How to Put 3 Homemade Meals on the Table Every Day

[Music] hey you guys it's carolyn from homesteading family and oh no where's Josh he's usually sitting right next to me for pantry taps um today he just got super busy with the house going up on our property here for my parents and he is he is responsible for building the house and so he got really busy with all sorts of appointments and things going on over there so I said I would take this moment and jump right in and talk about something that I've been getting a lot of questions on and that is how to keep healthy food on the table for a large family or for any family during a really busy time and of course I think for all of us every time is a busy time so I'm gonna talk about my techniques to be putting three homemade meals on the table every single day that might bring a little bit of sanity to your life but um I don't know it'd be a little odd to do chitchat without Josh to chitchat with so how are you guys doing I hope you're doing well um if you are a new follower we usually do some chit chat at the beginning talk about what's going on here on the homestead but if you want to skip right ahead to the main topic we always get that time stamped for you so you know exactly when to jump ahead to so hey it is definitely fall here I don't know if you guys have seen the pictures over on Instagram and Facebook but the wood cook stove is up and running and we've been making meals on the wood cook stove so that is a lot of fun here really exciting and that smell of wood smoke just a little tinge of it in the kitchen just makes everything so cozy and so amazing so we're absolutely loving that and aside from that around here all of a sudden everybody got the sewing bug and so I've been busy giving some of the older girls some lessons on sewing teaching them how to use their machines really well so that they can take off there now just kind of getting independent and really starting to sew now one of my personal goals this winter is to really move up in terms of our getting away from disposable items I really want to move further and further towards that zero waste mark we've been working on this for years Josh and I but this year I'm ready to take a whole nother leap there's all sorts of household items that I would like to stop buying there's a lot of things we already don't buy we don't buy paper towels we don't generally buy paper napkins unless there's some sort of a big event that a lot of people are coming over but I know we could be doing better some of the toiletry items some of the cleaning items things like that we could be doing a lot better on so that's gonna be one of my goals and breaking out those sewing machines and having people in the house who want to sell is a huge benefit for that so I'm glad to be getting them going so I'll have a little bit of extra help when it comes to getting their stuff done they can jump right in and help with their own items that we want to stop buying disposable versions of so anyways that's some of the stuff going on here at our homestead and hey we'd love to hear what's going on with you so leave a comment below and let us know what's going on what do you think about the new time for pantry taps this has gotten moved to Sundays of course you don't have to be here live it gets put out Sunday mornings and I know a lot of people are at church and that's just fine we don't want to interrupt that but we do want you to have the full day Sunday whenever it's convenient for you guys to be able to watch it so I had a lot of people say sunday would be a much better day so here we are at Sunday all right so let's get to a question from a follower this one is from Bethany she actually sent this by email so thank you Bethany that's great and I I just have such a soft spot for this in my heart and I'll read it - you'll know why she says that she'd love to have more insight into the life of such a large family like ours she grew up with only three kids in the household and she and her husband now have five five years old and under she just had twins in May and already she feels like she's outgrown pop the conventionally sized pots pans casserole dishes etc for the cooking and knows that she's gonna be feeding teenagers one day and I know that you've done some q and A's on time management so I'm not asking about that but I think your kids might have been closer in age like mine and I'm wondering if you have any advice or encouragement on getting through these early years with so many youngsters and how you led the lifestyle you lead before you had the older kids that can help so much that is such a great question into that I just say you know what we didn't do nearly what we do now when all of our kids were little what we did don't do though was made a real point to slow down and include them in the things we did and hopefully make it joyful of maybe not even a fun occasion but a joyful time together you know sometimes life just isn't fun chores aren't fun but you can still feel really good about your contribution in it and have a joyful heart net so we really try to encourage them to have that joyful attitude and to demonstrate that while we slowed down enough to be able to get them involved which a lot of times when they're little five five years and under that means they're not really helping honestly they are actually making big messes they're you know causing probably more work than our worth in the kitchen in terms of their input in their help however what you're doing is you're creating an environment where that kind of work is just what you do it just standard it's your work and your play it's how you spend time together and it's very normal as our children have aged we we now have our oldest is about 14 and then we have a 13 year old and then we have 12 year old I think we have a 10 year old ten and a half right on down to the baby who's just two and and so we've really seen this already come to fruition I can't imagine what its gonna be like in another five years when we have you know large number of older ones because already we can get done so much in a day if we need to and the kids are jumping in with their own ideas their own things that they want to do they're jumping in with their own angles and really owning a lot of the projects so I think that just that idea slow down and don't do more than you can do while including the kids and doing it joyfully at five children five and under you might just be getting through laundry and getting good meals on the table but include them in making good meals take the time to make homemade pasta or homemade bread with them in the kitchen yeah that means you might have babies on your back and a baby in the crib and a baby you know people close by but keep them close let them get involved even if it means just sticking their hands in a bowl of flour or something like that because they will love it and they'll just have great memories of it and before long they'll be said hey mom you want me to make the pasta for dinner tonight and that'll be the moment where you feel like you've arrived so stick with it you're doing a great job give yourself a break a cup of tea and make sure you get yourself a midday break every day take a few deep breaths have a little bit of planning time at a desk have a little bit of quiet time those are really important things for moms there's so many littles around so thank you Bethany that was such a great question thanks for asking okay so today we are talking about keeping meals on the table Wow this is a big topic and you know if you grew up in a home where eating home-cooked food was the standard this might not be such a challenge for you but if you grew up in a fast-paced world where you're grabbing food out maybe at school lunches where the you know the whole family is busy and going in different directions and then all of a sudden you're trying to put three meals a day on the table that can be a little daunting it can be a little challenging and so I'm gonna share with you some of what I've learned through my years of keeping food on my family's table some tricks that I've learned in just the systems that I put into place okay so first of all I want to tell you how our daily eating pattern usually goes so my trick number one is for breakfast I have a family who wants a hot breakfast every morning that's a really important health-wise I believe that's really important but here's the thing I'm not a morning person and I don't really like breakfast so while they agree it's a really important thing and I really want to see my children eat a hot healthy breakfast with protein in it not a muffin or some just quick grab and go thing I want a real breakfast on the table I don't want to make it in the morning so I have a super super important secret weapon which is my breakfast casseroles we make breakfast casseroles during the week throughout the week so that every single morning of the week we can just pull something out of the refrigerator stick it in the oven and between 45 minutes and an hour later we have a hot healthy breakfast on the table now I know I've talked about this before and I also have a download for you guys you guys can grab my I think it's my top four favorite breakfast casserole recipes I'll put the link in the description so you guys can try those out too if you want you can see some of our favorites that we eat so we'll talk about making those a little bit later but just know that it is part of our weekly routine to get those made get those in the refrigerator and then the breakfast person the person who's first up in the kitchen that's a designated job it's not just who happens to be there the person who's in the kitchen first in the morning just turns the oven on they slide them in cold they don't even wait for the oven to preheat and they turn out great every time so that is really really important to me is to get those breakfasts get that first meal of the day off to a great start now lunches while they're homemade they're also really really simple because I try to make big dinners and I try to make enough to make sure that I have leftovers for the next days sometimes leftovers for a few days this is so important because it allows us just to heat something up really quickly and have it still be a really nutritious really delicious meal not just a quick throw together that makes it really fast and easy okay but there are those days when everybody ate all of the dinner or maybe we did something like a quick convenience food one of our my home can convenience foods we'll talk about that in a few minutes maybe we did that instead and we don't have leftovers so what do we do well I want the meal to be nutritious and I want it to be homemade but I still need that to be really really simple so I've got a couple of different options that we go to in that case one is we'll do a simple beans and rice just start some rice while I'm walking around the house late morning make sure that rice is done usually it's a brown rice and house and oftentimes we'll have some leftover beans if we don't have that I have canned beans that I've home canned from dry and we make sure that we have a quick meal that everybody likes of just beans and rice and grab whatever condiments or vegetables I have in the refrigerator ready to go and let people add that sometimes it's cheese sometimes it's a little cilantro or salsa on the top it's just whatever I have on hand now some other options that I have that will make is maybe a quick cheese sandwich and of course will always have the option of grabbing another home can convenience meal which we have no problem doing something like a chili or anything like that at lunch is wonderful and the in dinners I tend to try try to go all out on the days that I have time that's the meal that I really want to put my heart into I want to make sure that we have a raw veggie a cooked veggie usually some sort of a starch or maybe a root vegetable on the side and then meat of some sort either that or I'll do a dish like a homemade lasagna or something of that sort with a salad on the side maybe some fresh bread so I try to really kind of put my heart and my energy into that dinner again making sure that I make extras wherever I can so that we can have another meal easy to follow it up alright so getting your routine down it may not look like mine but understanding your needs is I think a first part of keeping meals on the shelf and for me that really fell into place when I started realizing where the problems were I did this because I went through this period where I wanted to get my household systems in order and I walked around for a week with a notebook just a little notebook in my pocket in my hand and I noted the things that just weren't working or we're causing me frustration or we're not smooth running for me and one of the things I really found was that the meals needed to go smoothly in the morning and the lunchtime meal and that really helped me to step back and think about it so maybe your solution is not to have a breakfast casserole maybe it's something different although you should try those breakfast casseroles they're really good but maybe your solution is you know your problem is more that your dinners aren't ready maybe it's that you're not remembering to defrost me the day before whatever it is as soon as you start recognizing what that problem is start coming up with a system not just a one-time fix but an actual system that gets into place that's gonna help keep that running for me sometimes I have the problem of defrosting meat the night before so I wait to a system of meal planning writing my meal plan up on a chalkboard wall and then it's one child's job at chore time to go look at that chalkboard see what meat needs to be defrosted go to the freezer get it and get it in a defrosting pan for me I'm not just made things around so much more smoothly so look at your systems and see where you are having a meal break down and look to fix that system and that's where you're gonna start seeing your systems get smooth you'll start figuring out what you need to do for breakfast lunch and dinner to make your household run well okay so number two I just mentioned it and that's the meal planning now for years I heard that old adage if you fail to plan you're planning to fail and you know that really helped me in a lot of ways in that I started doing a meal plan and I would get it posted and it was really important to me to get it out but to realize that I have flexibility so if I needed to change it I could at the last minute that's okay it's there as a tool for me but there was still something missing and that's it was always when life got so busy and hectic then I needed the meal plan most then I wouldn't get the meal plan done and so I had to add to that which is that not only if you plan to fail your no no if you fail to plan your you're planning to fail but that you also need to plan failure because there are some days where it's just not going to work and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that and it doesn't actually have to be a failure on part in your part but you have to be ready for a system failure you have to realize especially if you have a bunch of littles in your house there are days or animals right if you have farm animals you'll know all about this there are days where it just does not go okay you have planned and all of a sudden it's 5 p.m. 5:30 p.m. everybody's hungry everything fell apart you don't even know what's for dinner so you need to have a backup on hand that is kind of your insurance against those bad days or what about the day somebody invites you to come over for a play date and that sounds really good you're ready to get some time away and you want to go visit you want to take the kids and go have a nice time but you know that's gonna cramp your evening or cramp your lunch having that backup on hand just gives you a lot of flexibility so for me my go-to backup is to have convenience foods in jars this is a chicken enchilada soup everybody loves this one this is a roasted eggplant and pepper Puttanesca sauce I don't know if you saw the video the 15 minute meal video that came out last week but I was using this for that video and oh this stuff is so good I wish you guys could smell that I think I said that three times do that video because it just it smells like a gourmet pizza shop when you open this up and heat it up here is a roasted tomato soup I have a whole free training on this making this for you guys where I step you through every step teach you how to can while making this I'll put that link in the description but these are just some of the examples of things that I like to have on hand to make my life easier on those days that don't go right so um a lot of other people do freezer meals freezer meals are great and before I can so much or knew how to can meals on the shelf and printed meals on the shelf I did a lot of freezer meals especially when I was expecting a new baby or when I knew I was about to hit morning sickness and I wouldn't want to cook I would get a lot of meals in the freezer right now our freezers don't allow for that because they're so filled with our homegrown meats and you know I'm a dairy freezer that has all some fresh cheeses and butters and all sorts of stuff so I don't really want to take the space up for that but that's another great way to go some people put dehydrated meals together in jars that you just have to add hot water to that's a great way you know even if you have to go to the grocery store and buy a backup meal or two while you're getting your systems into place I really don't recommend staying with that answer because those things are so not healthy if you find a healthy one it's so expensive you could put so many jars of food on yourself for the amount of money you spend on just one meals worth of a convenience food um but you know while you're getting your systems up and running give yourself some grace get yourself some backups and get ready to get some other backups on the shelf okay now you're planning to fail so you have your backup systems in place that's always important now number three of my top recommendations the top things that I have learned is to make producing your basics part of the weekly routine if you have children teach them how to make something and get it into their chore schedule if it's just you maybe it's just you and you work all week and you just have the weekends get your program that you do every Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon to fill up your basics for the week some of the things that we keep on hand all the time are several different tie of homemade bread we keep a pizza dough on the on the refrigerator shelf for a good homemade pizza night that just makes a Saturday night movie night actually relaxing and not the big stress of making a fresh pizza from scratch right there let's see we keep broths every week we're making some good bone broth and make sure that we have good broth on the shelf we keep some really good ferments going all the time we have dairy ferments we have vegetable ferments we haven't come bucho we keep those things going all the time but it's somebody's job one day every single week to keep that ferment going or to start a new one and so you just want to make sure that you're getting the basics that you need into your schedule so you can plan them in in our house the eight year olds six year old start making pizza dough and one day a week they have a chore of making pizza dough now of course those days where people don't want to do a chore but in general they love the opportunity to get into the kitchen to bake something or to prepare something that the whole family is gonna do and all over and that is definitely the case with the pizza dough those six seven eight year olds who are making that pizza dough always feel so good about themselves when the whole family bites into a pizza and just says oh this is so good so it's it's a great thing for the kids they just gain so many skills and they can certainly make a pizza dough at 6 years old it's not that part of the project let's see the eight year old start making French bread in our house and we'd like to keep a batch of French bread on hand just once a week we make it and use it throughout the week sometimes it gets used up all in one or two nights if we have company over sometimes it lasts through the week a little bit longer than that sandwich bread gets made usually by about the 10 year olds in the house and they make six loaves of sandwich bread once a week we make a batch of cheddar cheese once a week we make a batch of mozzarella cheese once a week when the cow is in milk so we always have some good cheeses to work with in the house vegetable ferments in kombucha is once a week and it's a child that takes care of most of that if it's a new vegetable ferment usually I'm doing that things like taking care of our cultures and our starters happens usually on a daily basis and it just fits into a few minutes short time so once you get that system down you just kind of have all these options on your shelf a quick soup is just a few minutes away if you have a broth on hand you've got some vegetable ferments you can top it with you've got a little bit of rice or noodles or something that can be in the pantry just waiting for you and maybe you have some home canned vegetables or some frozen vegetables you can add you can really put together a lot of good meals if you just have your basics down and you're making those every single week so those are some of the basics for me now let's see let me check my list make sure that I'm not forgetting anything oh yeah make sure you have some basic pantry meals in your pantry things that you can just go grab out of your pantry and make a lot of times that's something like a spaghetti because you can have your own canned tomato sauce you can have maybe a little bit of canned ground beef you can have pasta sitting on the Shelf dry so just make sure you are always giving yourself backups and be constantly planning on refilling your supplies of backups for those busy days okay so those are my tips for keeping three hot healthy homemade meals on the shelf for a large active family every single day of the week usually we give ourselves a big pat on the back by Saturday and Sunday enjoy a really hot fresh delicious breakfast something that's you know nicely freshly made not casserole and a big roast dinner that's easy to just cook all day while we're out and have a great dinner when we come back and you know it's just getting those systems in place so that you know what to expect you know what to do win and you're ready for all of the meals that are inevitably going to be your responsibility to feed your family okay you guys thanks for hanging out with me ask your questions below and jump on over and check out that free training series that we just released this just came out on canning your own convenience meals an amazing roasted tomato soup it is so delicious it's so easy you don't need any special equipment no pressure canner and you'll just love having some backup meals on the shelf so take care of you guys we'll see you next week goodbye [Music] you

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 208,719

Keywords: Homesteading Family, Food Preservation, food storage, how to, frugal meals, food storage prepping, food storage ideas, food storage pantry, homesteading family canning, canning, frugal living, money saving, long term food storage ideas, home canning, home canning videos, food storage and survival, easy dinner recipes, easy dinner ideas, easy dinner recipes for family, easy dinner recipes for kids, easy dinner recipes healthy

Id: FF0tKU1-MPs

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 03 2019