Are you overwhelmed for any of these reasons, and want a tip for reducing your load of domestic stress?
- a mom in a high stress season
- pregnant and sick
- chasing a very hyperactive little one with no let-up
- fielding an unexpected disease of a relative
- having to tend to some unforeseen extra heavy load of business/office work
- working through some fiery behavior from a family member
- chronically endure some sort of unidentifiable fatigue
Here is an immediate way to de-stress for a season.
One way to find more time to reduce stress so that you can regroup would be to find ways to reduce your cooking load, your time in the kitchen. You can accomplish this by spending extra money on buying more pre-prepped groceries than you ever imagined. This one tip will considerably reduce your prep time. Buying organic, least-tampered-with varieties of pre-cut and wholesome pre-packaged items will provide you with more time to rest. You can try this strategy, experimentally, full blast, for two weeks, to give yourself an enjoyable mini stay-vacation in your home.
Consider this:
Even if you were hiring a high school homeschooler every day to watch your young child for just one hour while you whipped out your meal preps, that would cost a certain amount of money. If you don't have a ready answer for that, consider using that increased allocated money to gain mega help for you in another way: buying pre-packaged and pre-sliced everything! Below are specific ways to do that.
Buy organic baby food in jars, jars and jars and jars of them, and other prepackaged baby food that isn’t just for babies, such as organic Mamma Chia Squeeze Vitality snacks. Stock your cupboard full of them. Presto. Pull one out for lunch for your baby, or anytime for you, yourself, as a snack.
Maybe you have someone in your household who needs (or wants) a lot of meat, but you’re angling for a plant-based diet for the rest of your household. Because of the extra minutes it takes to clean up all the grease in pans and utensils, here is a way to skip cleaning and prepping meat at all. When I had a meat-eater visitor in the house, I solved the mess and prep time totally by doing away with it entirely. I bought prepackaged organic meat slices, beef and turkey and in addition added cans of salmon and tuna. I served the sliced meat every day in a sandwich for lunch (on healthful gluten free bread) with a slice of red onion and a slab of lettuce and mustard and mayo. That lunch never took extra time for me. Toss an apple and a carrot on their plate, and you're done! No thought. No prep. No clean up. A person doesn't need meat twice a day -- so that part is now taken care of. Your evening meal can now be the same for everyone, to give everyone (and especially the meat-eater) good fiber. If you have very young children whose teeth haven't all come in yet, you can serve them your same evening meal, mushed up.
Purchase large quantities of these:
- frozen pre-cut potatoes
- frozen pre-cut sweet potatoes
- prepackaged rice meals
- frozen veggies
- frozen fruits (for your pies, buy the frozen fruit already cut up: open and dump into a pre-made gluten free pie crust)
- pre-cut coleslaw packages
- pre-made salads from a health food store: open and dump onto the plate
- gluten free breads, muffins, buns
- frozen dinners
- Amy's frozen roasted red pepper pizzas...no cheese
- cans of pinto, garbanzo and (most especially) black beans (just 3 ingredients: organic beans, water, and sea salt or salt-free)
All evening meals can now be made easily by stacking these ingredients in one bowl per person:
Begin with a base of rice, potatoes, corn or acorn squash, topped with frozen veggies steamed, beans from a can dumped on top of that and salad stuff on top of that. Serve with apple cider vinegar or some sauce...salad dressing is the easiest....DONE!
For more ideas:
(1) Download our 33-page e-Book of 80 Mostly Raw Recipe Ideas. Mother-easy quick-fixin’ great-tastin’ super healthful mostly raw delicious food ideas. Gets you goin’ in the right direction right now! Read the table of contents.
(2) Also, our 30-page e-Book, What? I Have to Fix Dinner Again?! Encouraging meditations and tips re: the seeming drudgery of fixing meal after meal, to reverse the bondage of fast-food restaurant quicksand and to adopt freeing new approaches to the work in your kitchen. Read the table of contents.
