Family Food for Moms Podcast I Inspiration for Family Cooking and Dining I How to Enjoy Special Meals Together

#36 What we can Learn about Bulk Cooking from Cruise Ships and Restaurants

As busy moms, there's always something that needs cooking, there's always a meal that needs preparing, and so I'm sure you have found that bulk cooking helps with that - cooking more than one meal at a time, storing half of it, putting it in the freezer, and then the following time you only have to reheat it. I thought it would be fun to look at how cruise ships and restaurants do their bulk and their batch cooking, and just get some ideas and inspiration from them. So, let's think about bulk cooking from the perspective of a cruise ship and what we can learn from that. 
In order to do bulk cooking effectively, a lot of planning, consistency, and efficiency must go into it. I think the more you plan, the more effective it's going to be, no matter whether you're thinking about doing some batch cooking on a day to have meals for your freezer, or just bulk cooking if you're having a large event, large family over, or if you want to double up on a meal you're doing. There's a few principles that I think we can apply. 

#35 How to Arrange a Special Fun Dinner for Your Family at Short Notice

 Today we're going to talk about how to arrange a special dinner for your family on short notice. Lately I've been feeling like I'm missing all those wonderful Christmas meals that we had in December. We had some graduation meals for our kids. There were the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day meals. There were other celebrations. There was a birthday, and another birthday in January. There was so much slowing down during that time, and making things special - having a special meal where we enjoyed each other's company. We relaxed, we played games, we did stuff that we hadn't done before, and we ate good food and made memories together. 
Suddenly things were very busy in January. Homeschool was going on, and work, and lots of cooking for various things, plus some extra challenges on top of that. Then it felt like we hadn't spent as much time with our kids, and we hadn't spent enough family time together enjoying each other, so on the spur of the moment, I decided to have a special meal that evening. I had the day to plan it, though I did have other stuff going on during the day, so I kind of did it in between. I didn’t have a lot of preparation time, so I wanted to talk to you about how that worked and how I was able to put that together in a short time. 
So, we're going to go through some steps to help you get there if you want to do this. Hopefully this will make it easy and practical. We'll talk about the food, but also the activities and ambience, and all those things.

#34 What we can learn from the Amish about Food and Healthy Eating

 Today we're going to be talking about what we can learn from the Amish about food and eating and dining. The Amish are a very healthy community because they eat very simply from food that they cultivate on their land and they have a huge amount of physical exercise having to look after their farms, grow their food and do a lot of manual labor that we would use machines for they're good at working as a community and helping each other buying from each other. 
But today we're going to talk about what they eat and the healthy lifestyle that they live. 

#33 Tips for Balancing Your Blood Sugar throughout the Day and at Night for Better Sleep

Today I'm going to talk about some ways you can balance your blood sugar throughout the day. It's something I try to be aware of, and it's not easy for me to remember to do things the right way, but it makes a big difference to how I feel, and how much energy I have. 
Making sure your blood sugar is balanced in the morning is the best way to have it balanced throughout the day.

#32 Tons of Ideas for Date Nights at Home with your Hubby

Today, we're going to talk about date nights at home. My hubby and I often enjoy having our date nights at home. And for many years, we weren't really able to go out because our children were young and we didn't have babysitters that we wanted to use. And so we had date nights at home and they've been so amazing.
Nowadays, we have older children, adult children. And so. We try to go out once a month to a place, but it is more expensive. So we still like to have three out of the month at home. So today I'm going to tell you how they, how we do that, how they work and give you some ideas for what you can do for date nights at home.

#31 What we can Learn from Restaurants about Cooking and Dining

 Today we're going to talk about some things we can learn from elegant restaurants about food and dining - things that we can apply at home without making it a huge big effort, but still making our dinnertime more special, more meaningful, and more nutritious. 
Certainly there are fast food restaurants and things that we wouldn't want to emulate. And, we're not going to be able to create a restaurant at home - that's a lot more work than we have time and ability for. You'd need all the waiters and waitresses and all the chefs. But I just want to think about ways that we can apply some of the principles to make our own mealtime special. 

#30 Simple but Effective Health Tips For Your Kitchen

Thanks for joining me on the Family Food for Moms podcast!
Today we're going to be talking about simple health tips for your kitchen. These are some unusual health ideas, ones that I find important, and that I like to do in our family. I thought that you might enjoy hearing them - you haven’t heard some of these before!

#29 What to do When You're Feeling Stuck in your Kitchen

Sometimes things just get stuck, often around the holidays and other busy times of year. There's so much to catch up with, and things kind of get stuck when it comes to food and cooking. I found this out recently, when there was so much going on, and I didn't even realize that I didn't have a proper food plan.
Every day I would be like; whoa, I have no idea what we're doing for lunch or dinner today. Then I would have to make a last minute plan, like doing some quick online shopping for something like quiche or pie, or chicken breasts that I could cook quickly. This just kept happening day after day. 
That's not usually the case, because we usually have stuff that we've cooked that week. We like to do a lot of cooking on Tuesday and Wednesday - our kids each help on different days. We also do quite a bit of cooking for our church family, so we have to be doing a lot of cooking, but sometimes there's just a lot going on, and things don't happen. That's what happened to me last week, and I had about four days where I just realized: oh, I don't have a plan for this. 
Now I want to tell you what I did to kind of correct that, because it got to the point where I felt overwhelmed, and it wasn't working, and I just never had the energy to cook.
Lets chat!
 

#28 What we can learn from the Chinese about Food and Cooking

The Chinese are a fascinating culture when it comes to food. They have a unique approch to eating and there is a ton we can learn from them. Everybody loves a good chinese takeout, and its great to learn to cook chiniese broth, noodles, stir fry, etc at home.
So today, Lets talk about what we can learn from the Chinese about Food and Cooking!
This is the last episode for 2024. I'll be back on Monday 6th January! Have a blessed Christmas, friends!
 

#27 What we can Learn from Queen Elizabeth II about Food and Dining

 Queen Elizabeth II was an amazing lady. She lived to the age of 96, and she reigned as monarch for 70 years, which was the longest of any British monarch. She was healthy and active up until close to her death, so it's very interesting to learn about what she ate, and how she ate it.
I enjoy watching YouTube videos by Darren McGrady, who is a former royal chef for the Queen, and then for Princess Diana when William and Harry were young. He's also written some recipe books, including recipes he used to cook for the Queen. I think it's so interesting to look at her lifestyle and the way she ate. So, today I want to talk about some things that we can learn from the Queen, about food, about eating and a healthy diet, and then dining, and how things worked around her.