Life SKilLs: Alex - Eating

Alright! Ready for another installment of Life SKilLs? Today we have answers from my dear friend Alex, who blogs at Learning to Let Go. She is wonderful and has a lot of wisdom to offer wives/mamas! She responded with this (below), and I just HAD to include it:

"EEK! This is about as fun as filling out those quizzes when we were in middle school except these questions actually serve a purpose! It's always so encouraging to me to hear from other moms that my life quirks, even if not exactly like theirs, are still normal because they're mine! And I'm glad the Lord made us different and still so similar. Here are my answers to your fun questions!"

Eating

What is your “food philosophy”? As in, do you cook just because people need to be fed, or do you enjoy/love to cook?

I'm a kitchen conundrum. Really. I love that our kitchen is the center of our home and I love taking care of my family in it, no matter what that involves. But I'm a middle ground cook. Sometimes I hate it (usually because I don't have time to make what I want to or because I despise doing dishes over and over), sometimes I am madly in love with it because I know I'm making something that WILL be successful. ;) So, to answer your question... BOTH. 

What do you typically have for breakfast? What about your kids?

Leighton (my newly two year old) wants her milk the MOMENT she wakes up, so we drink milk and cuddle for breakfast part one. :) And then she either has oatmeal with brown sugar or cereal for breakfast part two (elmo's on the front of the cereal box, thus she wants "elmo seesee" all the time). We also have a banana, raisins or blueberries every day. I say "we", but I don't usually eat a big breakfast. I'm a snacker. I will eat leftovers, fruit, granola, a cheese stick or sometimes make eggs. Sometimes I wait until a few hours before lunch to eat. (This morning I ate a big Hardees biscuit on my way to Costco. hehe!)

What do you typically have for lunch? Kids?

Lunch is mostly leftover dinner from the night before. I always make enough for my husband's lunch and hopefully ours the next day. But we also keep an arsenal of both L's and my favorite lunch-y things which take less than 5 minutes to prepare: hummus, homemade bread, steamed zucchini, nitrate-free deli turkey, cheese sticks and slices, yogurt, pasta/sauce, lots of fruits, etc. We make wraps a lot also. Lunch is easy and quick. We always drink water for this meal.

How often do you make/cook/fix dinner each week?

I try to plan for 6 nights a week. When I plan for those meals there's always enough stuff in the kitchen to make up a 7th if I were to need it. I probably fix dinner 5-6 nights a week. Maybe two of those meals are "serious cooking" meals, one is probably something frozen I made weeks earlier, and the rest are super easy (15 min prep max).

Do you meal plan?

Yes. I have no option. We have a set budget and I'm trying to still drop it another $50 over the next few months. I only shop twice a month. I have to meal plan though we are fortunate enough that we have a good pantry stock after having shopped at Costco for so many months, and thus I can almost always make something besides popcorn for dinner even if I don't have anything planned.

How often do you eat out each week?

The only time we don't eat dinner at home if one of our parents invites us over OR if we have a big gift card.  We don't have time to eat out during the week with my hubby's schedule and weekends we just like to be home together. And then of course there are those random weeks where we eat at someone's house 3 nights. Its a constant switch up. We tend to eat lunch out more than dinner- at least once a weekend.

So there you have it! Alex and I are wonderful friends, but as you can see, we operate our "Eating" habits in different ways! I hope you found something you could relate to, and something you could learn from in our featured guest's answers today. 

What about you? Do you resonate with Alex's answers? 

Let me know in the comments!

(Want to be featured? Leave a comment or email me at sarahklawhorn at gmail dot com)