By Ana Margarita Olar | Foodfindsasia.com
Many women today strive to be a domesticated career-woman. That is, they strive to balance being and excellent employee and an excellent mother as well. And there is an important factor that is affected with this: the kids. Many moms today are so busy that they didn’t have time to prepare a decent meal. More often, they opt for restaurant foods or processed foods for their kid’s lunch and even their own lunch. So for on the go moms out there, here are a few tips to prepare a healthy lunch for your kids:
- Have a meal plan. Because you are busy during the entire week, try your best to have a free time on weekends not only to bond with your kids but to plan your meal as well. Ask your kids what they would like for lunch for the rest of the week. Of course, you need to train them to compromise. That is fried foods should be lesser priority and healthy foods should be of more importance. Include budgeting with planning so that your kids can realize at this early stage how much will be wasted if they would not eat the food you prepared for them.
- Meal preparation is a family affair. Don’t take the responsibility of meal planning and preparing lunch all by yourself. Ask for your family’s help. Your husband can chop the meat, and older kids can dice or peel vegetables. Younger kids can help in cleaning up empty plastic wrappers and vegetable skins.
- Process your ingredients during the weekends. Consult your meal plan and prepare the ingredients according to the amount of time it takes for them to become “unfresh or stale”. For example, fish and meat stays fresh for a week if they are well kept in a freezer, the same goes with eggs unless they have a crack. Garlic and onions can be minced and chopped in advance, the same goes with vegetables such as carrots, kept in plastic containers and put in the crisper compartment of the fridge.
- Extend your breakfast all the way to lunch or extend your lunch all the way to dinner. Recycling your leftover foods should be included in meal planning so that nothing will be wasted. For example, if you have leftover bacon, or meat loaf or hotdogs or chicken, and eggs for breakfast, then you have the main ingredient to make sandwiches for your kid’s lunch.
- Offer foods in their simplest form. Cooking and processing foods is truly exhausting especially if you are a working mom. Why not try to offer simple foods? For dessert include a fresh apple or orange in your kids packed lunch. It’s healthy, oil-free, and saves you a lot of time.
image via She Knows
