Making meals for your family can take a chunk out of your day. That’s often part of being a stay at home parent, but it’s not always convenient. It’s particularly true for work at home parents who also need to deal with their work schedule. There are a lot of ways you can save time in the kitchen to make feeding your family at home take less of your day.

1. Time saving tools

There are a lot of tools you can use in the kitchen that will save a lot of time. Most of them are pretty affordable.

Crock Pot – I’ve loved my crock pot for years. I had one die on me a couple years ago, which was devastating – I didn’t catch on in time to save a rather nice roast I had put in there. I had to throw it out for food safety reasons. But aside from that one bad experience, it has been great.

One of the important things to understand with crock pots is what should and should not cook all day. Meats can of course stay in there for hours, that’s the main use, and so long as you have enough liquid, the meat should turn out tender. Do not leave vegetables or fruits in there too long. They will turn into mush.

You also need to season your meals properly for the crock pot. Too little seasoning, and you’ll have a very bland meal come out. I add some seasoning early in the cooking, but also some later so that the flavor isn’t entirely cooked out.

Instant Pot – My husband gave me an Instant Pot for Christmas, and I’m still learning to use it, but I’m impressed. I love the stainless steel insert that you cook in. So much nicer than a nonstick finish, which always wears off over time. I can cook rice in it, and it still comes out easily, and doesn’t even have the slight crust at the bottom my rice cooker always had.

An Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker can be a versatile device. How versatile depends on which one you get. My Instant Pot can be used to saute the meat before pressure cooking, giving the meat a much nicer look and flavor. It can be used as a slow cooker, although I think my Crock Pot does a better job. It can even be used to make yogurt. I haven’t tried that function so far, and don’t know that I will, but maybe someday.

Food Processor – A good food processor can save a lot of chopping time, slicing time, grating time, and shredding time. They don’t have to cost a lot – Amazon carries some in the $20-30 range, although others can go over $100.

Blender – I love my blender. It’s on the expensive side, being a Vitamix, but it’s well worth it for making smoothies or pureed soups. You can buy less expensive blenders if you prefer or that’s what fits in your budget. If you love smoothies, having a blender and making your own is far cheaper than buying them. Plus, any leftover smoothie make great popsicles for the kids.

Mandoline – If a food processor isn’t your thing or you have only a little slicing to do, a mandoline is a good choice. Make sure it has a good quality blade so that your slicing goes faster.

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2. Prep for multiple meals at once

Prepping for multiple meals at once can save you a lot of time on those busy days. If the recipe can be prebagged, frozen and then dumped into a crock pot or Instant Pot, you have a huge time saver for those days when you don’t have the time to cook.

There are two ways to do this. One way is to set aside a few hours and make up a bunch of recipes, bag, label and freeze them. The other is to make an extra meal as you cook a regular one. Prep two sets of the same meal, but one is cooked that day while the other heads into the freezer for a busier day.

The other is to pick a day and make a bunch of meals on that day. Have the ingredients ready to go and plenty of bags. You can make meals for a week or more in a single day.

Either way can save you a lot of money by making it easier to cook at home even when you’ve had a very busy day. Cooking at home then takes about as much time as going out. Move meals from the freezer to the fridge the day before you need them if you can – they’ll cook more quickly and it’s better for food safety.

Within reason, you can pre-chop your vegetables as well. Don’t do this too many days in advance, or they’ll go bad. If anyone in your family likes to snack on vegetables (my kids do), having pre-chopped vegetables makes it easier for them to have healthy snacks, as well as simplifying meals.

3. Make one pot meals

Making a meal that only needs one pot saves a lot of mess and can be a huge time saver. I like how well my Instant Pot handles one pot meals, as it can saute the meat or onions to really bring out the flavors before starting the main cooking.

Don’t add vegetables in too soon. Overcooked vegetables taste bad, look bad and can ruin an otherwise good recipe. Consider how long the vegetables need to cook and add them in when there’s enough time

4. Use frozen vegetables

Frozen vegetables make it much easier to keep vegetables around without worrying about them going bad. Some people even like to snack on them while they’re still frozen. Frozen vegetables are easy to heat as side dishes or add into one pot meals.

5. Organize your recipes

Find a way to organize your recipes that is easy for you to use. I keep most of my in my bookmarks in my browser, organized by type. You could also consider a recipe app such as Paprika, BigOven, Cookpad and others.

On rare occasion, I print out recipes and put them in a binder, sorted by type. I don’t do this much anymore – they’re so easy to bring into the kitchen other ways now, but it does have its advantages. No need for an internet connection being one of them. It also ensures I don’t have to worry about a favorite recipe disappearing if the website goes away. I also worry less about getting it dirty, as the recipes are in plastic sleeves.

6. Be sure you have all your ingredients

Few things slow you down in the kitchen like finding out you don’t have all the ingredients you need on hand. Either you have to find a substitute for the ingredient, switch recipes, or get someone out to the store, fast. Any of those will take more time than you had planned on.

7. Make it a family job

Just because you’re the at home parent doesn’t mean all the cooking and food preparation is your job. Your spouse can take turns when their schedule allows. Your kids can help as much as is appropriate for their age and skill levels. Kid help can make the job take longer at first, but eventually they will get to where they’re a real help, and even make entire meals for themselves or the family on their own.

Once the kids are big enough to make meals, try to have them cook at least once a week for the family, school work and other activities permitting. Have them plan the meal, and help with the grocery shopping when possible. It’s good training for when they’re on their own someday.

8. Don’t skin the veggies

Many vegetables really do not need to be skinned before cooking or serving. Wash them well. The skins can be very nutritious, and while they may have a slightly different flavor from the rest of the vegetable, that’s often not a bad thing. Many people like their vegetables better with the skins on.

9. Hone your knives regularly

A good quality, sharp knife is one of the best kitchen tools, but it won’t stay good if you don’t hone it regularly. Many people mix up honing and sharpening, but what you do most often is hone your knife. Honing before every use of the knife is not a bad idea at all.

A well honed and sharpened knife will cut through meats and vegetables smoothly and make your work a lot easier. Your work will go faster if you take those few moments to hone it.

The post 9 Time Saving Tips For the Kitchen appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

It’s not easy to get some kids to eat right.

Come to think of it, it’s not easy to get some parents to eat right. We’re the ones who start it a lot of the time, aren’t we?

When you’re at home with the kids all day there’s a lot of pressure to feed them right. You just don’t have the excuse of having been at work outside the house all day for why you’re too tired to cook. Plus you’re there to see what they eat for every meal.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always make it easy to teach good eating habits. Some kids are pretty resistant to the idea right from the start.

Start Them Off Right

Once you’re past the baby food stage, resist the urge to get a lot of prepackaged foods. It’s more work for you, but if you can cook most foods from scratch or something close to scratch you will have much better control over what your kids eat.

You’ll also be teaching them to appreciate more flavors, as most prepared and prepackaged foods are relatively bland, designed to appeal to the widest possible range of palates. They may also contain artificial colors and various types of sugar, such as high fructose corn syrup, that you are best off trying to minimize in your children’s diets.

Get the Kids Involved in Food Preparation

Most young children love helping in the kitchen. It’s something they can do with you, or at least watch what you do. Make sure you let them help as appropriate.

Kids can tear lettuce for salads, throw chopped vegetables into the bowl, help you measure ingredients and watch you do the actual cooking from a few feet away.

If you have the time, space and inclination, a garden is also a great way to get children interesting in healthy foods. Kids are more likely to enjoy vegetables that they have helped to grow, not to mention the great taste of produce fresh from your own garden.

Make Healthy Fun

Not all healthy food is boring. A common favorite is the fruit smoothie. You throw a variety of fruits, some juice and ice, maybe some honey for sweetener, into a blender and start mixing. Tastes great, very healthy.

You can make it more healthy by adding some vegetables into the mix. Carrot goes well in many cases, as do some leafy greens such as spinach. Just make sure there’s enough fruit to appeal to the kids.

I like to use frozen fruit in my smoothies, as it cuts out the need for ice.

The great thing about smoothies is that you can experiment with them. Berries of all sorts go very well as a general rule, and can easily be bought frozen for much cheaper than they are fresh much of the year. Bananas work very well. And if you want some dairy in there, yogurt adds a wonderful flavor.

What If They Just Don’t Like Healthy Foods?

Not all kids make their parents’ lives so easy, naturally. Some will express distaste for every healthy food you try to offer them.

Some say to disguise the vegetables. Books such as Deceptively Delicious and other titles provide recipes so that you can work vegetables into a wide variety of foods.

That’s not my own favorite method. You aren’t teaching your kids to appreciate vegetables and other healthy foods for their own sakes when you do that. However, if you need to work them in and nothing else is working, it’s a reasonable enough measure to take until you can get something better going.

The post Are You Teaching Good Eating Habits? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.