Consistently Cooking at Home
For years I worked outside the home. There were many times that my schedule had odd hours. Often, I would not think far enough ahead to plan for dinner. Because of my lack of planning, I would usually bring home something from a fast-food place for our evening meal. Don’t get me wrong there were many nights that I thought enough ahead of time to plan a meal and get everything together that I needed to cook. I really enjoyed cooking on the weekends when I had plenty of time. I realized that I needed better planning for the week. But better planning meant that I had to spend time making a menu for the whole week and stick to it every night. It also meant buying groceries ahead of time. Both of those activities were very overwhelming to me.
My work as a manager was all about making sure that every aspect of the operational day was carefully planned out. Scheduling employees, work crews, transportation, and ordering supplies were what I excelled at on my job. Why couldn’t that organization and efficiency carry over to my home life? I realized that my lack of planning a menu and buying groceries was not the only area in my home life that needed a closer look. My cleaning schedule was almost nonexistent, and my budget was out of control. “I will get to that just as soon as I can” was my catch phrase. Things were not thought through in my home life like they were at work.
Then something happened that changed the way I did everything – cooking, cleaning, spending, and shopping. A friend invited me to attend Financial Peace University a course created by Dave Ramsey on getting out of debt and living on a budget while building for retirement. It was offered at a local church for no charge. What did I have to lose? The course covered how to take baby steps in organizing your life, paying off your debt and saving for the future. One section of the course dealt with creating and living on a budget. Budgeting meant planning for everything including your meals. “I’m too busy”, was no longer acceptable as an excuse. Getting better at being prepared with a plan is what I had to do.
The thought of cooking every meal at home was intimidating. Making a meal plan for a month or even a week was foreign to my thought process, but it had to be done. Peanut butter and jelly could not be served every night.
I searched recipe books and the Internet looking for meals that my family would eat and more importantly ones that I could cook. But I was making menu planning more complicated than it needed to be. So, I created my own list of items that I could cook without using a recipe. For instance, chili – I know how to cook chili without looking at a recipe. Other examples included tacos, spaghetti, baked chicken, and roast. I could make those dishes blindfolded. I made a list of 6 or 7 meals that I could cook without following a recipe card. And yes PB&J was on the list along with macaroni and cheese as a backup meal. My menu was made.
Grocery shopping just became a whole lot easier. Using the menu, I made a list under each meal idea of things I needed to make that dish. Under tacos, I had one pound of ground beef, 1 taco kit that include shells, seasoning mix and sauce, lettuce, tomato, and shredded cheese. There were only 5 items that I needed on hand to create one meal. I repeated this process for each meal and found out that it wasn’t as hard as I thought to make a grocery list.
You might ask what are the benefits of this sort of menu? When you start simple with meals that you know how to cook without a complicated recipe then you’re more likely to cook at home. We may have had to eat those five or six meals repeatedly until I got used to the process and confident enough to add other menu items. I budgeted for one meal night to eat out. Our local pizza place has a Monday night special – any large, one topping pizza for $8. So, I did not cook every night, but I was prepared to have a meal whither from the local Mazzio’s pizza place or tacos that I could cook without the added expense of going to a fast-food place. For sweets we always used packaged cake, brownie, and cookie mixes. Everything was budgeted. Once I got the hang of consistently cooking at home it became easier and easier to plan meals for longer than a week.
Fast forward a few years to owning my home-based business or for some of you who work from home, we are home all day. For me, the “home all day” attitude started to settle into my thoughts. I would tell myself something like this, “I am home all day, I will start dinner after I finish this project.” Morning slipped into afternoon, afternoon slipped into evening and dinner would not be ready. I needed to get back to my simple plan and be disciplined enough to execute it. I’m not saying that you should never have a meal out, you just need to plan for it in your budget and not make it a nightly habit. In other words, back to my basic simple plan. Simple meals that you know how to cook without a complicated recipe. Cooking at home became a standing appointment in my daily work schedule.
It was amazing to watch the grocery budget decrease. In Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey said until you get out of debt you should eat rice and beans and beans and rice. We didn’t stick quite to rice and beans, but we did eat at home more often. An average meal for our family from Arby’s or Panera could cost about $50. When we ate at home, the average meal for our family would cost around $15 or less. No matter how you look at it, saving $35. on a meal is good news to any budget.
Whether you’re wanting to cook at home for budget reasons or for time saving reasons, it doesn’t have to involve complicated meal plans and even more complicated grocery lists. These tips have helped me along my journey to consistently cook at home and create my good life.
