A family home should be a place where all members can find satisfaction for their most important personal needs (shelter, nutrition, love, and safety). When people get together to form a family (whether it’s two adults who get married and have children, a single parent plus children, or even a childless couple), certain roles are established in order to meet those needs. Often, those roles are looked at strictly in terms of “tasks” or “chores” (someone takes out the garbage, someone washes the dishes, someone does laundry, someone brings money home, etc.) that are performed by one or more family members. Over time, these tasks coalesce into a “role.” One role that is often overlooked but totally indispensible to a household is that of the food manager.
A food manager is more than simply “the one who does the cooking.” They are the food preparer, the family shopper, the dietician, the storage manager, and more…all rolled into one lengthy job description. Moreover, the term “manager” is apt, due to the opportunities to delegate work to other family members (most of whom are happy to help out with something simple, like washing the vegetables, rather than be asked to prepare a full-on meal). The food manager may start out as simply “the cook” (in my household, this is me…and it was one of the big “selling points” that helped to attract my wife in the first place), but inevitably, this cook will voluntarily take care of the grocery shopping and plan for the use and storage of leftovers. Is it because they want more work? Of course not. They’ll do it because “no one else does it right.”
As with any job, the more you learn about it, the more work it sounds like. Fortunately, once the role is embraced and fulfilled, the food manager learns short cuts and can trim the work down to a matter of mere hours per week. The rewards are intangible…and formidable. I get a genuinely strong feeling of satisfaction from knowing that I am not only pleasing my family’s taste buds but caring for their nutritional needs and keeping expenses minimal. If you live in a home where no one has stepped up to accept this role, then consider the following as a checklist of qualities that such a person should possess. If you have these qualities, then perhaps you will embrace such a managerial position in your own home.
A food manager must have medium-term vision (which would fall somewhere in between “short-term” and “long-term”). Planning out meals for months at a time is impractical and unnecessary. On the other end of the spectrum, only considering the next meal in front of you is too short-sighted. A good food manager thinks at least a few days in advance. This evening’s dinner is obviously most important, but how will it impact tomorrow’s meals? Will there be leftovers that can be used (perhaps even re-packaged) for the next day? What (in the name of variety) will the next night’s dinner include? If you are going to make a nice London broil steak tonight, it would be good to know that you can slice it up nice and thin for sandwiches (or tidbits, if you have some cheese) for tomorrow’s lunch. You would also want to plan a different main course for dinner the next night (i.e. poultry or fish) for variety’s sake.
Another quality of a food manager is frugality, with both money and time. I will admit to being conscientious of the family spending, though I don’t think I could be described as “cheap” (some little splurges now and then are just downright necessary). I buy generic brands whenever possible. I try to follow the supermarket circulars to keep up on sales. If that night’s menu requires a green vegetable, I’ll choose between broccoli, cabbage, green beans, etc., based on what is on sale.
Of course, there are many frugal foodies who swear by the savings of coupon-clipping. While I commend their vigilance, this behavior conflicts with the “time frugality” mentioned above. With three young children in the house, I don’t have much time to spare…especially for the small savings that each coupon may yield. Another factor in the decision of what meal to make is how much preparation time it takes. I have a bank of meals that I use in rotation…some of which take only 10-15 minutes to prepare, some that take about 30 minutes, some that take 45-60 minutes, etc. If errands need to be run that day, I may not get home until after 5pm (time for a 15 minute meal). If a recipe has more than eight steps or requires more than two hours of work, I don’t even bother with it.
Of course, the nutritional needs of the entire family are of highest importance to the food manager. In today’s bustling on-the-go culture, most people (when left to their own devices) would prefer to just buy a quick meal, which is seldom the healthiest option (pizza, burger, etc.). And even when we do eat at home, it needs to be fast and convenient. As a result, a sandwich is usually rounded out with some potato chips or pretzels---instead of a green salad. When my wife comes home for lunch, I always have a salad ready (and I feel good knowing that I have snuck some vitamins and nutrients into her body that she otherwise wouldn’t have had).
I’m not a nutritional expert, but a good approach is for every meal to consist of some amount of protein, starch, and fruit/vegetable. With this approach in mind, putting a meal together becomes almost like a puzzle. Need a meat? Choose from beef, chicken, fish, turkey, or tofu. Got it? Now what starch will complement it? Rice? Potato (baked, roasted, mashed)? Pasta? Okay, time for a vegetable…lots of green choices. Want a fourth course? Pot luck choice!
Another component of meeting nutritional needs is to accommodate allergies and preferences (which, for a toddler, is often referred to as “fussy eater syndrome”). My oldest daughter is allergic to dairy and soy, which cuts out a lot more than you’d think (seems like 90% of baby or toddler prepared meals and snacks are just a delivery device for cheese). Of course, she’s also in a fussy eater phase, which makes it even more challenging. My wife has no allergies but some difficulty with foods of various textures. And it’s just a matter of months before my twins are off breast milk and in my nutritional jurisdiction. The food manager keeps all this information in their mental rolodex (which comes in especially handy when visiting family or friends who are preparing food…or going to restaurants).
The food manager also utilizes various techniques for extending food shelf life. We all have had the experience of buying something at the supermarket (likely because it was on sale), bringing it home, and then watching it turn brown in the fridge over the next week before throwing it away. Apart from the monetary cost, the waste of healthy edible food should never be taken lightly---as long as there are still people who go to sleep hungry every night. Most meats and many fruits and vegetables (the most perishable items in your refrigerator) can be frozen and still be quite tasty for up to six months. See the excellent “Frozen Cache” episode of Good Eats (with Alton Brown) on The Food Network for some good tips.
I find it funny that every family has one person who takes responsibility for throwing food away that has gone bad in the fridge (all the while complaining about being able to “feed the starving people of the world with all the food we throw away around here!”). Only the experienced food manager can minimize this problem by keeping track of what containers and plastic bags in the refrigerator contain food that is one, two, or three days old. My wife playfully teases me for that twinkle in my eye when we “use stuff up” from the fridge…sparing some perfectly good food from an unfortunate fate in the refuse.
I realize that I’m not creating a new job with this analysis as much as highlighting the existence of it. For the stay-at-home parent (mom or dad) especially, it’s important to recognize and value the specific contributions that you make for the family. Sure, you’re “raising your kids” which everyone takes a moment to remind you is a wonderful thing. But that’s a continuous process with no real beginning or end (since one day bleeds into the next in a continuous feeding-changing-playing-teaching-singing-television-reading routine). It’s nice (and I think downright necessary) to validate your contributions to the family in satisfying some of the basic necessities of life. Yes, if you didn’t do it, someone else would. But would they do it as well as you?
