Candy blogs: Are you a hurried, harried working mom? My heart goes out to you. I was one for 22 years. I recognize the weary look in your eyes. I remember that deep sigh as you were about to walk in the door from work. “Buck up,” you tell yourself. “No relaxing for you yet.” Since I can’t talk about EVERY relevant topic for working moms, I’ll choose one thing I am especially concerned about. And I wish I had you sitting in my living room or at my kitchen table, coffee in hand, relating lovingly face to face, eye to eye.
When my kids were growing up, I began to notice that most of their friends’ moms didn’t cook much at home. When they came home from spending time in other homes, my kids would tell me the kinds of foods they ate while they were there: frozen pizza, meal in a box, dumped from a can or heated in the microwave. There was even one time when my daughter went looking for ingredients to make a meal for her and her friend at the friend’s house and literally couldn’t find enough items to put a simple meal together.
This means as mothers we aren’t teaching our children how to shop for groceries or how to prepare and cook real food. What we ARE teaching them is that convenience trumps value. It’s more convenient to eat out or grab something pre-packaged from the freezer or pantry than prepare a real meal or snack. Of course, convenience foods have their place but not on a regular basis.
As a working mom I often saw cooking as a horrible chore, as something that had to be done and was keeping me from doing something I wanted to do. I don’t love to cook. But overall, I did know that preparing a meal for my husband and family made them feel love and comfort. Eating at home as a family has more benefits than just love and comfort however: you know where they are, you know what they’re eating, you have opportunity for conversation and debriefing about the day, the busy pace slows for this time together, you can share traditions and look into each others’ faces. Sharing a meal is sharing life together.
She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls. Prov. 31:14-15
I can hear you now. If you feel you don’t have time to cook, or, like me, don’t like to cook, get comfortable with some basic recipes and rotate them. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be enjoyed. Get good at 10 or 12 recipes that your family enjoys and rotate them. You can also always have the ingredients for those recipes on hand.
Do you know the cooking basics? Sear/fry, roast, bake, crumble, beat, fold, rue, steam, etc.? I’m no expert but I do have a command of the cooking basics and that has been quite good enough. If you weren’t taught the basics of cooking, go online, watch some cooking shows, ask a good cook whom you admire to share some teaching time with you, take a community cooking class, cook with friends, experiment. Try doubling recipes and freezing one batch for later. It’s not rocket science but it pays big dividends.
Some who will read this will be chuckling to themselves. Candy? Writing a blog post about the benefits of cooking?! It IS laughable. But I did cook at home most of the time when we were raising our kids. And my daughter has a knowledge of the cooking basics. I did go through a period of years at the beginning of our empty nest where I thought I deserved to take a break from cooking. Perhaps I did. But it came at a very high price. We spent hundreds of dollars every month on eating out when we could have been getting out of debt faster and building toward our future.
And don’t forget the value of teaching your children to work in the kitchen as well. Kids should be involved in the whole process of menu selection, grocery shopping, meal preparation, setting and clearing the table, washing dishes, tidying the kitchen, sweeping the floor and emptying the garbage. It doesn’t have to be all you. Are you a control freak? Does everything have to be done a certain way, to the point that you can’t allow others to help you? Get over yourself. So what if you can do it better and faster? It’s not about you. It’s about teaching and training your children to be functioning, contributing members of their own families someday. They should be able to take care of themselves when they leave your home. Are you raising demanding princes and princesses? We see them everywhere. There are entire TV shows about them.
Yes, there will be more dishes to do, more shopping to do, more messes to clean up. But there will also be easier weight management, a healthier family, you’ll save money, you will treasure a sense of well being, and you’ll actually be sharing life with the ones you love most instead of just surviving each day. Every day matters, girls. A lifetime is just an accumulation of individual days.
Here are some of my favorites:
Flylady
All Recipes
Whatmegansmaking
OnceaMonthMom
Everything in Moderation
So what’s for dinner?
Into this messy life of mine, I invite Him in, asking Him to shine through the chaos. Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience
Candy Troutman 
Candy, what a great blog! I too am not a cook, so why could I relate? I was not as wise as you are! I did not cook that much, nor teach my kids how to either. What a blessing we all missed by living life together at the dinner table! Can’t go back, but now as empty nesters, my husband, Carmen,and I have learned to share meals together. Why? Because it is less costly as well as we want to share life together. Learn a lot even over speghetti!
I have also learned to make sure we open holidays and any time to share a meal with the precious children and grandchildren we are blessed to have in our lives! Thanks for caring and sharing, keep it up!
Blessings.
“Simply” Sue:)
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Thanks for the link, dear friend! I appreciate it–and you know I LOVE to cook and cook for others. Food. It’s my love language.
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Candy – thank you for sharing your thoughts on the topic of family meals! I used to be a person that was in the grocery store at 5:30pm trying to figure out what I was going to make for dinner. Can you say stress?! Then I did as you suggested here. I found 3 weeks worth of recipes, created a perpetual grocery list in Excel (just print and checkmark what I already had and take that list to the store – checkmark the rest as I bought the stuff). Later I subscribed to a menu/recipe/shopping list service that I found off of Flylady (www.savingdinner.com)
I only cook for 2 people but I use the “servings for 6” recipe amounts so I only have to cook 2 or 3 times throughout the week. This keeps us from going out to eat (saves money and calories!) and I also have plenty to take for lunch. I guess I’m lucky that my daughter likes leftovers!
I have often been the mom that thinks I can do it faster and more efficiently myself but what have I taught my daughter for when she gets out on her own. That’s it! She is going to start cooking (or at least helping!)
Thank you again for this timely topic. I love and appreciate you Candy!
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Candy, I love this topic and I could “chat with you” about this forever. From the time my children were old enough I had them sitting on the kitchen counter stirring food and helping me with the chopping. Today, both my children are amazing cooks, and even though my son is a Professor at U.N.L.V…he calls himself a “foodie.”
He is an amazing cook.
I have done research on the value of “family meal time” and found that families who eat together regularily actually raise children who are more confident, do better in school, are less inclined to do drugs and alcohol and are able to function better socially. For years I was that mom that worked all day and then came home to cook a meal for her family-most of the time being dead tired. But I am glad I persevered, and got my children involved in the process. The rewards have been gorgeous! To this day when our family gets together, one of our great joys is chopping, stirring and creating in our kitchen. To top if off, when this generation really gets into cooking-they do it well-with fresh herbs, fresh vegetables and good meat. My son is actually talking about growing his own garden, which was idea he laughed at when he was a teenager. It’s priceless. Thanks for getting me excited again bout family meal time. Its awesome!
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