Asalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu,

How are you?  I’ve had a hectic couple of weeks, hence only getting round to write about my weekly cooking tips which many of you were interested in hearing more about; many of you were surprised that I do the majority of my cooking once a week.  But I understand the surprise as often when you Google meal prepping or freezer cooking, you’ll find tonnes of blog posts with brilliant tips but that often require huge freezers and instant/crockpots which for those of us with small freezers and kitchens practically cannot do even if we wanted to.

But where there’s a will there’s a way.  Welcome weekly batch cooking!

And let me clarify ‘batch cooking’ needs no fancy equipment, crock pots or even instant pots. I’m a minimalist at heart, and though I know it would be handy to have some time-saving kitchen tools, I’ve devised a way that keeps the minimalist in me happy as well as still being able to cook for almost the entire week.

So what is the point of batch cooking you might ask?  Let’s start with the obvious….
-You will save time, not only cooking time but cleanup (even simple cooking can fill that sink).
– Save money because meal planning reduces the impulse buys and take-outs.
-Clear up mental space for Mama; knowing that breakfast, lunch and dinner is taken care of really takes a burden off your shoulders.  

But there’s more to it than simply getting the cooking done, and kitchen cleaner a little longer. 

Well, homeschooling can be busy.  Really busy.  And I’ve been through phases in our homeschool that I constantly felt guilty.  I was spending time with my children every day, but I missed those windows of time in-between the read alouds, the painting and just anything that involved ‘focused’ learning though of course often these things are spontaneous too.  I missed just enjoying my kids, WITHOUT MULTI-TASKING.

And even after minimalising our space and decluttering my heart out, I was always still using pockets of time doing a chore.  But it wasn’t putting a load of washing once a day that was bothering me, it was the restriction I felt that I had to cut our afternoon/evening downtime to get dinner done every day.  Since our mornings were so busy, those slower evenings were vital to keeping the home and school balance, and that was what I was missing.  That time was spent in the kitchen and the aftermath.  By the time dinner was done, it was time for bed, and the day was done again.  

So I decided to do something about it, cooking my once a week meal plan all at once. And I haven’t looked back since.

So Mama, if you can resonate with any of the above, perhaps give batch cooking a go. And to help you get started I’ve created a weekly batch cooking guide with tips and templates that you can download for free below.

Happy cooking!