Au pair and meal planning

[Anonymous]

How much leftover meal is too much? We eat a lot of leftover in our house and I am wondering if this is going to be a problem with the AP. New HM Here. AP starting in July.
I like to cook big quantities and freeze it for later, this works best for me. So usually I cook fresh on Saturday and/or Sunday, big quantities and eat during the week.
Here is about how it works in our house:

Monday: Leftover from Saturday
Tuesday: Leftover from Sunday or frozen meal from even earlier
Wednesday: Fresh food (because I work from home on Wednesday, so I have time to do this)
Thursday: frozen pasta sauce + pasta
Friday: salad or pizza or combo of leftovers lol
Saturday: Fresh cooking after grocery shopping (e.g. huge bowl of pasta sauce that we split in multiple portions)
Sunday: Fresh cooking (another huge quantity of something)

From time to time I improvise, so what you see above is on my very busy week.

So I count 3 days of fresh cooking, but I have been told that most APs don't eat home on weekend so it might be only 1 day fresh food for her.
This works great for us but with one more person in the house and I starting to wonder if we do too much frozen meals/leftover

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much leftover meal is too much? We eat a lot of leftover in our house and I am wondering if this is going to be a problem with the AP. New HM Here. AP starting in July.
I like to cook big quantities and freeze it for later, this works best for me. So usually I cook fresh on Saturday and/or Sunday, big quantities and eat during the week.
Here is about how it works in our house:

Monday: Leftover from Saturday
Tuesday: Leftover from Sunday or frozen meal from even earlier
Wednesday: Fresh food (because I work from home on Wednesday, so I have time to do this)
Thursday: frozen pasta sauce + pasta
Friday: salad or pizza or combo of leftovers lol
Saturday: Fresh cooking after grocery shopping (e.g. huge bowl of pasta sauce that we split in multiple portions)
Sunday: Fresh cooking (another huge quantity of something)

From time to time I improvise, so what you see above is on my very busy week.

So I count 3 days of fresh cooking, but I have been told that most APs don't eat home on weekend so it might be only 1 day fresh food for her.
This works great for us but with one more person in the house and I starting to wonder if we do too much frozen meals/leftover

Where is your AP from? Our AP from Spain was used to a very different culture when it came to food (fresh and groceries bought in small batches) than our Mexican AP who ate mostly fast food at home. I wouldn't change your cooking habits for the AP. I would just explain how you handle meals and ask if there are some staples (for example eggs, fruit, etc) that they like to cook on their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much leftover meal is too much? We eat a lot of leftover in our house and I am wondering if this is going to be a problem with the AP. New HM Here. AP starting in July.
I like to cook big quantities and freeze it for later, this works best for me. So usually I cook fresh on Saturday and/or Sunday, big quantities and eat during the week.
Here is about how it works in our house:

Monday: Leftover from Saturday
Tuesday: Leftover from Sunday or frozen meal from even earlier
Wednesday: Fresh food (because I work from home on Wednesday, so I have time to do this)
Thursday: frozen pasta sauce + pasta
Friday: salad or pizza or combo of leftovers lol
Saturday: Fresh cooking after grocery shopping (e.g. huge bowl of pasta sauce that we split in multiple portions)
Sunday: Fresh cooking (another huge quantity of something)

From time to time I improvise, so what you see above is on my very busy week.

So I count 3 days of fresh cooking, but I have been told that most APs don't eat home on weekend so it might be only 1 day fresh food for her.
This works great for us but with one more person in the house and I starting to wonder if we do too much frozen meals/leftover

This sounds great to me

I suggest you discuss your meal plan with your au pair right when she gets here in July.

[Anonymous]

I would hate to eat so much leftovers and it doesn't sound very healthy either actually.

But your house = your rules. She'll manage and eat what you have or cook something else. Don't get upset if she does, not everybody eats the way you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would hate to eat so much leftovers and it doesn't sound very healthy either actually.

But your house = your rules. She'll manage and eat what you have or cook something else. Don't get upset if she does, not everybody eats the way you do.

From one meal example you figured out that what I cook is not healthy ? I actually think we eat very healthy, everything is homemade beside when we randomly get pizza or Peruvian chicken or Friday. We always have a side of fresh veggie with our meals (baby carrots, green bean etc). AP is from Brazil.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would hate to eat so much leftovers and it doesn't sound very healthy either actually.

But your house = your rules. She'll manage and eat what you have or cook something else. Don't get upset if she does, not everybody eats the way you do.

From one meal example you figured out that what I cook is not healthy ? I actually think we eat very healthy, everything is homemade beside when we randomly get pizza or Peruvian chicken or Friday. We always have a side of fresh veggie with our meals (baby carrots, green bean etc). AP is from Brazil.

I wouldn't worry so much about the leftovers. She may or may not like the food you cook but I would just outline how meals work in your home and offer some additional groceries if needed. Our Spanish AP didn't like things with many 'ingredients' so never ate my cooking. In the end she was still pretty low maintenance because she would just eat toast and strawberries for every meal. Our next AP has literally described every meal I have cooked as 'delicious'.. and half of it is frozen.

So all this just to say wait and see what their eating habits are but don't worry too much about changing to fit their lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would hate to eat so much leftovers and it doesn't sound very healthy either actually.

But your house = your rules. She'll manage and eat what you have or cook something else. Don't get upset if she does, not everybody eats the way you do.

From one meal example you figured out that what I cook is not healthy ? I actually think we eat very healthy, everything is homemade beside when we randomly get pizza or Peruvian chicken or Friday. We always have a side of fresh veggie with our meals (baby carrots, green bean etc). AP is from Brazil.

I wouldn't worry so much about the leftovers. She may or may not like the food you cook but I would just outline how meals work in your home and offer some additional groceries if needed. Our Spanish AP didn't like things with many 'ingredients' so never ate my cooking. In the end she was still pretty low maintenance because she would just eat toast and strawberries for every meal. Our next AP has literally described every meal I have cooked as 'delicious'.. and half of it is frozen.

So all this just to say wait and see what their eating habits are but don't worry too much about changing to fit their lifestyle.

Good feedback, thanks!

[Anonymous]

We have been hosting 11 years. Every ap has been happy to eat what I cook. Sometimes it’s beans with seasoning, rice, wilted spinach. Sometimes it’s some soup with a whole load of veggies thrown in. Sometimes it’s baked falafel on pita with salad. Mainly, it’s about them feeling that someone has thought of them and prepared for them. One told me that his year with is was the only time in his life there was a) enough food and b) someone who made sure he had foods he liked. If you have picked well (not a princess), my guess is you will find that any ap easily adapts to your way of doing meals and will think it’s “the American way.” Our APs leave thinking it’s typical American to go get veggies from an organic CSA each week....

[Anonymous]

It's good you freeze your big meal prep stuff because one of my au pairs would eat up any non-frozen prepped meals!! We got a mini-fridge to keep in our room where I ended up storing our dinners.

[Anonymous]

We eat lots of leftovers and I make that very clear in matching. I always say, “While I wish I could make a home cooked meal every night, with our schedule it’s just not possible.” We decided not to match with one ap who really wanted to have the whole family eat dinner together every night. But neither of the APs we’ve had seemed to care at all.

[Anonymous]

One thing that I would be aware of is communicating to your au pair which foods are up for grabs for lunches/snacking/etc and which foods you are planning to use in the future. It could become challenging if she feels like she can't eat from the fridge because she doesn't know what your plan is for the food. A common way to solve this is by putting a meal plan of some sort on the fridge itself so that everyone knows what ingredients are available and which are not.

I think that every family's general choices around what food to eat and when/how to prepare that food are most often fine for the AP program as long as you

1.) Include her in family meals the same way you do other members.
2.) Give her access to basic ingredients to prepare food if she wishes too outside of those basic meal times.
3.) Give her space to store and prepare food for her personal consumption. (This could be a shelf in the fridge/cupboard that nobody else uses so that she can store her own foods in a way that preserves them from being eaten by other people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We eat lots of leftovers and I make that very clear in matching. I always say, “While I wish I could make a home cooked meal every night, with our schedule it’s just not possible.” We decided not to match with one ap who really wanted to have the whole family eat dinner together every night. But neither of the APs we’ve had seemed to care at all.

I’m surprised you’ve only run into the nightly-dinner-seeking AP once. I’ve had that be the friction point at least a dozen times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I would be aware of is communicating to your au pair which foods are up for grabs for lunches/snacking/etc and which foods you are planning to use in the future. It could become challenging if she feels like she can't eat from the fridge because she doesn't know what your plan is for the food. A common way to solve this is by putting a meal plan of some sort on the fridge itself so that everyone knows what ingredients are available and which are not.

I think that every family's general choices around what food to eat and when/how to prepare that food are most often fine for the AP program as long as you

1.) Include her in family meals the same way you do other members.
2.) Give her access to basic ingredients to prepare food if she wishes too outside of those basic meal times.
3.) Give her space to store and prepare food for her personal consumption. (This could be a shelf in the fridge/cupboard that nobody else uses so that she can store her own foods in a way that preserves them from being eaten by other people.

This. Communicate that she shouldn’t eat something prepared because it’s for dinner on Tuesday night. Don’t have the scenario where you’re upset that she ruined all your meal planning by eating leftovers for breakfast and lunch, so it’s gone by dinner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We eat lots of leftovers and I make that very clear in matching. I always say, “While I wish I could make a home cooked meal every night, with our schedule it’s just not possible.” We decided not to match with one ap who really wanted to have the whole family eat dinner together every night. But neither of the APs we’ve had seemed to care at all.

I’m surprised you’ve only run into the nightly-dinner-seeking AP once. I’ve had that be the friction point at least a dozen times.

Yep only once. I think it’s also in our profile so maybe aps don’t agree to a connection if they see it. But really it hasn’t been a problem. Both of our APs have been college grads so neither came right from home- that may be why they don’t kind as much.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, our AP from Brazil LOVED leftovers. In fact, she would often help herself to even DH and my restaurant leftovers. we loved it because food never went to waste, but admittedly this was probably unusual. by contrast, our German AP was very picky and refused to eat leftovers at all. Even her own from dinners out. LOL. Our Colombian AP also never ate leftovers, even fancy ones like salmon or grilled strip steak.