6 Meal Hacks for Busy Mums!

Hey Everyone!

As a busy mum with kiddos who have after school activities most of the week, planning and prepping meals is a big part of my week. 

At this point, my son has futsal games on Monday and Tuesday late afternoon, and futsal training on Monday and Wednesday straight after school.
Speech therapy is also straight after school on Tuesdays. 

My youngest daughter also has gymnastics straight after school on Wednesday and Friday.
So making sure I have meals prepped (for the most part at least) is really important for us to keep to our routines.

Here are some tips I have picked up in my journey of feeding my family on a budget!

Tip #1: Pre-cook your mince, chicken breast etc. We eat a few meals that use mince as the base (tacos, spag bol, savoury mince etc) and in order to make the most of my time in the kitchen, throwing a couple of kilos of mince in the pan or putting some chicken breast in the slow cooker takes little effort. Freeze in ziplock freezer bags in 1kg portions for mince and 2 chicken breasts for each meal. 

Tip #2: Use the weekend with your kids to plan out and make school lunch items for the week.
In my experience, kids are more likely to eat and enjoy their school lunch if they have had a say in what they are eating. For the majority of the school year this year, my kids have made their own school lunches. However, I did find that they were not taking enough of the good stuff and too much junk food. Friday night or Saturday mornings, sit down with your kids and make up a school lunch menu for the week. Include a main lunch item, a fruit, a dairy item and a snack they can have for 'dessert'.
Lunch items we like to make here lately include: wraps, ham and cheese sandwiches, mini muffins, homemade mini pizzas, chocolate chip muffin bars, yoghurt, cheese and bacon scrolls and pikelets.

Tip #3: Make use of pre-packaged snacks AT SCHOOL PICK UP! I don't know about your kids, but mine are like starving vultures after school. My kids have to stay after school until between 3.30pm and 4.00pm because they are grandchildren of a staff member, so I pick them all up at the same time. By the time I get there (if they haven't packed themselves a snack already), they are famished. So I just have to throw them a snack such as a bag of popcorn, Belvita minis are popular with them, oat bars etc.

Tip #4: Make or prep dinner in the middle of the day. This is for a couple of reasons. One - to give you more time to spend with the kids while they are home. There is not a lot of time after they come home from school and after school activities, so we as parents need to spend as much quality time with them before they go to bed. The second reason is that if you are like me and the meal needs more time to cook (slow cooker meal, savoury mince, my spag bol) and you forget, you still have time to cook the meal.

Add photo of the clock at lunch time

Tip #5: Keep healthy cooked breakfasts in your fridge. Cook up a big stack of pancakes, scrambled eggs, or breakfast muffins on the weekend for the weekday breakfasts. This saves so much time for us in the mornings and it helps the kids become more independant. All they have to do is pull out a couple of pancakes from the fridge and heat them up in the microwave. Same with the eggs. Our daughter is on a high protein diet to help her put on some weight and having these eggs ready for her in the morning is a life saver.

Tip #6: Keep the pizza vouchers/ takeaway menus for "those nights". We all have those nights where you just need a quick meal to feed everyone without you having to cook. Just last week I was at futsal with our son and had not planned anything for dinner and the kids had to be up early the next day so we had to order pizza (such a shame). We get the pizza vouchers regularly and they often have really good specials on them with the codes. We only paid half of what we would have with the voucher code for 3 pizzas and 3 sides delivered.

Being even a little bit organised in the kitchen can save you so much time and money. These tips have saved us so much money as well as reducing food waste.

What tips do you have? I would love to hear!

Thanks for reading!

Jacqui xxx