Debra Rossing

1 - Mix'n'match meals: rather than making three casseroles, to accommodate three different issues (dairy, gluten, meat perhaps), cook the components separately and then combine them at the table. Similar to the way you might do a taco bar where the meat, cheese, beans, peppers/onions, salsa, guacamole, and tortillas are separate. Make your own pizzas are fun for kids - put out an assortment of whatever toppings and appropriate crusts - perhaps everyone just gets gluten free crusts, perhaps only some get GF and some get whole wheat, etc. Same for toppings - some get little bowls of tomato sauce, cheese, pepperoni and others get tomato sauce, pepperoni and a non-dairy melty cheese, and so on. Pasta can be GF and then cook the sauce and meatballs separately.

2 - bulk cooking: pick a day when you've got an extra set of eyes/hands to be with the kids (maybe a weekend when your partner is available) and cook several days' worth of freezable meals. Then you only need to heat the oven and pop the meals in to heat up. Alternatively, cook the basic components (ground meat, rice, beans, etc.) so that you put together a meal quickly without the long prep and cook times. Along with this, you can repurpose leftovers - leftover chili (slow cooker!) over a starch (rice, pasta, baked potatoes) makes another meal. Dice up leftover cooked chicken and add to mac'n'cheese - BTW frozen veggies take the same amount of time to cook as most pasta so you can throw the pasta and a veggie or two into the water, cook, drain, add your favorite cheezy sauce (we use a cashew butter based non-dairy cheese sauce recipe - yum!) and you've got a one pot meal (minimizing clean up).

3 - menu plan: plan a week (or two, depending on your schedule/preferences) of dinner menus before you go to the grocery store. That way, rather than having to think "what do I have? What can I make for dinner?" you have it sitting there where you can see it at breakfast. You'll know "Okay, we're having baked chicken and salad, that means I need to get the oven on to preheat at 4:30 so the chicken can go in at 5 for 45 minutes, and I can start at 5:15 to make the salad." Also, knowing what you are making means you can figure out ways to enlist little fingers to help - ripping washed lettuce, for example, or dumping a can of something into a pot. Back in the day, if I was baking something, little feet always wanted to be right there but we had a teensy apartment galley kitchen. So, I'd set him up at the kitchen table just outside the doorway of the kitchen with a BIG plastic bowl and a wooden spoon. As I was gathering ingredients, I'd toss handfuls of things in the bowl or let him use a plastic measuring cup to scoop out some - things like nuts, raisins, crunchy cereal, and the like (even if those didn't go in the recipe - it didn't take a lot of extra time to hand him a scoop of nuts). He'd stir it around a bit and I'd add something else. By the time the baked goods were in the oven, we had a nice trail mix together to snack on while we waited for the baked item to be ready to eat (baked and cooled).

Deb R


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