Module 2 – The Chef is In the House
Working Mums and Dads
Before you had children, no doubt as a couple, you had more time to cook and exercise.
Cooking and grocery shopping would have been an activity that you did together, or shared between you, as were all the other house chores. You may have both been working or studying, but still your free time was your own.
This changes dramatically once you start a family. Every family’s set up is unique to them; some work around shift work, some are Monday to Friday, and most families with young children will have one or both parents working full time, with the other working part time or at home full time. There is so much work to do with young children that it never seems to end, and it never does – spare time is very limited. The variations are many and the norm is constantly changing.
If one parent is a stay at home parent, the amount of work for them is plenty to keep them busy all day – washing, tidying, cleaning, caring, teaching, entertaining, driving, cooking, shopping and the rest.
Now that you have a family, the workload has increased and the responsibility of feeding your hungry family is something both parents must share in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle for the whole family.
Preparing and cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner and maintaining the kitchen is hard work. However it is by far the most important measure in developing and maintaining a healthy diet for you and your family.
If these tasks are left to only one parent, then that parent will most likely want to resort to shortcuts. These shortcuts can result in bad habits that will impact on your family’s health. Put simply, it is a team effort to cook, shop and look after your kitchen and diet. Parents and kids together, as a team. In the next two sections we will cover how you can help each other in making your teamwork successful when it comes to kitchen management.
Head Chef
It’s time to think of yourself as the head chef in your home kitchen.
You are in charge of all the same things that a head chef is in their daily work schedule. That’s why I call this part of the program ‘From a chef’s perspective’.
Jobs that chefs do daily are things like;
These tasks are also the jobs that need attention when working in your home kitchen.
These tasks are not always the job of the Head Chef though, sometimes the Second Chef picks up some of the jobs, and you also have the support of your Kitchen Hands (your children).
Second Chef and Kitchen Hands
Often, what works best is when the full time (paid employment) working parent picks up the role of Second Chef. Their job is to provide support in the morning and evening with all the tasks that have to be done during the week. On the weekends or on days off, they pick up a bit more of the work to not only support, but to take over some of the prep and cooking duties.
This is so important, as we established earlier if all of these tasks are left to just one partner then they will become frustrated and take short cuts.
It is important that as a couple you acknowledge that you both need to commit 100% to sharing the tasks even if one of you works full time.
This is where your commitment to the program really comes into the picture. The success of this program depends on the commitment of both parents and ultimately the whole family.
Everyone has a role to play in the Kitchen Dream Team.
Obviously whoever is at work for the bulk of the day cannot commit to these tasks when they are not at home. But when they are at home, then their role is to get involved in any way they can. They can help finish off tasks that have not been done in the kitchen and can also provide support to get ahead with tasks for the next day.
Success relies on mutual respect for the role each member of the family plays. For the working parent, remember that the stay at home parent has already been in the kitchen prepping, cooking and cleaning for hours. Its hard work and it can be monotonous and exhausting. It is only fair that the working parent pulls their weight in the kitchen when they get home from work, so the other can then tend to other tasks that have to be done (because let’s face it, there’s also the washing, cleaning, ironing, vacuuming…)
This isn’t about shaming each other, or having a battle as to who works the hardest. We know that this is a pretty common quandary that many families navigate daily.
What we are acknowledging here with this program is that EVERYONE works hard. Neither role is harder or easier than the other. Working is hard at times, being a full time stay at home parent is hard at times. Working full time can be stimulating and rewarding, as can being a full time, stay at home parent.
As a family, it’s key to acknowledge and value the contribution you all make to your busy lives. Each of you play such an important role in the family and together you make a great team. The gold in the team is where your roles overlap and you can find ways to support each other.
The Kitchen Dream Team creators see it a bit like this;
Sometimes you are working apart, sometimes you come together, but ultimately you are heading in the same direction.
In the next download we will look at an average week in the life of my family, so you can see which principles you can apply to your life.
Our Daily Routine, Diet and Schedule
From a Chef’s Perspective
Get ready for the Big Cook Up
Professional chefs usually have one day of the week where they get most of their organising and prep done for the week ahead – chefs always work ahead. By doing this, they create a flow to the rhythm in their kitchens which makes it possible for them to maintain momentum throughout the busy week.
Now, having already acknowledged that each family’s set up is unique to them, for the purposes of this section, we are going to base our planning around an average “9 to 5, Monday to Friday with weekends off” set up. If this isn’t your average family week – we cover shift work later in the chapter.
Weekends are where the most “gold” exists. Parents are often home together and can use this time to prepare themselves for the busy week ahead. This is what we call “The Big Cook Up”.
The Big Cook Up refers to the following steps:
We will cover these activities in detail as you move through this section.
It seems like a lot to do, but doing this together makes it faster and creates a real feeling of achieving great health as a team, this is paramount to every busy family. It will free up time during the week, you will be well prepared for your evenings and this is where your family will consistently eat more healthily. If you have a fridge full of healthy, ready to go foods and meal prep done ahead of time, you will succeed in dishing up nutritious home-cooked meals that have been cooked from scratch.
It makes sense. When all your ingredients are prepped and ready to go in containers in the fridge, you can see how easy it is to throw together a quick salad. How much easier is it to get dinner on the table when you have some chopped vegetables and slithers of lean meat ready for a stir-fry all prepped in containers in the fridge?
OK, so now you have read through the overview, here’s the process in more detail.
Shift Work and Still Working as a Team
If you don’t have the opportunity to work as a team preparing the big cook up together on the weekend or another day during the week, not to worry, the big cook up can still go ahead. It is just about setting each other up for success in making it happen.
Before the big cook up, as we have established, choosing a menu and having a well prepared shopping list filled out is the beginning of the process.
For example, if my days off work are Monday / Tuesday (which is typical when working in hospitality) then I would do the grocery shopping for the big cook up on the Saturday night when coming home from work. Once home with the groceries I would set Michelle up by leaving dry goods for the big cook up on the kitchen bench and rotate and store the fresh ingredients in the order of what she will prep that Sunday morning whilst I am at work doing a long Sunday shift.
Michelle would already have created a prep list for herself and an extra one for me for when I enter the kitchen Monday morning and I take over the cooking duties as she is then at work. As it is only Michelle and the children at home for dinner that Sunday night this is a good time to use a pre prepared frozen meal so that Michelle does not actually have to cook that Sunday morning. Instead she can concentrate on creating a new fruit and salad bar for the week ahead and in the evening simply reheat a pre-cooked meal for the kids and herself.
During the Sunday morning prep she can cut and dice vegetables and meats for the first meal on our menu board. I will then cook this meal on the Monday morning (being my day off work). While I am cooking the first meal of the week I will, at the same time, dice and slice ingredients for the next meal to be cooked the day after in order to always stay ahead of schedule.
So by the time we get to Tuesday we are ahead of all food prep and feeding ourselves heathy home-cooked meals for both lunch and dinner maintaining our family’s diet and wellness.
Food Safety
Food safety in the home is really important. Most instances of food poisoning occur in family homes. To avoid this happening to you – be diligent in cleaning your kitchen and rotating foods.
Store raw foods separately, put them in a sealed container on their own and place on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Place cooked foods on a shelf above raw foods, again, in a sealed container. By making sure that there is no contact between raw, cooked and ready-to-eat foods we prevent cross-contamination.
Make sure that your fridge operates at 5 ºC or less. If in doubt then get a thermometer for your fridge and have the fridge serviced if it needs it.
Personal hygiene is also very important in the home kitchen. Never start prepping food without washing your hands thoroughly in warm soapy water. Every time you move from one task to another, wash your hands again.
As you prep your meal, continually keep your bench area tidy and clean.
After washing and peeling vegetables clean the kitchen benches and sink thoroughly before bringing new ingredients into the kitchen.
Always wash your chopping boards, knives and other utensils thoroughly between jobs.
Activity – Time to Reflect
Take a moment to reflect on your progress.
Think about how far you have come when it comes to your food preparation in this exercise.