How to Survive Making Breakfasts and Lunches for Your Family

I oversee the food for my family of four.

I plan, I shop, I cook, I feed, I pack. And then I eat.

It’s a full-time job.

And of all of the meals and snacks and “I’m hungry”s and “feed me, now!”s I get, the morning shift is the toughest. It holds a special place in my heart; the left ventricle.

So many mouths to feed, so little time, so many small tasks, so asleep still.

Each day looks like the straw that broke the camel’s back, and yet, with one eye open at best, I come through in flying colours and I look spectacular flying in colour.

Not only do I get all of those breakfasts and lunches cooked, but I am good at it. Surprisingly good, if you are one of my critics.

How did I prepare for this challenge?

Well, years of working on a line in a restaurant and teaching school have given me the organization and preparation skills I needed to excel. And I shouldn’t forget all the hours directly observing my parents navigate similar waters.

In one sense becoming the dude making the food was the role I was born to play. In another, infinitely more accurate sense, it was an extra in a poorly-funded B film.

So, if you are a parent and have been tasked with providing nourishment (and not solely the metaphysical variety) for your partner and your offspring, then read on. If you are not a parent, but plan to become one and are interested in one aspect of how your life will irrevocably change, read on. If you are not a parent and don’t intentionally plan on ever becoming one, but enjoy a good laugh at other’s expenses (namely me), then you too should read on.

Here is how to prepare breakfasts and lunches for a family in the morning while maintaining your sanity or at least not losing too much of it.

The Calm before the Storm: How to be Ready Before the Morning Arrives.

1) Preparation! I can’t stress this enough (due to time constraints), but being prepared is key in the same was an actual key is key to opening a locked door. You must be ready at the drop of a hat to make any meal at any time. (Note: ban all hats.) To get prepared, start by drawing a picture of a cute squirrel. Now tear that paper up. You don’t have time for that crap! You must be on your game at all times. You must operate like a chess grandmaster — multiple moves ahead and an unhealthy obsession with trapping the king.

2) Seriousness! This job you have signed up for (always read the small print) is 24–7 365 days a year. There are no vacations or sick days or time off for good behaviour. You must be ready to jump up in the middle of deep sleep and perfectly boil an egg or butter some bread or butter an egg if your kids are weird. The toaster is always plugged in. The kettle always a click away from starting to boil. This is not the time to develop a sense of humour and give the wrong person the wrong container of cut up fruit or leave crusts on a sandwich because you think you are funny.

3) Plan! Each Sunday morning, sit down and plan to the most infinitesimal detail exactly what each human you are legally required to feed will require for substance. Then laugh for a while, giddy with the power, before allotting some extra rations. You plan because there can be no surprises! Not on your watch; not next to your watch; the inclusion of a watch at this point is a distraction you don’t have time for. Every possible meal-time request must be anticipated and shopped for. Your ability to know what they want before they ask for it will be called “eerie” and “woah” and “stop reading my diary”.

4) Knowledge! Get to know your family, both as actual humans and as robots, just in case. Sure, you knew them before, but for you to prepare their food, you must be as one with them. Study them. Follow them around at a distance with the binoculars and night vision goggles you requested as presents. Document their each and every move, strength and weakness, and emotional and physical responses to various stimuli. Only then can you properly feed them.

5) Preferences! In a perfect world, each person would eat the same thing and be the opposite of picky. In a perfect world I’d also be taller, have a darker complexion and speak with a deliciously hard-to-place accent. Take notes on each person’s food likes and dislikes no matter how asinine, perplexing or hilarious they may seem. Debate throwing those notes away and having some fun, before remembering that you can be replaced. If it helps, think of yourself as a highly-flammable scarecrow surrounded by crows who possess the knowledge and skill to use lighters — worked for me!

6) Memorize! You must be keenly aware of where everything is in your refrigerator, pantry and freezer. And I mean everything. Every grain, ounce and gram must be accounted for. Then forget everything you learned and memorize it again. And again, until you want to scream. Then scream. You, and you alone, are the master of this kitchen and only you can perform the tasks you perform. This is important — by no means can anyone else possess the knowledge of what is actually in all of those unlabeled Tupperware containers in the freezer.

7) Arrange! Despite what others tell you, this is your kitchen, unless you are at their house and then it is their kitchen. Don’t argue this point. When at home alone, take out all plates and bowls and utensils and spend some quality time together — hugging and issuing compliments is encouraged. Rank your pots and pans in order of size and likeability. Make sure the more frequently used foodstuffs are easy to reach as you don’t want to embarrassingly pull anything (“you tore your calf doing what?”). Arrange the plates and bowls in such a way that would make your mother proud if such stuff did, which it doesn’t.

The Storm: The Morning is Here.

8) Confidence! Like an elite athlete or Hollywood star, a certain amount of self-esteem is needed to perform this task. I aim for somewhere between off-the-charts and insufferable. You must believe your own hype or else you have no chance and may very well be eaten alive (to this date, that hasn’t happened, but why take the risk?) Enter the kitchen boldly. Own the room. Remember, you are the straw that stirs the drink; the flame that ignites the fire; the chicken and the egg. Bwaaach.

9) Focus! You don’t have time for distractions! It doesn’t matter how bad a sleep you got or how many nearly-debilitating allergies you are dealing with. Around every corner is a trap that may try to throw you off your game (your phone, the TV, your collection of hilarious wigs) — ignore them all! You must make the food for your family. You don’t have time for niceties and clean shirts and proper grammar. You definitely don’t have time for spilled milk or burned toast or scalding your hand. You must maintain singular focus on your task at hand or else you will fail. You will not fail.

10) The Set-up! It is highly important to wake up early to have the kitchen to yourself. This will give you time to visualize success while enjoying some “me time” which should entail a high-fibre homemade muffin and some r/jokes. Then, as if flipping a switch (by all means, flip an actual switch if that helps), you jump to action and boil some water. Why? Maybe you are preheating Thermoses, or making some tea or obsessively boiling water for the access to free steam. As the clock strikes the exact time (and not a moment sooner) the kids must be woken up, quickly pull out the ingredients that are needed for the battle ahead before racing upstairs to wake/scare/dump water on the kids.

11) The Dance! You are a dancer! Once the kids are awake and out of their rooms, the dance begins as you waltz, jive, two-step and crunk your way from the freezer to the microwave to the pantry to the stove to the kids to the cutting board and on and on for the next 45–60 minutes without pausing to think, dry your brow, contemplate life with bigger bushier brows or eat. The TV is on and your kids sit there gaping, stationary and mostly asleep while you sashay and bellydance around the kitchen putting on an incredible show that goes entirely unnoticed.

12) The Race! One kid likes toasted English muffins (not too crispy!), the other likes a cheese omelette (not too brown!), the first kid wants juice (not too much!), the other wants juice too (a little more than her sister!). You nod and grunt (as a nod to your cave people ancestors) and continue to race to the large freezer to desperately locate some lunches for the others that they won’t stick their tongues out at. Your arm and hand and half your upper body descend deep into your freezer as you dig around blindly as if a small child selecting an exciting prize with the only difference being that freezer-burnt macaroni and cheese or something that may be meatloaf is the prize.

13) Doing the Wave! You race back to the stove and toaster, get their breakfasts, literally throw their food at them and begin to frantically and quite demonically microwave leftovers. As the time counts down on the microwave and before you must leave for work, you are cutting up fruit, wishfully placing raw veggies in small containers and bribing them (and killing a small part of yourself) with small packages of cookies or fruit gummies. Plead with them to eat faster! Exhort them to finish their lunches this time or at least tell you if they hate the food. Drop to your knees and beg them to clean up their dishes. Make plans to hire a personal chef when you win the lottery.

14) The Home Stretch! The clock has hit 7:30am. It is ‘bout to get real. Cram random items into the blender for smoothies and delicately constructing your partner’s breakfast while taking some joy in debating whether to actually hide some jalapeno slices in her eggwich just for giggles. Wolf down your own breakfast (time spent observing actual wolves eating helps with accuracy) as well as signing agendas and fieldtrip notices and spelling tests and checking math homework and literally pushing the kids out the door. Any and all face washing or tooth and hair brushing are optional.

15) Congratulations! Like a star of a sports team, bask in the adulations which are completely of the silent and imaginary variety. Raise your tired arms above your head like a victorious general home from the war. Give some over-the-top fist pumps followed by some animalistic roars. Allow yourself to be overcome with emotions for once again succeeding in conquering this momentous challenging task. You are valuable, you are needed and you, and only you, made breakfast and lunch for your family. Allow a small tear to drop down your cheek. And then another and another like it is raining. Stop playing with tap water, it’s time to go to work.