Workin' Mom Homestead

Working full-time and cooking from scratch can be challenging at times, especially when you have kids in sports or work late. I work in athletics so I usually don’t get home until about 6:30/6:45. If I have a game that starts at 6 or 7, then I’m not home for dinner at all and my husband is in charge…

Now don’t get me wrong, I still buy convenience foods for emergencies, like chicken nuggets and frozen french fries. I try not to use these, but sometimes -ish happens. I may have a certain dinner planned, and then my volleyball game goes an hour later than expected and I can’t cook that meal I had in mind because I’m not getting home until close to 8. My husband is at home with hungry kids and not the same level of culinary skills. Now if I know I have a late game, I will prep him with better stuff, like thaw out ground beef for spaghetti, throw a crock pot meal together, things like that. Sometimes the unexpected does pop up though and I’d rather have some dino-nuggets in the freezer for him to cook rather than him taking everybody to Wawa and spending a bunch of money.

I have gotten better with meal prepping and planning as time has gone on, and even since having a baby. I want to preface this by saying that we don’t have our older kids all week. They live with us half the week, and their mom half the week. My meals look different when they’re home because they don’t like all the same things. They weren’t given things like rice and beans as babies because, well, they’re not Puerto Rican like me. I also want to say that since I don’t go into work until 11 a.m., I do a lot of meal prepping in the morning before work as well. Before work I have more energy and my son isn’t as clingy. After work, he hasn’t seen me all day and wants to hang on me; I’m tired, sometimes my kids need help with their homework, and I’m rushing because it’s already 7 p.m. and dinner still isn’t on the table.  Anyway, here are some examples of how I prepare myself for the week:

• Breakfast. Saturday morning muffins are a tradition in my house. My step-kids expect them. I like baking muffins or a nice breakfast loaf (banana or pumpkin bread for example) but now that I have the toddler, I make extra so I have a couple days of prepared breakfasts for him. I love having breakfast already done on a Monday morning when I’m still mentally preparing for the week. Other things I like to do are freeze things like pancakes and french toast. Then I can just put them in the toaster and serve. I’ll even make a double batch of farina (cream of wheat) and give the leftovers to my toddler the next day.
• Bread. On Sundays, I like to make a double batch of crusty bread. We eat one fresh that evening, and I freeze the other for the middle of the week. I just pull it out the night or morning before I want to use it, and pop it in the oven on low (like 250℉) with some tin foil on top so we have a “fresh” loaf of bread for dinner. Sometimes I will also make sandwich rolls or loaf bread if I’m feeling extra energetic, but those don’t last the whole week. If I do make sandwich bread, I slice and freeze whatever won’t stay fresh enough for sandwiches. Then during the week I have toast for myself that’s not full of chemicals.
• Beans. I absolutely buy canned beans. However, lately I’ve been utilizing dried beans more to save on money and preservatives. Every other weekend or so, I’ll cook dried beans in the pressure cooker (you can also soak overnight but I usually forget to do that), drain and rinse, divide into two freezer bags, add water, and freeze or refrigerate.
• Chicken. I’ll buy family sized packs of chicken breast or thighs and just prep it all at once. I’ll cut some breasts in half for cutlets and cube some for either nuggets or to make pasta with chicken. The thighs I just separate into bags. I season everything at once and put them in freezer bags. It’s so nice to pull out a bag of chicken to thaw and it’s already seasoned and ready to use when you go to cook.
• Veggies. I love when past Adriana chops veggies for future Adriana. If I know I’m going to make soup or something during the week, on Sunday I’ll chop carrots, celery, onion and garlic and put it in the fridge. Often I’ll just leave it all in the chopper and put it in the fridge if I know I’m using it the next day. If I know I plan to make buffalo cauliflower or serve raw broccoli, I’ll chop it in the morning before work. I also buy frozen green beans and broccoli for the Winter time when I don’t have fresh cucumbers and peppers coming in (the ultimate kid veggie side dish). Sweet potato fries are also something that can be cut and seasoned ahead of time, because they don’t oxidize and turn brown the way regular potatoes do.
• Eggs. I hard boil eggs for myself for the week. I’ll make 6 at once so in the mornings when I’m rushing around I can just grab one or two and throw them in my lunchbox. 
• Mac & Cheese. Occasionally I’ll do a baked mac and cheese and freeze it. Don’t forget to keep it covered when you reheat or it’ll dry out! I made that mistake before. You can do this with casseroles too if your family likes those. Any meal that you want to turn into a freezer meal, you can literally Google, “Make ahead [insert dish here]” and you’ll get a recipe. Trust.
• Leftovers. I love when I have leftovers to take to work. Otherwise I’m basically eating a charcuterie meal for lunch. After dinner I’ll pack the leftovers in my glass containers to take to work the next day. You can also reconstruct leftovers to make different meals. For example, the other day I cooked chicken thighs in the crockpot, but the older kids weren’t home. So we had 3 leftover thighs. I used one to make a chicken black bean chili, which my husband was skeptical of but turned out delicious, and the other two we air fried and had with a side of sweet potatoes that were made in the crock pot. Three days worth of meals came from one prepped bag of chicken thighs.
• Crock pot. Anything in the crock pot is a convenience food. If you can plan ahead enough to have meat thawed, you’ve got to start utilizing your crock pot. If you chop your veggies over the weekend, your morning is even easier.
• Cook in the morning. Besides using the crock pot, and depending on your work schedule, you can cook parts of your dinner in the morning. Sometimes I’ll cook things like rice or roasted potatoes in the morning and have my husband start heating them up when I leave work. Lets say we’re going to grill that evening. If I cook the potatoes in the morning and cut the veggies, and I have the thawed, seasoned meat already in the fridge, I’m basically done. My husband is in charge of the grill because that’s easy for him, and then we’re just reheating the side(s). Or, maybe I’ll cook my pre-seasoned cubed chicken in the morning, then in the evening I just have to cook the pasta, dump in the sauce and meat and let it all get warm.

Here’s what a typical week of meals looks like at my house:

• Sunday– Usually a grill day for us in the warmer months and chili in the colder months. Salmon for me and the toddler, sometimes a steak for my husband if I’m feeling nice, with some roasted veggies (potatoes and Brussels sprouts for example) and bread.
• Monday– Soup/stew/chili with leftover bread or rice. I love a good lentil stew, chickpea noodle soup, or bean chili. 
• Tuesday– Rice and beans if I didn’t make chili the day before, or chicken with roasted potatoes and veggies.
• Wednesday (older kids are home now)- crock pot meal (BBQ chicken thighs or Italian beef sandwiches, for example); pasta dish (like chicken alfredo with broccoli or spaghetti and meat sauce); or a new dish that my oldest sent me on Instagram and wants to try.
• Thursday– Chicken, roasted potatoes, a veg like frozen green beans or buffalo cauliflower and the other loaf of bread if we didn’t eat it Wednesday; or burritos and white rice.
• Friday– Pizza night. My husband started that tradition with the older two before I came into the picture and I wasn’t going to take that from them. Plus it’s a break for me and during football season I have late games on Fridays anyway.
• Saturday (older kids are sometimes still there, depending on what they’re feeling)- Depending on what Saturday involves, this could be another take out night or I’ll cook if I’m home. This is a good night for burgers and roasted potatoes/homemade fries or trying something fun with my step-daughter, like making homemade tortillas for chicken caesar salad wraps (she absolutely loves chicken caesar salad wraps).

I hope you found this helpful. A little bit of planning, chopping and prepping can help tremendously. While I typically stick to this skeleton menu, I change it up sometimes- seasonal changes, a kid makes a certain request, I find something cool on Google, I don’t have any meat and decide to make breakfast for dinner, or I’m off from work and have time to make something more elaborate. Do what works for your family and helps keep you sane!

¡Buen provecho!