How to Prepare Healthy Meals as a Busy Working Mum

去年11月我跟同事參加公司新成立的Toastmaster英文演講社團，交了很多新朋友。這篇是我的C2演講稿，十幾年沒有背稿子了，實際寫下來還要講出來實在是有點困難度，這題材還是我自己選比較熟悉的，真的沒辦法想像演員背台詞是有多麼的辛苦！

Good day everyone! 

Some of you have listened to my precious C1 speech might still remember I have 2 kids and love cooking. This is why I started to prepare meals as a mum because several incidences of food safety scandals happened in Taiwan, such as chemical clouding agents in 2011 and the recycled waste oil in 2014.

Today I will be sharing my ideas how to prepare healthy meals as a busy working mum. I will be focusing on preparing dinner on weekday after work. Probably I will be sharing my ideas about preparing breakfast in my next prepared speech!

Do you know how much time to prepare a meal for a small family, I say 2 adults and 2 kids? Roughly speaking, it might take 2 hours, including grocery shopping, washing, chopping, and cooking. But as a busy working mum, I need to reduce it down to 1 hour to make the kids go to bed before 9:30; whereas, to provide sufficient nutrition for growing kids.

 

These are some ideas I have worked out so far:

First of all, in terms of grocery shopping, I do online shopping most of the time, through mobile phone. I make order in the morning, the delivery comes in the afternoon and I can make dinner in the evening. I could buy almost anything online, including veggies, tofu, milk, soy milk, eggs, sea foods, meats, rice, and oils, but NO processed foods.

Secondly, in order to reduce cooking time, I use different kitchen appliances to cook different food at the same time, such as rice cooker, oven and stove. But NO microwaves - I don't use microwaves at home. The food needs longer cooking time would need to be prepared earlier. Dinner will be finished within 1 hour and let the kids to have dinner around 7:30.

You might be curious what I cook within such short time. In order to provide minimum nutrition for growing kids, I need to prepare 3 portions of starch - which is rice or noodle, 2 portions of vegetables - including 2 to 3 types of vegetables, and 1 portion of protein - which is meat, sea foods, eggs, or tofu. My signature dishes are fried rice, curry rice, spaghetti, risotto, and last night we had 麻油雞麵線 - this is so easy! I could finish it within 30 minutes and everyone in my family loves it! I place everything on one plate or in one big bowl for each person. So we have less dishes to wash!

After listening all above, you might be thinking I am a hardworking mum. But actually, I am NOT! I don't want to cook everyday and I don't want to cook at weekends, either. And besides, my kids don't even feel appreciated what I have done so far because they want to go to nice and expensive restaurants too.

After doing all these efforts, I do see my kids grow healthily and hardly get sick in these years.

While I am cooking in the kitchen, I always imagine to have a big and nice kitchen and able to see my family doing in the living room. Of course, I want a dish washer too! My house is too small to fit in a dish washer. I have to wait until I buy a new and bigger house in future.