I am just about the laziest person I know.
If I can find a shortcut, I will take it.
If I can avoid doing something altogether, I will do so.
However, I do need to eat, as do my husband and child, so I have been developing some supremely lazy meals to make life easier for me.
By lazy, I mean as little washing up as possible, as little preparation as possible, and the maximum output possible - so if I make something that can be divided into portions for the freezer? So much the better!
I do work (part time - 5 days a week at the moment, but not full days), and some evenings we will have frozen pizzas, when I just cannot deal with preparing a meal. However, most nights, my husband (J), son (O), and I, will sit down to a home-cooked meal, and chat about our days.
As O is only 2, and we have another child on the way, we have to balance eating healthily with eating at all (O is a notoriously picky eater when he's tired, which is pretty much always, and I have had such bad morning sickness for the past 6 months, that many of our meals have been bland, bland, bland). I have to cook in the hour between getting home from work, and O reaching that point in the evening where he is hungry enough to eat, but not too tired to sit still - so 4.30pm at the moment.
I have several types of recipe:
1. quick (15-20 minutes from start to finish)
2. advance (all prep done at the weekend when J can deal with O)
3. vegetable vehicles (a meal that hides vegetables in it, so J will eat them)
4. snack (quick and easy snacks)
5. puddings (dessert, basically)
6. baked goods (predominantly cake, sometimes cookies, occasionally pies)
Some of these will be suitable for a toddler to help with. Some won't. I'll be sure to mark each one to make sure it's obvious which ones are small child friendly!
Hopefully over the next few weeks/months I can build up a catalogue of easy to follow recipes which can be cooked during an episode of Peppa Pig (or, less optimistically, during an episode of Bob the Builder!), or which can be cooked with the assistance of a small child.
