A mother decided to teach her kids to cook family meals for six members under a budget.
Sarah Chick who is a mother of five and stepmom of one lives with her partner Justin and children in Dorset.
The 32-year-old mother used this lockdown period teaching her daughters who are 11 and 12 how to prepare meals from what they already have in the fridge.
She challenged her daughters ‘six days six meals’ and asked her eldest one to cook for the whole family after giving her their weekly food box. Sarah told LatestDeals.co.uk: “I wanted to use our time in lockdown wisely and make the most of the children while life has seemingly slowed down for everyone right now.”
“The two older children are 11 and 12. When I was doing dinner one evening they were really inquisitive and were asking me, ‘how do I manage to feed so many people and still have food leftover? How do I know how much to cook for everyone? My idea came to me when I was due delivery of fruit and veg.”
The mother said she has been cooking food from a young age and she decided to teach her daughters the same. “The only way I could answer the questions they were asking was to show them. I was taught to cook from a young age so I thought we could use this time to educate them with essential skills for life.’’ she added.
“So I took everything I had out of the fridge, the freezer and cupboards, put it on the side and asked them if they wanted to try a challenge of making six dinners for six days to feed six of us, with minimal waste! Then it became the ‘Six Days, Six Dinners’ challenge.”
Sarah revealed that her daughters were very excited for completing the challenge though she had told them they would have to make the meal on their own. The mother assured them she would take care of all the hot pots and pans and they can seek her advice if they want to.
She chose an “obvious” meal of gammon, egg, chips, peas and pineapple for the first day of the challenge. Sarah continued: “They had lots of other ideas. A curry was one of them but I advised them to take each day as it came and see what they were left with after each meal.’’
“On day two, my 11-year-old wanted to make a macaroni cheese dish but added broccoli, onion, bacon, and mushrooms. I was skeptical but it was lovely! On day three, it was a roast chicken dinner. On day four, they got stuck and they couldn’t see an obvious meal for what they had left, so I asked them to write some ideas down.
The kids got some inspiration from Disney movie Ratatouille and the family ate pizzas and homemade chips for the last two days of the challenge.
Sarah said: ‘’They were watching Disney’s Ratatouille and my eldest came running out saying she had a meal idea in her head. For day five and six, they had only ingredients for pizzas so it was pizzas for the final two days with homemade chips, but it was lovely.”
The mother said her girls learned how they can make a meal from anything and it also helped them to become independent. She said: “The girls have said that the challenge taught them to really think about the amount of food they were using and that if you are creative enough you can pretty much make a meal from anything.”
“It also taught them just how much work actually goes into a meal in general but also for a large family. For us, it was great because it gave the girls a slice of independence but also brought us even closer as a family doing these activities together.”
The mother also revealed some tips to save money as every kid has a habit of constantly asking for something to eat.
She added, “The children, like many others, constantly ask for food throughout the day, so they each have a daily basket with fruit, a chocolate biscuit, a water bottle, a pack of crisps, and some veg sticks in. Once it’s gone it’s gone and they don’t get anything else.
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“This has helped us save money too as they have to think if they really want to eat or if they’re just bored.”
She also shared how she saves time by preparing meals in parts. Sarah said, “To save time if we are having say a dish that requires chips, we will make the chips the night before and then leave them in water until we need to cook them.
“To save waste on things like vegetables we will often leave the skins on and if we have cauliflower we use the leaves too. My top tip would be to meal plan though and really only buy what’s necessary. We are home growing a lot of vegetables this year.”
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