Gone are the days when women had their daily routines wrapped around planning meals and brainstorming on ideas to redecorate their homes. A modern mommy is more than a house wife for she is a working mom too busy giving her best to the world and earning her way through it.
While many Pakistani men are learning to help the women in the kitchen, the trend has not really caught on. In order to make life easier and the daily meals more manageable, we have come up with a quick guide. All you working mommies out there, read on.
Search the Internet
This advice comes rather handy in almost all situations. Searching internet for a working mom is essential too. She needs to find recipes — lots of recipes. Take some time away from your busy schedule and browse through the various websites offering desi food recipes. You can do so while you are on your way to work, after the family goes to bed, or before they are up. Once you accumulate sufficient number of recipes, make a list of them.
Create a Weekly Planner
Instead of wasting hours every day and getting anxious about what to cook, you should plan the meals ahead. Fix a day of every week for planning the meals. You can run a check on the ingredients too in case you are missing something from the list. You can also make use of a dry erase board and write the weekly menu on it. Hang it on the fridge for your kids to avoid the constant “what is in breakfast/lunch/dinner today?” questions.
Ask your Family
We would never advise you to be a dictator and plan all the meals on your own. We believe that would be a lot of responsibility, don’t you think. Besides, your children (tumhare bache) might get the idea that they never get to eat what they want. Therefore, we recommend you to involve them in the meal planning procedure as well. There is a 99% greater chance of your daughter eating bhindi voluntarily if you ask for her opinion as opposed to if you make her eat it by force. Besides you get to be called the coolest mom ever too.
Preparing Earlier
There are a lot of things you can do to fasten your daily cooking ritual. While there are a lot of ready-to- cook materials available in the market, we are not referring to them. You can grind spices, churn meat, make the garlic/ginger paste, and various other tasks at the start of the month. You can use them for several days to come.
On a Bad Day…
Another great hack for the working mommy is to make some chutneys. On a day when the curry doesn’t come up quite the best, you can spice it up with desi chutneys. You can make a variety of these such as poodinay ki chutney, til ki chutney, and even timaatar ki chutney. Stock them. Apart from the sauces, achaar is a great way to add flavor to your meals. You can buy some from the market.
Just writing this has made our mouth water. If you are a working mommy, you will find this quick guide quite useful when planning meals for your kids.
