meal planning

Cooking with your kids is one of the best ways to get them to eat healthy real food, and a great way to boost their excitement is by involving them in meal planning. 

When children can take ownership of breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks, they tend to really think about what they’ll be eating. When you first start giving your children a voice in meal planning they may provide outlandish ideas such as cheeseburgers with cookies for buns or string cheese for every meal, but you can curb this by showing them how you do your own meal planning, and what you take into account (nutrition, budgets, what’s on hand) so they understand how meal plans work. And of course, do your best to make meal planning fun!

This is the fouth post in our Co-op on a Budget series, which explores the different ways that we can shop co-op effectively and affordably. Also check out the first post, on shopping bulk, the second post, on the Wedge Co-op vs. Cub Foods, and the third post, on Eastside Food Co-op vs. Rainbow.

The new year is beginning! How many of us are contemplating what we want to do differently in 2013? If you are the primary cook for your household, or one of the primary cooks, you may be looking for ways to cook more at home. I don’t know about you, but while I am the primary cook, cooking is not primarily what I do – I  have to fit in all my other roles (mother, wife, daughter, friend, worker, etc.) during the day, too. One tool that can make it easier to cook at home is knowing ahead of time what you are cooking. Planning out the meals for the week definitely helps me when 5:30 rolls around and the family starts milling around looking hungry.   

This is the second post in our Co-op on a Budget series, which explores the different ways that we can shop co-op effectively and affordably. Also check out the first post, on shopping bulk.

About three years ago our young family went through a financial crunch, which I’m sure most Americans shared. My employer was on a two-year wage freeze and hiring-freeze. Rumors of layoffs were the smaller waves of a larger fear that the company might fail altogether. As a relatively new employee, I was confident that layoffs would affect my position. My wife, pregnant with our second child, had recently quit her job to stay home with our 3-year-old daughter and the expected baby, so my income was solely driving our household, and, to be honest, we were scared shitless.