Ah, September. I’ve been looking forward to this month as it usually brings a hint of better weather. I can’t use the word “cooler” yet — in fact, this week we’re supposed to hit 100 degrees thanks to lots of sun and no rain — but at least the prospect of fall is out there…somewhere. And perhaps by the end of the month, the heat will dial it back at bit? I can hope!
Big things happening in September:
+ Charlotte’s 4th birthday. It was on Monday and we had a lovely day. And her party is this weekend so the fun hasn’t ended yet.
+ Weekend in Corpus Christi. My mother-in-law is having a combined birthday party for both girls with Jose’s family, just as she’s done for the past several years now.
+ Solo parenting weekend for me while Jose goes on a bachelor trip with his cousins. (His cousin is getting married later this year.)
September goals:
+ Develop a weeknight/homework routine. Second grade homework includes reading for 20 minutes each night and doing a few math exercises. Our whole family would benefit from tweaking the evening routine to accommodate this stuff (and decrease the screen time while we’re at it). I don’t want to be militant about it, but I do think we’ll need to set some expectations.
+ Eat more veggies. I like most vegetables and eat them often at restaurants, but I have long struggled to get them into my diet at home. I think it’s just out of (bad) habit more than anything — I don’t buy much at the store, therefore I don’t have much at home to eat. It’s time to improve this, both for myself and for the kids. If you have suggestions on how you incorporate more easy vegetable dishes (or even just simple veggie sides) into your diet, I’m all ears!
+ Set up some sort of calendar/command center by our back door. Carrying this one over from August, since I didn’t get it done. And now that Jose is at a new job, we need a family calendar more than even to keep things straight.
+ “No spend-ish” month. We have been spending money hand over fist for the last several months. There’s been travel, and health stuff, and kid stuff, and just general life stuff. Whew! Jose and I talked recently and agreed to watch our expenses this fall.
+ Investigate alternate TV/internet options. This was a July goal that I didn’t accomplish. But a friend recently mentioned fuboTV, and how it has the Astros games — which is our biggest requirement. I signed up for a 7-day free trial yesterday to try it out.
September! Let’s do this.
So, reading the advice I just wrote, I think the starting advice is to just pick a few basic vegetables and make them part of your grocery store staples – buy them every time without being linked to specific planned meals and then force yourself to use them every time you cook – spinach, broccoli, carrots, green beans, are all pretty versatile.
I am not sure how kid friendly this is, but basically every meal we cook at home we serve with a simple salad (dressed with vinegar and oil), with the salad made of mixed greens or spinach, and usually topped with tomatoes, carrots, or broccoli, I feel like it gets a few servings in and takes all of 2 minutes to prepare (since we eat with most meals, the ingredients are part of our grocery store staples, we precut the carrots and broccoli so we just have to dump them in; though we top the salad with different things if we have it like olives, croutons, or cheese) (also, with spinach, when it starts to get a little wilty, just stir fry the remainder with garlic and oil for a “hot” side)
On the kid side, the most common after school snack in our house was veggies and dip (usually also pre cut or baby carrots and broccoli and tomatoes). I feel like that helped with a couple extra veggies in the day.
One thing I notice my Dad does is that every meal always have a side of green veggies. Again having green beans, broccoli, or asparagus around is just a grocery store staple (eg he just buys a bunch of them every time he goes to the store without being part of meal planning), he just grabs something out of the veggie drawer when he’s cooking the rest of his meal. .
Also, its easy to incorporate veggies in kid-friendly meals that are prepared in a stir-fry pan (e.g. just mix in green beans or broccoli with the mac and cheese or hamburger helper or what not).
If you want to kick start the veggie side option, you can buy frozen veggies (broccoli, peas, and spinach are ok frozen, though I prefer all my veggies fresh really) in massive quantities and then you have no excuse not to break them out when you are cooking.
You could also add a vegetable-centric meal to your usual meal rotation (e.g. stir fry or a dinner salad or mixed vegetables over pasta)
So we have been getting boxes from Plated for the last 18 months — 2 meals per week — and those meals are always pretty well-rounded and the girls will eat them about half the time. It’s all the other nights that i need to just follow your advice and make it a habit of incorporating a veggie.
Instead of tacos last night, we had tacos and green beans. Progress!
We usually stick to very simple veggies – plain steamed broccoli, cauliflower, or carrots are popular. We have a metal steamer basket that fits into a sauce pan. Baked sweet potatoes are very popular and easy, especially if I remember to do it the night before and then just reheat them. Boiled frozen veggies are quick and easy. A bag of salad with dressing and croutons. We always have frozen veggies around and then usually buy fresh for many of the meals each week.
We also like stir-frys and we just learned in the last year or so that the kids like “salad bar night” where we have a diced-up protein, salad stuff, and some fun extra toppings – avocado, bacon, boiled egg or whatever. The older kids make fancy salads, the younger kids just have little bits of everything on a plate.
I think every comment has mentioned steamed vegetables so maybe I should just accept eating steamed more often. (It’s not my preferred way to cook veggies.) We have started doing the bagged salads once or twice a week and I do like those a lot!
I’m going to have to try salad bar night and see how that goes over with the girls!
If there’s no veggie in the meal, we boil a frozen vegetable and eat it with dinner. The kids are required to eat their frozen veg before they can have anything else. I actually enjoy eating boiled frozen veg so it’s no hardship for me to eat it. Our go-tos are broccoli and spinach. Easy to cook, and easy to clean up.
It’s an on-going battle.
I’m not even going to start on the kids…ha! Actually, Emma is pretty good about eating whatever is served. Charlotte though… Last night we had green beans and I lost count of how many times she said there saying “yuck.” Sigh.
I always have frozen veggies and serve one with every dinner. That is easier because I don’t have to worry about using it before it goes bad. I always buy the steamer bags because it just takes 5 min in the microwave and it’s done.
I do regularly buy baby carrots, and cucumber fresh. I’ll sub that in for frozen veggies periodically and they are good for snacks.
I really like the salad bar night idea. I don’t know why that never occurred to me.
I am not a huge fan of steamed veggies and usually prefer roasted or raw.
But having a stash of the frozen steamer bags on hand would certainly be an easy way to make it happen!