Second Cup: Make a little extra on Sundays

Make weekday meals easier without spending extra time cooking

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to make a little extra on Sundays. By

(00:21):
overcooking on Sunday, you can make the beginning of the
week a little easier. So longtime listeners know that I
am not a huge fan of elaborate meal prepping. When
I first started writing about women and work in life,
I quickly realized that some working mothers had absorbed the

(00:42):
message from somewhere that they needed to spend their entire
weekends preparing for the week ahead. Sunday would be devoted
to making meals for the upcoming week so they could
be pulled out of the freezer on weeknights and served.
The problem, of course, is that it still takes some
time to thaw and reheat complicated dishes. People who did

(01:06):
this often had a tendency to then decide to make
side dishes for those pre made meals. All of a sudden,
they are cooking all day Sunday and during the week
as well. That is a lot less time available for
relaxing or hanging out with family members. Given that I
have found that most men who are not, say, training

(01:28):
for a bodybuilding competition, just don't tend to do this.
I tend to think that maybe there is another way.
Maybe we can just make simple meals during the week
that take twenty minutes or so and leave Sundays open.
But if you are eating Sunday dinner, meaning that someone

(01:50):
is going to have to cook something, then I think
there is an argument for making a little bit more
than you would have in order to have a little
extra to cover at least some parts of meals during
the week. For instance, we sometimes like to grill on
the weekends. If we are grilling one steak, it is

(02:12):
just as easy to grill two or three steaks. Now,
the second batch of protein can become fajitas on Monday,
or be mixed with a jar of sauce from the
Asian isle at the supermarket and served with rice on Tuesday.
Those dinners wind up being quite quick and no extra
time was added to any one's Sunday labors. Or maybe

(02:35):
you could decide to have soup for dinner on Sundays
since people are around and so it can simmer during
the afternoon. That sounds like a lovely winter tradition. If
you are doing that, just get a stock pot that
is twice as big, double what you would have made.
Now you have dinner on Sunday and you have something

(02:56):
you can take to work for lunch for the next
three days. Or perhaps you could decide that Tuesday will
be soup night as well. Why not? Soup is tasty.
I would eat the same things multiple nights per week.
Some people will make a big batch of grains on Sunday. Again,
if you are already boiling the water for that farrow

(03:18):
for your Sunday meal, it doesn't take extra time to
make a bigger batch. Then you put it in the
fridge and can mix that with frozen veggies, heat it
up some other night for a very simple side. Add
a retisserie chicken that someone grabbed at the supermarket on
the way home from work, and all of a sudden
you have got a very easy, very tasty, and pretty

(03:42):
balanced meal. There is really no point in taking extra
time to cook on Sundays. For the week you will
probably eat one way or another. You might be better
off enjoying some time away from the chores. But if
you are already in the kitchen, making a little extra

(04:03):
tends to involve very little extra time. If that would
make meals easier during the week, it is probably worth
the bother. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks

(04:29):
for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(04:51):
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