals (summer)
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Crockpot dinner or tries a new recipe
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“Day Off”
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Chicken, pork chops, fish, hamburgers, etc (grill day in summer)
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Lynne
tries to make Sundays different – uses the good dishes, changes the
tablecloth for the season, cloth napkins, stemware. She likes big meals
on Sundays because so there will be leftovers
for Mondays which allows her to focus more on FHE
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Family Home Evening
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Sammi's day to cook (Lynne's at school) so these meals are easier
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YM/YW
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This is Lynne’s big school day
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She either goes out on date with husband or orders pizza
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She
likes serving a bigger meal on Saturdays due to Fast Sundays etc but
makes sure it's easy. Grilling is always easy and so is the clean-up.
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· In the winter she uses the oven,
during summer she uses the grill
· Sometimes we get so bogged down
w/ main dish that we can forget side dishes which are the healthiest (fruits / vegetables)
· During family dinners everyone
gets a turn to share: what was your high today and your low today, what
did you do for somebody else today, what are you grateful for today?
· Lynne adds apples, strawberries,
or nuts to almost all salads
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Tip #1 Know what you are making for dinner BEFORE 12
noon. If you work figure that out the night before.
· Set a time in the morning to have
all your prep work done (10am, 11am, whenever).
· Chop the vegetables, brown meat,
wash the fruit, etc.
Tip #2 When you cook, think TWO meals rather than one. This will save you a lot of time.
· Whenever you’re browning ground
meat, cook extra and freeze the extra.
· The frozen, already browned meat
thaws quicker
· A little over 2C cooked = l lb
(use in tacos, meat sauce, stir fry, etc)
· Buy the leanest ground meat you
can buy
Tip #3 If you have good food on the
counter when the kids come home from school, they will eat it. For example, celery sticks, fruit, etc.
Tip#4 Cooking should be a family affair.
Make/Let your kids—boys and girls—HELP and over time they too will like to cook.
· Don’t worry about the mess, think
about the memories.
· Remember that what you do or don’t
do in your kitchen will be passed on for generations.
Think about what meals you can make with several main ingredients:
· ground meat meals - tacos, spaghetti,
chili, lasagna, meat balls, hamburgers, sloppy joes, stroganoff, stir fry
· beef - stroganoff, stew, steak, chili,
pot pies, pot roast, beef/barley soup
· pork - pulled pork, pork chops,
stir fry, pork roast, ham, ham soup, ribs, bacon, BLT sandwiches
· chicken - flautas, taquitos, teriyaki,
BBQ, chicken cacciatore, white chicken chili, chicken parmesan, enchiladas
· meatless - lentils, minestrone,
all kinds of soups, salads, potato, eggplant parmesan, vegetable stir fry, fettuccine, beans, breakfast stuff, baked potatoes
· Italian - spaghetti, ravioli,
cacciatore, pasta
What a few Church leaders have said about the importance of family dinner time:
Elder Perry (“Becoming Goodly Parents” - October 2012 General Conference) http://www.lds.
In
our remarkable parental stewardship, there are many ways that goodly
parents can access the help and support they need to teach the gospel of
Jesus Christ to their children.
Let me suggest five things parents can do to create stronger family
cultures
First, parents can pray in earnest, asking our Eternal Father to help them love, understand, and guide the children He has sent
to them.
Second,
they can hold family prayer, scripture study, and family home evenings
and eat together as often as possible, making dinner
a time of communication and the teaching of values.”
President Hinckley (“To The Women of the Church” October 2003 General Conference) http://www.lds.
Count
your blessings; name them one by one. You don’t need a great big
mansion of a house with an all-consuming mortgage that goes on forever.
You do need a comfortable and pleasant
home where love abides. Someone has said that there is no more
beautiful picture than that of a good woman cooking a meal for those she
loves.
Sister Beck (“A Mother Heart” April 2004 General Conference) http://www.lds.
To
nurture and feed them physically is as much an honor as to nurture and
feed them spiritually. She is “not weary in well-doing”
and delights to serve her family, because she knows that “out of small
things proceedeth that which is great” (D&C 64:33).
Sister Beck (“Powerful Nurturing” December 2005 Ensign) http://www.lds.org/
As
a young mother I did not fully understand my power as a nurturer.
Though we were a busy family, I considered everyone’s presence
at dinnertime nonnegotiable. It was our most consistent gathering time,
and everyone planned to eat together before going on to other
activities. I learned of the influence of my nurturing when our youngest
daughter wrote in a college paper: “Dinner in our
home was not just an eating ritual, but a special time for the family
to communicate and to share our thoughts and stories of the day. … We
often sat together for over an hour as we savored the conversation as
much as the food.”
What research/studies say about dinner time:
University of Minnesota - The happier dinner times are at home, the more likely kids
will have:
· Better nutrition
· Better language and literacy
· Fewer eating disorders
· Fewer risky behaviors
University of Columbia -
Found that children and teens who eat dinner with their family less than 3 times a week are more likely to:
· smoke cigarettes
· drink alcohol
· try marijuana
Cooking is like anything else – you need the right tools. An artist can’t paint without proper brushes. Her some of her favorite
tools are:
· rice
cooker, one that has “cook”
and “warm” settings. After dinner, she can move remaining rice to the
side of the pot and put in other food to keep warm for her kids coming
home from practices, etc. Most people in the world eat rice daily.
· crock
pots, a big one and smaller
size. FYI, bake potatoes in there for 8 hours – doesn’t heat up house.
Another way to make potatoes – put in steamer for 20 minutes.
· fresh pineapple corer (she always
serves pineapple with Mexican food)
· lemon squeezer
· giant skillet (Lynne found hers
at Big Lots)
· she buys minced garlic in jars
spices you may not normally use that make food taste good
· dry mustard makes soups taste
good
· parsley
· season salt
· peppercorns
· paprika (good on chicken)
· garlic salt
· rosemary
