Monday 17 February 2014

Hats off to Mums with big families!

A Mum at Oscar's kinder/school was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and so has been undergoing surgery, chemo and radiotherapy. I reckon that would be pretty exhausting for anyone - but this lovely lady is also Mum to 5 young lads. Another Mum at the kinder very kindly organised a meals roster where friends and family can go online and allocate themselves a day to cook dinner for the family and drop it over so Mum has one less thing to worry about. Such a great idea and I, for one, appreciated the opportunity to support the family in a practical way. However - cooking for seven has been an adventure!

Mums of large broods I take my hat off to you! I've cooked for their family a few times, now, and planning and executing a meal for so many really tested me. Some things were a matter of scale. E.g. instead of cooking the meal I'd usually make for my family I would triple it - so there'd be two serves for their family and one serve for ours. But even that necessitated additional planning and preparation. While I'd usually have enough in my pantry to make a (small sized) family serve of whatever, making in larger quantities saw me checking the pantry and heading to the shops to get the larger quantaties required.

I have several friends who have 4 or 5 kids and none of them seem to spend every waking moment in the kitchen. I can only suppose they are more organised than I as it seems to take me so much longer!

On the plus side - the french bechamel Thermie recipe makes a litre of bechamel. Which is way too much for a typical lasagne - but was just the ticket for the 3 large ones I've made today. Similarly the quick and easy chicken and corn soup was quick and easy to do twice in a row - so there's a generous serve for their family tonight as well as ours.

So the meals are ready and I'll hand them over at school pickup. Unfortunately the house is a mess as I really have spent all day cooking!

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