Real Family Food Blog

For me the biggest trap for not sticking to  healthy, fresh food is running out of time or feeling tired.  When these things happen if I’m not organized we turn to quick meal solutions which are invariably fairly unhealthy (think pizza delivery).  To overcome this I try to stick to a weekly meal plan and shopping list to make sure we have everything on hand we need to make quick, healthy meals.  It takes a bit of time one night a week (I admit a glass of wine helps) but it sure makes the rest of the week easier.  One meal plan, one or two trips to the grocery store (usually a couple of trips a week for fresh fruit and veg and some Wholefoods bread because its preservative free and tastes great but doesn’t keep well) and the result is a pretty organized week when it comes to meals.  The other benefit I’ve discovered is that I’m delving into my cookbooks to find recipes we don’t usually make and by choosing the family-friendly ones I’ve found that I’m exposing my children to a much wider range of foods.  It also made me realize I’d fallen into the parenting trap of serving up the 2 or 3 meals they had decided they would eat just to make things easy.  Now I make sure I’m serving up a better variety but making sure they still get a favorite each week.