How do I cope with daily lunch packing for whole family?

Hi folks!

As life gets busier, we need to be more efficient to keep the balls "juggled" well..

When my babysitter "resigned" from me, my two older kids will have to go daycare and I will be preparing lunch for all 4 of us.

Besides the help of thermos and lunchbag to keep the lunchpack warm, I have to make sure i do all the preparation (cutting, slicing, washing, matching ingredients) in advance to ease the the working days.

Thanks to some kitchen helper like the big two layer Trio steamer that DH redeemed from his credit card, I can make a pot of soup, one pot of steamed rice, a pot of steamed dish (e.g., steam egg, steam tofu, steam vege fish, etc), hard-boiled egg, steam sweet potatoes, all in total I can make one rice, one soup and two dishes at the same time with the steamer.

Then, as I detest cooking at the wet kitchen as the mozzies are a big fan of me! Remember my last dengue episode? The moment I stepped into the kitchen for few minutes/seconds, they'll attack me in no time. I had three bites when I went in to cut my vegetables for merely 5 minutes..sigh...

Thus, another kitchen helper is the oven. It minimizes the need for me to stand there and fry things yet still be able to prepare palatable dishes which resemble "frying".

I have made oven-baked fries, mushroom, baked rice, etc with it.

And these kitchen helpers helped me to make time for other things while the meal are being prepared at the back.

And, another great tool invested is Biosafe, the vege+bottles wash/detoxifier.

I am able to wash the bottles, fruits, vege quickly and efficiently with it. It makes it safer to let the baby bite on the fresh foods and fruits washed with it. ZS loves biting on cold celery to ease the gum pain(teething).

IF only i managed to be this organised then things will work out smoothly. Otherwise..we have to survive on breads, takeaway or expensive eat-out affair throughout the week!

Thus, online grocery shopping is another great helper to me! It saves us time to go find parking, and shop with 3 kids..times thrice the time it takes to finished shopping! Wait till you hear the shout i need to go toilet from each kids, one poo poo, another one tired of walking, bla bla bla....geddit?

haha..

So this is how i coped with my daily meal preparation saga...how did you manage yours?

Please do share your thoughts about it!

Cheers!