What is it like feeding all these eaters? First of all they are picky. Multiply that times four and we have quite a bunch. After being a vegetarian for 2o years we now eat more of a paleo diet. We wanted to cut carbs, non-nutritious fillers and processed foods. There is still a lot of organic, processed “health food” readily available I am still trying to avoid.
We are now a local meat and fresh veggies for dinner household. Except I get tired of meat pretty quickly and I could eat veggies for dinner for days. I have one child who mostly chooses to be vegetarian until she gets so hungry she’ll go for a corn dog. Despite farm visits and growing up in a lifestyle where all her food is organic, local and delicious… She’d opt for Papa Johns cheese pizza every day of her life. She’s 13 now. I’m pretty sure I was the same way at her age. I have one child choosing to be gluten free right now which makes the no grains on a paleo diet too limiting for her. Beans have to be in our realm of choice too. But we stick to dried beans. I have one girl who is at least more open to culinary adventures like curry and Thai food. My toddler is living off bacon and kefir right now with many of sides of breastmilk. Thank goodness my husband will eat anything. He just eats a lot of everything. He’s super skinny and I have no idea where it all goes.
All my kids are eating larger amounts of food as they are getting bigger. I’m learning feeding a teenager is not much different than a toddler. When they are hungry they get cranky. So it’s best to just keep them fed. The kitchen is open all the time. The dishwasher gets run twice a day. I feel like I’m wearing a hole in the floor by my cutting board.
To keep my self motivated I recently splurged and bought myself some new happy kitchen things, a new cook book and an apron. Plus I cleaned out some cabinets so I don’t curse while digging out all the pieces and parts to my food processor. Being organized and clean in the kitchen helps a lot.
Cooking daily homemade meals from scratch for a family of six takes a lot of my time. In my spare moments I find myself choosing between taking a shower or feeding myself. Or doing laundry or prepping something for dinner when it’s 10:00 in the morning. I’m a foodie and I like to eat good food. So I don’t mind the effort. I just wish my kids would share my excitement to eat black bean sweet potato chili fries.
I don’t follow recipes. I do from time to time take photos of a meal I make and post it on Instagram. I love being inspired by other people’s cooking so sometimes I play along too. But I don’t think I make anything so extraordinarily awesome I should write a recipe and tell everyone else on here they should make it too. Recipes are a dime a dozen on the internet now. My advice is to jump in and start with quality ingredeints and you can’t go wrong.
Two days a week we cook a family meal from Sun Basket. It helps me get two nights a week where I don’t have to meal plan and the food tastes great. It’s really helpful on the evenings we get home late from dance class.
Most days I still get out my CSA bin from Farmer Megan and cook. I chop, roast and sauté. Like so many moms my Instant Pot is my new best friend. Sundays are for meal prep and planning dinners for the week. I miss sewing all day on Sundays. But feeding all these people is a lot of work. So I sew less and chop more these days. 
For about a year I’ve been experimenting with gluten free flours wondering if I could get anyone to make the jump with me. I’ve learned I can make about anything gluten free. But it does taste different. Everything is more dry. Someone told me to whip the egg whites first and I think that does help. In the photo below, I made butternut squash cornbread, using fresh ground cornmeal and roasted sqaush from our CSA. I thought it was good! Leftovers were made into breadcrumbs for eggplant. The dish on the left was a crustless quiche loaded with veggies.
Good gracious while I’ve been not blogging about food the last nine months, and learning to use an Instant Pot and cook meat…I even started making bone broth. Yep it’s true! Tossing leftover veggies in broth makes for a super easy, yummy soup.
My toddler is hitting the age of wanting to help in the kitchen. She asks to crack eggs, mix things and all the adorable acts of “helping” that really just take forever to make anything. But she’s really cute so we are back to the days of making mini muffins. These were gluten free pumpkin muffins that got gobbled up in one afternoon by my kids, along with the neighborhood kids who can be found at my house daily. I do love being that kitchen where the warm muffins get snatched up in a dash.
In addition to the sweet potato chili fries we had Friday for dinner, I made stir fry beef, quinoa, a pot of plain dried black beans in the instant pot and a salad. Before dinner on the counter was a cutting board full of carrots, hummus, celery with peanut butter, mini bell peppers and block of cheese. Nearly all of it was devoured in the interim time of getting home from school and me getting dinner on the table. Feeding all these people is a lot of food. Period. I can not even imagine feeding boys.
