Coming from someone who once professed “I am not a baker!” and could barely cook beyond pour and stir type of recipes (think Hamburger Helper, Ragu spaghetti sauce and boxed noodles), cooking from scratch isn’t too hard. There are some shifts that need to happen and in this post, you’ll learn what those shifts are and some super simple ways to make nourishing, fast homemade meal ideas for your family.
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The age of convenience foods
As an elder millennial (1985), almost an Xennial, I know what it’s like to live in a convenience food world. Pour and stir dinners, TV dinners, and pizza nights turned Door Dash and drive thrus. That’s how our society “feeds” itself these days.
While some scream “fed is best” and “everything in moderation“, I once agreed but now am on the fence about those statements..
Is fed really best when the food is ultra processed garbage full of unpronounceable chemicals? Is everything in moderation if that everything is toxic and poisonous? Hey, you’re eating it so you get to decide what’s important.
But what about our children?
They eat (mostly) what we feed them.
- Are we also choosing to educate them on healthy food choices?
- Do they know that Froot Loops and Fruit by the Foot have ZERO fruit in them?
- Do they realize that foods labeled “plant based” have an ingredient list a mile long and barely any of it is actual food?
- Do you know these things?
I get it. It’s what’s pushed to us. We see it on the grocery store shelves and think it’s okay to eat but is it really? For many, trust has dissolved with 3 letter agencies that are SUPPOSED to do what’s right for the people. Yet they don’t.
Wealth over health for them. YOUR health.
But you can take back control of your health with better choices.
Ingredients Households
What is an ingredients house? It’s a family who prefers to avoid as much processed foods as possible by making what they can at home using ingredients instead of boxed or bagged, ready-to-eat meals.
Call it a from scratch kitchen or a homemade kitchen.
A well stocked pantry will help tremendously in creating a from scratch kitchen:
These ingredient homes take a good amount of planning and effort. Much of which the general society these days cares nothing to give. Netflix and chill after a long day. Door Dash and veg out are weekly routines and preferred.
As a disclaimer before the claws come out, yes I am a stay at home, homeschooling, and homesteading mom. Perhaps I have “more time” to make from scratch meals. Or perhaps my busy and your busy are simply different.
BUT FROM SCRATCH COOKING DOESN’T HAVE TO BE HARD OR TIME CONSUMING TO BE HEALTHY! Keep reading…
The shift
If you’re still here reading, something is keeping you here. Maybe you want to learn how to make better food choices for yourself and your family. Maybe you’re looking for inspiration to keep at it. Whatever the reason, thank you for opening your heart and mind to the subject that desperately needs our attention:
OUR OWN HEALTH.
The shift is this:
- Do you want or need to get healthy?
- Do you need to make a lifestyle change?
- Have you been trying to out work your fork and it’s not working anymore?
- Have you woken up to the corrupt food system?
- Has reading labels for food allergies or food sensitivities opened your eyes to what the FDA calls “food”?
The shift is mental. A mindset shift. A value system defined.
What do you value in health? Once that is clear, we can move forward in desiring to learn how to cook from scratch.
Fast, easy, and cheap foods
And I’m not talking about McDonald’s! I’m talking REAL, healthy, clean, foods made simply.
It’s not difficult. A dinner doesn’t need to be 5 courses and take 3 hours to make after work on a Tuesday to be healthy. A meal doesn’t need to be Pinterest worthy in order to nourish your body.
K.I.S.S.: keep it simple, silly (stupid is too harsh)
Bowls
One of our favorite go-to meals around here are bowls.
The protein is generally a ground meat like beef, pork, or chicken (or those meats but shredded or chopped). Even if I forget to take out the ground meat to thaw during the day, it can be cooked frozen in a pan with a little water. Keep pulling the browned meat away from the frozen middle piece to help it cook faster.
While the meat is cooking, prepare any veggies you want to go in the bowl. Be them preserved from your own garden or the steamable kinds you can get in the frozen section at the grocery store. Seasonings are best as spices and herb combinations over bottled sauces at the store containing loads of seed oils.
Bowl Ideas:
Busted Burger: ground beef with burger seasoning, sliced tomato, cheddar cheese, lettuce, mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, bacon
Mediterranean Bowl: ground pork or lamb, sauerkraut, yogurt dill sauce or tzatziki dip, hummus, beans, bean sprouts, cucumbers, olives, feta
Tex-Mex Bowl: ground chicken or shredded chicken, black beans or refried, pepper jack cheese, tomatoes, Spanish rice, sour cream, salsa
Stir Fry Bowl: ground chicken or pork, scrambled egg, cooked cabbage, shredded carrots, sweet peas, steamed rice
Breakfast Bowl: ground sausage or bacon crumbles, scrambled eggs, Colby jack cheese, diced potatoes
Instant Pot meals
The Instant Pot gets used way more in our cooking from scratch kitchen than the slow cooker.
Why? Because a slow cooker still requires thinking to prepare. The meat should probably be thawed or cooked ahead of pouring all contents into the slow cooker to warm all day. Not always but I’m particularly thinking of ground meat situations.
The Instant Pot is in a league all her own. Toss in a frozen roast after work and let it cook (my own IP is about 10 minutes per pound for roasts and whole chickens) then add in rice or veggies to cook a little longer. Plenty of recipes available for Instant Pot quick meals in about an hour after work.
My favorite to cook in the Instant Pot is a whole chicken. Our family of 4 can get 2-3 meals out of one 4.5 lb bird. Usually we use this chicken meat for fillers in meals like chicken Alfredo, chicken and rice stew, tacos, nachos, stir fry, hibachi style dinner, soups, and more. The pot liquor (if you’re Southern) or meat stock is used for a soup base for another meal. The bones, skin, and cartilage are used for a bone broth for another soup base.
“But it’s expensive to buy whole foods”
Is it, though?
Because we stopped buying potato chips due to seed oils and GMO-ed ingredients and the price tag.
Caveat: we have found chips we eat sparingly that are cooked in avocado or olive oil and are not GMO-ed. Wish we could find organic and be able to afford it. Chips are a want; not a need. A splurge. So they aren’t always in our ingredient home.
Chips can be $6 or more for a Family Size bag of chips that may last 2 or 3 “snackings”.
A pound of grass-fed beef can cost about $9/lb which is a lot, I know. But it also can make 4- quarter pound patties which can be close to 19 grams of protein! In A SINGLE BEEF PATTY. Much more filling than a bag of chips. More nutritious too.
A bag of organic apples containing about 6-8 apples is around $5-6. If we are talking snacks, let’s swap the $6 chips for the $6 apples and get more fiber and less gut inflammation.
A bag of cheese sticks is around $4. A box of cheese crackers is about $4.
One dozen eggs can make a few breakfasts, hard boil some for snacking, and get out paying $3-4.
Ultra processed foods are expensive too and not filling and full of junk ingredients.
Consider your values, consider cost comparing the bagged/boxed foods you buy to simple, single ingredients and see what you get.
Planning and preparing
I may not have an out of the home job but I also do not have a lot of extra mental bandwidth to plan meals ahead either. We aren’t too different, are we?
Meal planning is a knack of which I do not have.
I can Idea Plan, though.
Here’s how to Idea Plan:
I have this one folded sheet of cardstock that is 11 years old now. It stays in our junk drawer. When I am fresh out of dinnertime inspiration, I grab that sheet and take a look at names of dinner. Whenever I try a new recipe that is approved by the family, it gets added to the Idea List.
Additionally, in my paper planner, I write down each meal’s title on the at-a-glance calendar so that I can look back for inspiration and/or not make the same meals too often. Kind of like reverse meal planning. Do it after the fact to keep a record.
Next, we try to eat seasonally in our ingredients home. Whatever is on sale at the grocery or with Azure Standard each month is likely what is in season or easily stored long term (like apples, carrots, onions, winter squashes, other root vegetables). Eating the seasons helps keep the grocery bill down (abundance of in season food generally means it’s lower in price. Getting that food out of its season means it travels a long ways away and thus costs more).
In short, using what I have in the freezer and vegetables available in the fridge, pantry, or freezer; I can make an Idea List for each week of what I may be able to make for dinner.
- I generally make only dinner from scratch most nights of the week.
- Breakfast is hot cereal, toast, yogurt, or pancakes I made in a huge batch that can be reheated.
- Lunch is usually leftovers or a sandwich.
Leftovers
A hot topic: leftovers.
Some folks love them (that’s us!) and some refuse to eat leftovers.
Here’s a case for leftovers + limited time or energy for homemade meals:
When I take the time to plan and cook dinner each evening, I attempt to make sure that meal will actually feed us twice. All 4 of us two times! Leftovers for lunch the next day. That’s how I can get away with feeding my family homemade, from scratch meals every day without going insane. Big dinners made into leftovers.
Cooking from scratch meals doesn’t have to take too much time or planning!
Large batches
Did you know it takes the same amount of TIME to make one dinner as it does to double or triple that dinner to freeze for later?
Did you know that if you’re making pancakes for breakfast on Saturday, adding 15 more minutes to the cooking time can yield pancakes for the rest of the week? This recipe makes a big batch.
How to teach the next generation cooking from scratch:
First of all, you yourself need to learn how to cook BASIC meals. Protein, fiber, fats, carbs. In the order for our family.
Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill in order to feed your family a filling, nourishing, healthy meal that doesn’t require a culinary degree! Cooking from scratch should start small and simple.
Our next generations Gen X through Gen Alpha (and it won’t get any better if we don’t try now to do better for them!) have been scammed by convenience. And their (our) health is a risk!
Scammed by convenience
Don’t get me wrong– I too love convenience. Convenience of an automatically climate controlled home. The convenience of turning a knob to cook a meal. The loveliness that is hot water at my fingertips. I could go on and on. We like to refer to these conveniences as blessings in our home.
But the scam that has many generations in a headlock are the things presented to us as “making life easier” when really it’s making us dumber and more dependent. I’m looking at you, Chat GPT and fast food “restaurants”, to name a few.
If you still have children in your home, no matter their age, start teaching them basic meal making and cooking from scratch, single and simple ingredients. Let them get in the kitchen and cook… and make a mess, and burn dinner, and learn to wash their dishes! You’ll soon find them asking “Can I make Alfredo tonight?” (from scratch, not a jar! YES!) and then you’re off the hook for making that meal. WIN-WIN!
Some cooking from scratch meal recipes
Dutch Oven Roasted Whole Chicken
One Skillet Ranch Chicken Dinner
Follow Along for Cooking From Scratch Recipes
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What other ways to do you make cooking from scratch simple, affordable, and quick for your family? We’d love to hear it in the comments!
