Feeding My Children As A Working Mom

Contrary to what my husband may believe, I often wake up in the mornings wondering what I’m going to make for supper that evening.  I say that Seth wouldn’t believe it only because it often happens that I do nothing about it at all.  It just kinda happens.  It’s not intentional though I promise.

OK, no, that’s not true.  Sometimes it’s totally intentional.

But let me explain.

This post is powered by the LG NeoChef

I work till roughly 2pm everyday.  Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter – all depending on what I need to do in office, what I can do at home, the kids extra murals and life.  I know it’s a privilege.  One that I really don’t take for granted unless I’m listening to my children screaming at each other and dreaming of the peace and quiet in my office.  It happens, I’m human.

The thing is that we have a variety of things that happen in the afternoons.  I don’t just pick up the kids before heading home to watch them efficiently destroy their homework in 20 minutes, leaving the rest of the afternoon open for fun and adventure.  Or as other people know it – my cooking.

No, no, no.  We have extra murals to go to, play dates to have and grandparents homes to literally drag them out of.  Realistically on a good day we will get home around 3pm.  On any other day we get home around 5pm.  So technically I work a full day.  Kids are work.  Fight me on it – I dare you.

So yes, some days I opt out of cooking.  Intentionally.

Look, if I get home at 5.30/6 there is no way that I’m going to slap together a meal in 30 minutes.  Especially because even though I think about it when I wake up – I forget to take anything out of the freezer.  So really, it’s not going to happen.  Other days I have every intention of cooking but due to extra homework or things outside of my control, there’s just no time for it.  That’s what takeaways are for.  And that’s OK.

But on other nights guys – I nail it.

And I couldn’t do it without my trusty microwave.  I mean how else are you going to defrost the chicken you’ve forgotten to take out the freezer?  How else are you going to make wonderfully fluffy rice without burning the bottom of your pot?  How else are you going to time your children in the naughty corner?

Seriously though, our microwave is the go to for all the usual things.  We’ve had ours since we got married 10 years ago and it was also a LG model that served us really well.  It was only now in its later life that if I had to defrost chicken it would par boil it instead (and I can’t handle that smell or taste) so we stopped using that function.

When LG offered to send us their new LG NeoChef to try out we were keen to bring it into our home and see what it could do.  And there are so many things that are different with this one…

• It’s not just there to heat up your cold tea or defrost the mince you forgot to take out again – you can actually cook food in it.
• It literally sings to you once it’s half way through defrosting (and you need to turn your goodies around) or about a minute before it’s finished what you asked it to do.  It so much nicer to hear than the blatant shouting of our old one.  We all have the little tune in our heads on the regular.
• It comes with a great recipe book that tells you how to make a range of European, South African and other dishes – all in the microwave!  I’m going to be trying some of the random ones out soon so I’ll let you know how they turn out.
• It has an Anti-Bacterial EasyClean coating which helps to ensure that you keep your microwave and food healthy and not contaminated with any germs.
• There are instructions on the inside of the door in case you forget things as easily as I do!

And just in case you think that our kitchen looks too clean to be true…

It was.

I totally cleaned up for this – obviously.  But then I put back our random bowl of collected crap in its rightful place…  On top of our brand new LG NeoChef microwave because he’s part of the family now and he needs to carry his load.  And then Riya cut a banana right onto the counter before mixing it with water and a spoon and turning it into ice cream.  Sigh…

Find out more about the LG NeoChef here.