Menu Planning & Kitchen Work

Menu Planning & Kitchen Work

This page of resources belongs to the Homemaking Resource Library.


I started my homemaking journey with a practical interest in cooking. Cooking was not my favorite thing but it was a necessary reality. I assumed that responsibility in our marriage following the homemaking role models in my life - my mom, aunties, grandmas - all of whom did the cooking in their homes.

Cooking never became a passion of mine but it was part of the job description which I fulfilled faithfully for many years. For fourteen years we followed a plant-based diet, not cooking with any animal products in our home. Our children grew up mostly vegan and as they became old enough, elementary-school aged approximately, I trained and taught them to cook by requiring their help and participation in the kitchen.

For many years, in addition to providing three meals a day, doing the budget-conscious grocery shopping and managing a buying club, I made many basic foods from scratch, both for cost-saving reasons but also because I was motivated by a certain "homemade" homemaking ethic.

A lot has changed in our kitchen in recent years. I don't hold to such high homemade standards anymore. Three of the five of our family eat an omnivorous diet, while the other two maintain plant-based diet styles. And having trained my kids to cook, I have slowly worked myself out of the chief chef duties I assumed for the first fifteen years or so of our family life.

My cooking is simple. I'm a busy woman, with other interests and responsibilities. I'd much rather manage the kitchen (and I'm good at doing that) than cook all the meals and homemade snacks.

Even at the hey-dey of my family cooking I didn't write a lot about food and kitchen work. But over the years I have shared recipes, snippets, and strategies from our kitchen and they are gathered below.

I've even written a short e-book, How to Start a Food Buying Club, which you can find free here.

For plant-based food philosophy and recipes see this resource page.