Getting home-cooked meals on the table daily is one of the hallmarks of homesteading. It will keep you eating well even on a tight budget, and it’ll be a good habit to develop if a large garden is in your plans. You’ll need to be comfortable in the kitchen to make the most of and preserve your harvests. I have one toddler, and one on the way and strive to provide them home cooked meals daily. Not only is eating out all the time way out of my budget, but the fast foods also make us all feel pretty sluggish after a few days in a row. Even with busy schedules and chores, getting home cooked meals on the table daily is not impossible, here are some secrets I’ve learned to accomplish that goal!
Don’t try to cook everything from scratch.
It can be pretty inspiring making your own – but don’t get so caught up in it that you burn yourself out trying to make every recipe from scratch all the time. Use the frozen biscuits, the box mix, and already shredded hash browns. If it saves on time and keeps you cooking, then it doesn’t make your efforts any less valid. There will be a time for you to experiment later on, once the time savings have built up.
Keep kitchen stocked with family-favorite staples.
Breakfast hashbrowns, chicken and curry with rice and beans or pasta and meat sauce are examples of classic, low effort meals you should always look to keep the main ingredients stocked in your kitchen. When time is low, go with what you know everyone will eat and get full on. Making fruits, veggies, grains, and legumes a larger part of your diet will stretch a grocery budget far and provide the most cost savings when your harvest comes in.
Simplify menus by using the same ingredients.
The age of food delivery makes it easy to get multiple different cuisines in the same day. Unless you have a large budget and lots of prep time, getting the same effect with home cooking is not as easy to maintain. This doesn’t mean your meals have to be bland or boring – just coordinated so you can buy ingredients in bulk. This also allows you to be able to prep ingredients in bulk which will provide plenty of time savings and reduce the number of times you have to dirty and clean up the kitchen for a meal.
Learn other methods of food preservation for different “quick” meals.
Batch cooking and freezing extra meals is a great place to start building up a stockpile of convenience meals. However, only using the freezer for food preservation has its downsides: many freezers have limited space, many things in the freezer need to be used within 6 months to maintain good quality, depending on how you store the food it can take too long to defrost for when you need it. Learning to can recipes will expand your stockpile for even faster quick meals that will last just as long, and some longer. Water bath canning is easy for beginners and good for acidic foods, like fruits, jellies, salsas, most tomato sauces, and pickles. Pressure canning requires a little bit more expensive equipment, but you can preserve low acid food like soups that contain meat, pasta, or non-pickled veggies and is still a great way for beginners to begin stockpiling their pantry with home cooked convenience meals.
Share your family favorites
Establishing a habit of making and serving home cooked meals on the daily is not impossible even with young ones to care for. Comment and share some of your family favorite staple meals!
