So What Is For Dinner?

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Do you get variation of this question daily? “Mama, what’s for dinner?” “Mama, what are you cooking for lunch?”

Food, a major preoccupation with Singaporeans and a touchy topic with parents – always concerned about the amount their children are eating or not eating. Many days I wish we didn’t have to eat. Just pop a pill or something! Or if we have to eat, have a personal chef assigned to each family!

Be Good Stewards of Our Bodies

And then reality strikes 🙂

Most of us want to feed our families and ourselves healthy and nutritious food. But let us be realistic and practical. We cannot do it all the time. It could be a time or money constraint. Our resources are limited. But we have a responsibility to God to be good stewards of our earthly bodies. To eat junk food and pray that God will look after us is as presumptuous as dashing across the road and saying that angels will watch over us.

By planning ahead, you will be able to avoid that last-minute meal time rush that sees you resorting to buying MSG-laden processed foods from fast food joints or kopi tiam‘s zhi char stalls*.

Stop the Guilt Trip

While eating good quality organic food sounds like the way to go, I find that it is just not practical in the long run. Especially in Singapore where such a high percentage of our food is imported, unlike the US. My American friends tell me that they can either rear their own food (chicken, beef, goat, vegetables, etc) or they have neighbours who do. So save yourself the guilt trip if you can’t feed your family organic food all the time. I refuse to let it bug me.

What I do try my best to do is eat as little processed food as possible. Eating food as close to the way God created it is best, according to Rex Russell in his book, What the Bible Says About Healthy Living and Jordan Rubin of The Maker’s Diet.

Planning Ahead

So how are we to feed our families reasonably well and not bust our food budget. Oh! And not have to slave in the kitchen for hours?

Two words: planning ahead.

Planning Ahead aka Menu Planning

I used to plan a weekly menu when we had fewer children and I had more time But now, I plan a whole month’s worth of menu. By planning ahead, certain things are accomplished.

1. You don’t have to crack your head everyday thinking of what to cook.
2. There is no mad rush before mealtimes because you already know what you are going to cook and the necessary food item would have been defrosted or marinated.
3. In the same way, you will not discover just before cooking that you have run out of fish sauce or lemongrass some other spice that you need for the dish you are cooking.
4. You don’t have to resort to calling take-aways for your dinner.
5. At a glance, you can at once see if you are eating too much of a single food group and space it out accordingly. This is especially helpful when you are avoiding certain food groups due to allergy issues.
6. You can stick to your food budget.

After planning the month’s menu, I then draw up my grocery list by the week. This allows my husband to help me shop for groceries instead of me bringing all 6 to the supermarket. It may be educational for them but it is extremely tiring for me. But whenever possible, each of them gets to take turns to follow daddy to the supermarket.

More Planning, Less Stress

Ideally, I should cut up and portion up all the meat items once the groceries are brought home (this will save even more time in food preparation) but generally I am too preoccupied with other things when the groceries come back. So it doesn’t get done.

Does this mean that we never eat junk food? OR that we follow our menu to a T? Of course not! Contrary to popular opinion, I am human too. Lol! And I, too, get lazy and uninspired. So sometimes we do order pizza or McDonald’s or KFC. But with planning, this becomes the exception, not the norm.

Planning ≠ Boring

Does planning ahead spoil the spontaneity of life? Only if you let it rule your life.

When I feel like cooking something not on the menu OR if beef/duck (usually more expensive) is on offer, then I will cook it and just skip the original menu plan or save it for a rainy day. Let the menu plan help, not frustrate you. It is a tool to simplify your life.

Once a Month Cooking

There is one more method that you may wish to try which I personally have not done because…Imagine cooking one month’s meals for our family in one day. Not only will I collapse from exhaustion, but I will also have to invest in 2 chest freezers to store them all! Even if it is just one month’s worth of dinner only.

It is Once a Month Cooking or OAMC. It literally means what it says – you just cook once a month. For one day or two (if you are just starting out) you will cook everything on your menu and freeze it. And that’s it! You are done! All you need to do in the days ahead is to pull out what you need and defrost it in the oven and voila! A meal is served in just a few minutes! If you need more details just google for it and go to the library to borrow books on it.

Happy planning!

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Menu Planning
Cook Once, Eat Twice

*A zhi char stall is a shop that sells various Singaporean Chinese style stir fried food such as sweet and sour pork or fried rice/noodles. It is similar to what is called Chinese takeouts in other countries. 

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