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When it comes to dinner I am all about preparing my food ahead of time, especially when my husband is out of town or working late. The reason why? Well, here it is:
Cooking dinner usually involves two steps: preparing the food and then cooking the food. I find that both of these steps require some amount of time and create some amount of dirty dishes, how much will depend on what you are making. Now I don't know about your kids, but speaking from the experience of my own, they have a really hard time lasting forty to fifty minutes in the kitchen both preparing and cooking dinner at the same time, especially when it is the end of the day and they are hungry and cranky and sometimes tired. Also, now that my kids are getting older and have extra curricular activities I do not have an hour to give to dinner every night.
However, when I break up the preparations and the actually cooking of the meal into two separate activities (one in the morning and one in the evening) I find that young children are more willing and able to help and that their attention span can usually last for two twenty to thirty minute sessions without too much of a challenge. I have also found that my older children are very motivated to get in and help for those twenty or thirty minutes at night because they know that their assistance creates more time for me to go outside and play with them. Whether its shooting hoops, swinging a bat, playing hopscotch or going for a short bike ride we can create meaningful relationships as we both work and play together.
I have also found that this method of preparing dinner in the morning prevents a huge, huge mess come dinner time because the dirty dishes you created from preparing the meal have already been taken care of in the morning. When I prepare my dinner ahead of time I am usually looking at one pot, occasionally two that require my attention after dinner, plus everyone's dinner plate (which my kids now take care of themselves). I think for a homemade meal that is pretty minimal and I mentally feel better when I don't feel like I have been in the kitchen all day. When I do not prepare my dinner ahead of time I typically find that the mess has gotten out of control and requires more than just a few minutes to quickly clean up. This I truly dislike.
Now, perhaps it is the recent loss of a child that is making my life feel even more unpredictable and less stable than ever, but I think regardless of your circumstances life has and always will be unpredictable. Life happens and often the day just gets away from you, at least it gets away from me more than I would like it to. With kids, anything and everything can happen. However, with all of the instability, there is one thing that usually never changes: the need to eat and the guarantee that come dinner time everyone is going to be hungry. You can hate it, you can try to hide from it, but like it or not dinner is coming for you every single night. Sure, you can try to not think about it, to procrastinate it, but unlike that paper in college that you saved for the eleventh hour there is a little army of hangry children to be reckoned with, and we all know that nothing quite compares to the fury of a tired, hungry child.
Am I prefect at preping my dinner every day? No. But I always regret it when I do not prepare my dinner ahead of time. There are a lot of things in life that you cannot prevent, but I know that when my life is falling apart at 5:30 in the evening, when it feels extra chaotic and I am flustered trying to throw something together that I could have prevented this chaos if only I had taken a few minutes earlier in my day to prepare. When I split up dinner between morning prep and evening assembly I sigh a huge sigh of relief because I can now handle the unpredictability and the instability of the day with a little less anxiety, a little more patience, and a feeling of freedom to do the parts of motherhood that I love and live a life that feels just a bit more free.
Of course I know that mac n' cheese, a five dollar pizza, and premade meals exist, but I feel like crap when I eat crap and I am sure my kids do too. Although it takes more work to cook, more mess, more time, I will gladly accept the short term consequences for the long term benefits of health and energy, and the meaning and purpose that cooking with my kids gives to the every day mundane, a meaning and purpose that a meal in a cardboard box will take away. I am not just a provider of food. I am a nurturer, I am a teacher, I am an example of hard work, productivity, and perseverance. The time my children spend in the classroom at school, on the ball field at practice, and in the dance and music studios we attend only serve as an enhancement of values and principles we are already learning at home, lessons that can be learned not once or twice a week, but every day, multiple times a day as we gather together in the heart of our home: the kitchen.
So, this is my substitute for mac n' cheese when my husband is out of town. If you do not have the time to cut up a butternut squash you can buy it pre-cut at many grocery stores. I only like to cut it because Olive and I enjoy washing and counting the seeds (a super fun activity if you need to kill some time).
We usually cut everything up first thing in the morning. I can fit a large baking sheet in my fridge so I will just put the food right on that, cover, and refrigerate until dinner time. I toss everything in a bit of coconut oil (I've also used avocado oil, my kids just like the flavor with coconut oil) and season with salt and pepper. I cook it at 425 degrees for about 40 minutes or so and serve with a fried egg on top.
The best part about the meal is that I can put it atop a bed of greens and eat it as a salad and the next morning I use the leftovers in our breakfast omelets (life saver when dad is out of town since we are not a cold cereal family).
Tips for kids:
Onions. Most kids do not like them. However, after about a year of making this on a regular basis my six year old son loves them. My eight year old daughter does not. Olive just tried on for the first time two weeks ago. We'll see if she will try them again. However, I still make it with onion, I still put it on their plates, and when they are young (about four and under) I just give them a toothpick to easily pick up the other vegetables and not the onion.
As with any chopping, your child will have better success with flat surfaces. This is why I give Olive the center pieces, which are totally square. Your child will get frustrated and be more likely to hurt their fingers if their food is rolling around or wobbling.
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