Day 16 Without A Kitchen
Day 16 of not having a kitchen. I am adjusting to this new style of meal prep and dining. It is not my favorite… and I’m working on adjusting.
When we had a kitchen, my husband and I would make food every day. Fresh, delicious meals every day. It was part of our routine and ritual throughout the day – it’s very strange to have a huge chunk of your routine upheaved in a single day. In a day, we completely ripped out our kitchen. The granite countertops, the island, the perimeter, the appliances, the dang tile… all of it, gone in a day. Upheaval feels like the right word.
I’ve had a daily reflection where I tell myself “you need to cook some food” and then I’m like DUH you don’t have a kitchen anymore! What am I doing with all that extra time during the day when I am not cooking? I mean it gets filled, it is just a daily adjustment to a very ingrained routine.
In our house there is my husband, myself, my 2-year-old son, our dog Finn, and our cat Scarlett. My husband and I both eat – A LOT. We eat high quality food and with our metabolisms and exercise routines… we can pack the food away. Our son, eats like a teenage football player – it’s kind of disgusting and amazing at the same time. We also make our own dog food for Finn (yes, we are those people). And the cat… well she eats food from the store because she is the most picky, finicky cat. Also… she is a cat and is supposed to be snooty.
I used to have meal prep on lock. Each week this is what my husband and I would make just to keep us satiated:
Rice (for us and Finn)
Pasta
Sweet potatoes
Russett potatoes
Egg casserole with potatoes, sausage, eggs, and cheese
Pumpkin oatmeal muffins
Ground beef (for us and Finn)
Chicken
Steak
Fruit prep (mangoes, pineapple, pomegranates)
Vegetable prep (green beans, Brussel sprouts, romaine lettuce)
Protein smoothies
Protein pancakes
Okay… our meal prep takes a ton of time but it is SO worth it. When you can just pull together all the great food that is already prepped to make fresh, delicious meals… ugh it is just the BEST! And when the day is busy, it’s one less thing to stress about.
I’ll also say that we are a pretty “plain” household where we will place the exact same grocery order but rotate through different types of food (Greek rice bowls, pasta bowls, Mexican bowls – we are a bowl family haha – hearty foods and easy meals). All freshly made and eaten in the same week. The food just tastes better.
As I’m writing this, I think you can tell how much I miss our kitchen. The calmness that comes with meal prep – I miss. The satisfaction of filling the house with amazing smells and anticipating the finished food (especially when I make egg casserole and pumpkin oatmeal muffins at the same time – the house smells sweet and savory and it makes my mouth water just thinking about it).
Now, I did try to plan ahead to make some extra food and put things in our basement freezer. So all of that food we usually made, I made extra each week leading up to our remodel and stuck things in the freezer. Mostly, I made rice, pasta, sweet and russet potatoes, chicken, ground beef, egg casseroles, and muffins. So it’s not like we don’t have some food made up to pull out of the freezer. It’s just different.
For starters, the forethought to unthaw things from the deep freezer, has been an issue. Oops… guess we have to figure out how to either heat it up differently or see if we have enough food around to make a meal. Ugh… stressed. Also… freezer food tastes different than fresh food. Not the best, not the worst (I sound like such a food snob and I’ll admit that I am).
It's also been different using cooking appliances that I haven’t used in a long time or just used on occasion. In our temporary kitchen we have an instapot, crockpot, griddle, air fryer, ninja smoothie, microwave, and a Trager. So it’s not like we can’t cook – we can cook quite a bit of food. My muscle memory has just been so refined in using the stove and oven. Learning how to use these appliances and making different food has been a pretty good challenge.
One other thing that is definitely an adjustment – mini fridge and outdoor cooler. We live in West Michigan and have honestly appreciated the freezing temperatures since a majority of our food for the week is sitting in a large cooler outside. But man oh man… going outside at 6am in 10 degree weather to pull stuff out of the cooler is a jolt! It’s not horrible… it’s you know just different!
So, we have made some adjustments to our meals and to our prep over the past 16 days.
Mini-grocery orders since we literally don’t have the space for our normal order.
Cooking in our mini-appliances to make simple meals.
Using the freezer when we need to supplement our food.
Greatest of all… going over to my father-in-laws house once a week to cook.
My goodness has that been so helpful and appreciated. Going to Lee’s once a week to make some fresh food on a stove and in the oven is amazing. I went yesterday and make fresh sweet potatoes, pumpkin oatmeal muffins, egg casserole, and ground beef. Getting everything prepped to take over took about a half hour at my house. Cooking and cleaning up at his house took about 2 hours and my stress level was drastically improved. Drastically!
There is something about having high quality food for myself and my family that is a top priority for me – all the time. I think about the meals we have and the environment I want us to have surrounding food. Cooking and eating as a family builds such a strong family unit and even though our house is under construction, I still want that aspect of our daily lives present.
We are on day 16 of not having a kitchen. We have 55 more days to go (as long as we stay on schedule) since our remodel is very extensive with the entire main floor and an open floor plan – it’s just all connected. Each day I’m adjusting and figuring out different ways to approach meal prep. It will continue to evolve – if you have any suggestions on how to maintain high quality food and meal prep without having a full kitchen, please let me know!
