I choose to cook.
You can’t do everything for your children and your family. It is impossible to cook homemade meals, clean a house, do yard work, help your children with homework, do laundry, do dishes, play with your children, take care of yard work, and have time for self-care. The solution for the modern parent is to simply not do all of these things.
Diana takes on a lot of these duties, many she shares with me, and a lot of other stuff like yard work and house cleaning we pay others to do for us. One thing that I chose to take care of myself is cooking. Many people eat out or take out more often than we do, not because they are bad people, but simply because they choose to take care of their lives, and their families in different ways than I do.
Almost every day I will cook at least one dish. If the meat and starch is leftovers I might roast some broccoli. Three of four times a week I cook a full meal. Sometimes this might include boxed macaroni and cheese, but more often than not I’m cooking most of the meal from scratch.
Often Diana is around to keep the kids out of the kitchenm but many times I’m managing cooking dinner while watching the kids. So here are some tips I’ve figured out over the past six years on how to cook with children around.
1. The Oven Is Your Friend
If you’ve got a little one who is insisting on being held, putting them down in a play pen for ten seconds to slip something in and out of an oven is a lot more effective and safer than trying to hold them (or let them scream) while sautéing something in a pan. If I know I’ve got needy kids on my hands, dinner is roast chicken thighs, roast broccoli and baked sweat potato time. Yes, the stove-top faster, but the oven allows you to not need to actively pay attention to the food, when you need to actively pay attention to your children.
2. Time Everything
When I’m cooking without my children around, I don’t really feel a need to set timers. I can keeps multiple times in my heads to for different dishes, and I have the ability to check on the progress of food. With kids are involved, my ability to keep track of time completely goes. The only times I’ve ever come close to burning food is when I’m cooking with my children around. So, I run multiple timers, even for a time as short 2 minutes. I’ll keep a timer my phone, on the microwave, and an egg timer while my children refuse to let me pay attention to the food.
3. Prep Whenever You Can
There’s a lot to do around the house after your children go to bed, but if you can spend some time prepping it can make a world of different. Cooking with needing to worry about chopping, slicing, and dicing is a whole different process. You can hold a baby in one arm while you put in prepped ingredients into a chili, but you can’t hold a child and chop at the same time. Parboil potatoes, marinate meats, chop veggies, and measure out spices. The closer you can get to basically have meal prep kit level of readiness, the easier it will be to cook with children.
4. Go With Plan D
I can be a pretty stubborn cook sometimes. When I set my mind to doing something a certain way in the kitchen, I often don’t want to compromise. However, with children around, sometimes you just have to change you plans. That may mean you go with a frozen veggie instead of fresh. Or you start a stew, realize that your children simply will not give you the time and space to cook so you order in a pizza. There’s no shame in holding off on that amazing salmon dish until lunch the next day, if you have to go with plan D to get your family fed.
One of the ways that mother expressed her love to me was through cooking. This is something that I do for my family. Sometimes my children appreciate it more times than others. It can very stressful, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s worth it. However in this crazy world, it’s one thing I can do for my children, one part of their day I can control. Someday they will realize how I showed them love through food, but for right now knowing I'm doing right by them with the food I put on their plate is enough.
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