How to add a homely touch to your family meals without any special effort?
And here we are again at Sweet blog, the sweetest blog online.
The place connects all fans of the 'home concept' for its diverse meanings.
And today, we will present a few solutions for a rather challenging topic that is quite sensitive and relevant for some of us - parents trying to combine a meaningful career with Better family life.
There is a quote attributed to Allison Pearson:
"It's not wrong to be passionate about your career. When you love what you do, you bring that stimulation back to your family."
Some of us know from personal examples the inevitable guilt that occasionally arises due to desires to fully fulfill career potential, which, in most cases, will have to come at the expense of time spent on home and family needs.
The desire to move up on the career ladder Usually consumes a lot of time and energy, which some parents are sure could have been invested for the benefit of their home and children, which makes them wonder about the correctness of their choices and ultimately leads to an excessive desire for compensation and winning "Parent of the Year" title in a way that ends up in complete exhaustion.
Since we are not a blog that deals with parenting, we will not expand on this issue directly but only on the aspects that interface with 'home affairs,' and in our case - on your ability to grant a more homely touch to your family meals at home even when you are careerists without free time.
In this article, we will teach you all the little tricks that will help you make your child feel that his dinner was cooked by a sweet housewife grandmother and not by a busy careerist parent. Something that will inevitably strengthen the sense of Family-ness in your home.
Hop on!
1. Make time!
Time is the number one challenge for careerist parents who wants to hold more family meals.
In fact, It is also quite intuitively understandable. After all, a good family meal will necessarily require an investment of time and effort. And what is the number one resource that careerist parents lack?
Well, you got that right - Time.
So, the first thing you must do if you are careerist parents - who, on the one hand, try to juggle between a severe lack of free time due to a demanding career and an insistence on active family life in the form of home-cooked meals - who want to add a more homely touch to your family meals is to create more time.
"And how do I do that?" you must be asking.
Well, you must first identify the factors that waste most of your free time and deal with them directly.
For example, A meaningful family meal usually involves preliminary planning, such as choosing a menu, understanding the preparation method, buying groceries, and more.
As a careerist, you obviously don't have enough free time to carry out
all these tasks. Therefore, try to think outside the box and assign some tasks to your household members.
For example, one will be in charge of choosing the menu, while the other will be responsible for buying groceries. Thus, when you eventually come home at the end of your work, you will save all the time in question and immediately start cooking your meal.
It is also highly recommended to get updated briefly during the day (in the family WhatsApp group, for example) regarding the progress of the assignments.
By doing so, you will be able to manage your time properly and create more free time, which inevitably will help with your efforts to produce much higher quality family meals, thus giving them a more homely touch.
Create free time and be efficient!
The examples are countless, but the guiding principle is still valid - try to understand the factors that give you the hardest time concerning efficiency aspects and then deal with them directly and wisely.
Unfortunately, many careerist parents are so overwhelmed in advance by the scope of the required tasks that from the very beginning, they do not try to deal with them wisely and wave a white flag.
Once you implement this wisely, you will be surprised to see how much "free time" you suddenly have.
By the way. You can read more here about better time management in your home.
2. Natural ingredients and interesting recipes.
So now that you've figured out how to make more free time for preparing your family meals, it's time to figure out how and what they're made from.
Orson Welles once said:
"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."
A refreshing recipe may be the difference between a good, solidifying, homely family meal and a routine gathering around food whose whole purpose is to make you feel full.
One of the powerful tools that will help you in your efforts to grant a more homely touch to your family meals is a refreshing menu that consists of - wait for it - mainly non-processed ingredients.
Imagine a family meal somewhere in a small village in the middle of nowhere. Can you imagine that processed food is part of the meal's ingredients?!
Hell no!
As most of us assume, the motto which apparently stood at the foundation of the culinary concept that most of us would consider 'homely' was: "Natural ingredients - IN. Processed food - OUT"!
Processed food - OUT!
We are fully aware that processed food is the one that fits precisely the lifestyle of the time-poor careerist parent who barely has fifteen minutes max to engineer a bullshit Microwave dinner for his children - this is exactly the sad reality we come to face.
And it goes without saying that, given the circumstances, we completely understand the reason behind this lack of time - The reality of modern life and the need to earn a living with dignity - We are not judging anyone. Our sole purpose is to help you create more 'homey meals' with this fact in mind. And the tip about creating more free time mentioned above was just the first tool you will be exposed to in this article that will assist you in making more 'homey' meals.
Back to the natural ingredients - Besides the significant health benefits - A meal consisting of only natural ingredients will provide everything that a processed meal cannot offer - warmth, coziness, unity, and closeness.
By the way, You can read more here about the health benefits of eating organic foods over processed foods.
So now that we've established the considerable contribution of a natural ingredients meal to your sense of homeliness, it's time to talk about the other tip - refreshing and exciting recipes.
Look, We have nothing against mac and cheese. In fact, It's pretty delicious, and both meatloaf and baked/grilled/fried chicken and even mashed potatoes and baked or grilled fish - they genuinely are tasteful. But, and it's a big but - they're rather dull and generic, and you can find them at most dinners in American homes.
Therefore, for you to be able to grant your meals a more homely touch, you must try and overcome the "culinary boredom" prevalent in most homes and families. And one of the tools that can help you in this matter is an exciting recipe.
No need to panic. We're not asking you to become Gordon Ramsay overnight (it's also a bit far-fetched because you'll have to dye your hair blonde). All we are saying is that you should invest a little time and effort (perhaps with the help of the tip in paragraph number one - delegating responsibility to another family member) in finding an interesting recipe that will possibly excite a bit your family members dining with you.
Doing so will give your family meal a unique touch, undoubtedly leading to the desired feeling of homeliness.
Sources of information for such recipes?
Don't sweat. We've got you covered:
And for the advanced among you - here.
3. Zero distractions.
Tom kite once said:
"You can always find a distraction if you're looking for one."
After discussing how to create time for proper meal preparation and describing the ingredients that will grant the desired homely touch to your family dinner, we will now talk about the actual time frame in which it will take place - it must be completely free of distractions!
If you want to increase the sense of homeliness of your family meals, you must avoid any possible distractions. Phones will be put aside in "silent" mode. The TV will not play in the background, and work matters will be put on hold. Etc.
Distracting technology must not affect family closeness and intimacy during meals.
There is significant evidence that that media present during the ritual of family mealtime could have detrimental effects on the development of a family system.
Media devices used during a family meal may distract family members from engaging in healthy conversations that ultimately form strong relationships.
Distractions - Out!
Trust us with this one - the world will manage to survive one hour without you being connected to your WhatsApp/social media/email (Unless your name is Elon Musk, and you have to tweet something refreshing every now and then or launch a rocket into space) But if it's not the case - you're good!
Use the meal time to talk leisurely about things that are important to you and get closer to each other. Doing so will turn the home-cooked meal into a more intimate and unifying experience that will strengthen your family bonding.
You can read more here about the Communication Benefits of Mealtimes.
4. Social activity.
Another great way to increase the feeling of homeliness in your shared homemade meals is through a family social activity.
Besides the intuitive general insight regarding the importance of joint family activity for strengthening your family bonding - something more important nowadays than ever - It is also super relevant concerning giving your family meals the much-desired homely touch.
Creating a social family activity around your dinner table (usually after eating. When everyone is full and relaxed) is an infinitely great tool to help you give your meal a homey touch.
For starters, you can read the excellent article on our sweet blog for general inspiration. But in fact, anything goes, starting with family Board/social games, through entertaining quizzes, and ending with a shared and exciting conversation around a specific topic.
Board games as a unifying family tool
The examples are many, but the guiding principle is the same - a family meal is more than just flavors in the form of food - It is an atmosphere. Create a social activity around your family dinner table that will strengthen your social connections, enhancing bonding and leading to intimacy and family closeness when everything is, as mentioned, concerning the act of the meal itself. Doing so will deliver a more intimate touch to your family meals.
And by the way, here, too, there is no need to reinvent the wheel or invest excessive time in finding such a family activity. A little creativity (for just fifteen minutes or a little more), and you are there.
In conclusion, these were The four ways to add a homey touch to your family meals effortlessly.
We hope you found them helpful.
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