Batch cooking breakdown

Although I am a fan of batch cooking, I did have a disastrous experience once. Thankfully this happened to me when I had my second child and not my first or I would have been put off of batch cooking for life.

One day as I shuffled through the mundane pile of bills, leaflets and junk mail I discovered a voucher for a free baby cookbook. I already knew and loved the brand and was really looking forward to the fabulous meals I would prepare. I might add that the scene playing in my head was one where my house was spotless, the children sat around my dining room table where the pristine white linen table cloth had been freshly starched (I don’t even own a table cloth and if I did there is no way I would be starching it!) The children would beam up at me and after thanking me profusely for taking the time to cook for them eagerly tuck into their dinner. Of course they eat every last scrap and gush about how lucky they are to have such an amazing cook as their mother. This would be quite a feat as my daughter wasn’t even talking at this point. I am dressed in a fancy figure hugging dress (made by The pretty dress company) that is free from snot, sick and general child slime. I am also wearing ridiculously high heels. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book and have my daydream play out as a reality.

Having a slightly impulse personality I dragged the kids and my husband out early the next day to pick up the cookbook and then to the shops to buy the ingredients.

Probably not my greatest idea but in my excitement I decided I would cook the dinners (plural as obviously the queen of batch cooking would be cooking lots all at once) in the evening once the kids were in bed. In my husband’s defence he did try and tell me that starting at 8 O’clock in the evening wasn’t one of my best ideas but of course I knew better.

The first signs that I was starting to run into difficulties was when I was desperately trying to de-string very skinny runner beans. This took forever and by the time I had removed all of the string there was very little bean left. Seriously never, ever, bother doing this, Ocado sell them all prepared and frozen, if only I had known that at the time.

When it got to midnight I had to admit defeat. There were so many ingredients in each recipe and each one had a million different steps which in my opinion were completely pointless anyway. All I had accomplished was one and a half dinners.

Every pot, knife, plate, bowl and chopping board that I owned had been used and lay discarded on the worktops. As I looked around I felt an overwhelming sense of failure. I didn’t have a month’s worth of dinners, it was more like a week’s worth and of course there were only one and a half different meals. I had more washing up than I could shake a stick at. There were still loads of unused exotic ingredients in my fridge that I wouldn’t be cooking in any other dinners. And to top it all off I had just kicked over a beaker of milk that had been left on the floor amongst a sea of toys. My eyes started to prickle with hot tears and as the first tear trickled down my cheek I instantly felt like the worst mother ever.

My unrealistic daydream would not come true, I didn’t have enough dinners so would have to cook again and soon. My kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off but I was too exhausted to tackle any cleaning. I knew the ingredients in the fridge would go to waste. I was setting myself up to have a challenging morning as trying to get breakfast ready in this mess whilst having 2 children jumping around would be a nightmare.

I simply put the dinners into a bowl, covered them with foil and put them into the fridge and went to bed. Where I continued to cry at my husband about what a failure I was until I came up with the reasoning that the free cookbook was a ploy to make you fail so that you felt rubbish and would go out and buy pre prepared baby food as there is no way you are capable of producing the tasty delights that your baby wants and deserves.

The next morning I cleared the kitchen, hid the offending cook book at the back of the cupboard, never to see the light of day ever again. Then I took the kids to the park and really savoured spending time with them, drinking in their care free giggles and smiles. Yes I was covered in chewed up spat out baby biscuit and my hair was a mess but in that moment I knew that I wasn’t the worse mother ever. I was a far cry from any of the mothers that you see in adverts but my children wouldn’t want me any other way and they really couldn’t care less about the dinners I was providing as very little of it was going to go in their mouths anyway.

#batchcooking #unrealisticviewofmotherhood #babyfood #weaning #batchcookingbreakdown