Printable View
Hi everyone. I am new to this forum. I am a stay at home mom to a 4 months old. I am planing to start a home daycare and provide home cooked meals to the little ones.
I was wondering when do you ladies prepare your meals? Do you make it a day before or in the same day?
Thank you
I do most of mine the day of. some providers do it the night before, or sever left overs. Its really up to you. Find what works best for you and go with that.
I double up on supper so that the children then have a real meal at lunch time. It's just a matter of heating up properly and then allowing to cool to an appropriate temperature for small people and cooling time is normally spent having a quick story then using the washroom/changing diapers and handwashing before eating.
It's impossible to cook from scratch and properly supervise a group of children at the same time so this is what works best for me.
I do not serve "left overs", there was a very negative comment from a parent few years ago insinuating that homedaycares serve only left over which wasn't the service they were paying for.
I do my meals from scratch every day around 6 am. And my family has the left overs of our lunch time.
If you search how restaurants and chefs handle properly food you will get lots of tips to prepare things way ahead. Ex. Salads, soup mixes, crock pot recipes already mixed freeze and cook it etc. Search pinterest you'll get absolutely many ideas. You'll find your own system the way it works best for you. Spring and summer we set a lot more raw veggies so I focus a lot on those months to introduce new foods too. Fall and winter mostly crock pot meals, all year round frunits are always easy to offer. My kids learned to eat every thing cooked or raw veggies.
I don't not serve left over and I would be really offended too Peacefulbird if a parent suggested I did. All my meals are cooked from scratch. Like you, I use no packaged goods at all. Heck, I even make our own bread and pasta. I would have been really upset if a client even suggested that as I know I cook meals that are a higher quality than most children have from home. Jeez, some parents - just when you think you've heard it all. I'm sorry you had this experience.
Thank you Suzie_Homemaker, but it wasn't my personal experience, I do not remember exactly were but this was a parents experience and description of a homedaycare and published in the written media. And then I went to a workshop the presenter also suggested (tax purposes) that family "dinner left overs" can also be charged and how to do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Suzie_Homemaker
Obviously, many providers were using the term "left overs" to describe what they feed children. And parents assumptions were that basically whatever your family didn't like to eat was served to the daycare children the next day (absolutely far from the true and a misunderstanding).
But the real explanation is that we prepare meal a night before to be warmed and served the next day. Never our families lefts overs.
So, I decided to cook early and basically when parents arrive they can notice the lunch was done earlier before the kids arrive and are cooked or prepared daily. I got used too and it gave also a good reputation to my daycare.
I do some basic preparation before daycare opens, and maybe a few final touches as they eat morning snack while we’re in the kitchen together.
I try to do the same as you,only if we have something like sandwiches or such i make the same day.I think it would be extremely hard and unsafe to cook while having children in care.
Could you please share some of the real meal recipes for I am getting out of ideas and would love to try something new that they would actually eat!?
Thank you in advance:)
Yeah, me too, I often make different sandwiches with sourdough bread as I have learned as it's a healthy one with this article on https://www.edelweissbakeryfl.com/bl...bread-healthy/ and I love the fact that it's not so difficult to do and doesn't take too much time as well as I'm often busy