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BATCH COOKING

What is Batch Cooking and how can it improve academic success?

Batch cooking is basically buying and preparing a variety of food in advance so that it will be available and ready for you throughout the busy week. I most recently learned about batch cooking as a part of my journey in moving towards whole food plant based eating. But batch cooking can be used with any nutritional preference/need.

If eating healthy and reducing stress is a priority for you, give batch cooking a try.

This process can start with identifying and meals for the week and choosing recipes.

Next comes grocery lists and then marketing.

For many of us (especially moms) it’s more efficient to do this ourselves.

However, offering our kids an opportunity to be involved even in the early parts of this process engage them in these steps that cultivate planning, analyzing and decision making.  

We might know what foods and meals our kids enjoy, but if and when we ask them for input on what meals they want to have available during the week, it empowers them to collaborate with us.  As our kids move through their adolescence, our roles as parents shift more towards consultant (vs. caretaker), and planning meals together offers us the opportunity to collaborate with our kids, while possibly also infusing some teaching opportunities to include healthy components in these meals.

That might be as far as you get at first.

But you might consider asking them to join you to get the food (also probably not efficient).

However, when someone gets the opportunity to choose the food they will eat (and I’m not talking about what they order at McDonald’s), a lot of things start to happen.

Batch cooking begins with creating a timeline. Inherent to this first step is reviewing for the following week and deciding how you want to manage your time and pace yourself.

Batch cooking involves setting goals (choosing recipes), anticipating and planning (checking pantry/refrigerator and creating shopping list), taking action (food shopping), being prepared, and meeting needs.  Sounds like we’re cultivating executive function (Go PFC!)!

Batch cooking supports resilience:  coming home from school/work at the end of a hard day, you have prepared options to quickly and easily put dinner together.  You have healthier options and more time to sit down together with family and connect (or some peaceful solitude if you’re alone).  Now when your students go to do some homework and studying (before going to bed at a reasonable hour), they’ll be more focused and will learn better.

Batch cooking as a family can cultivate team work and collaboration (wow!).

Batch cooking has environmental and economic benefits too! 

If you’re batch cooking,  you’re likely to buy in bulk, which means you’re saving money too!

Buying in bulk and batch cooking is more environmentally sustainable (less packaging, less trips to market – lower carbon footprint).

Like with mindfulness and meditation, some have us have been practicing this in certain ways all along, we just hadn’t labeled it as such, and thus were not necessarily practicing with intention.

Want more information on this?  Get in touch…dcitron@auhsdschools.org