Au pair meal making

[namechanger4097]

We’ve had live in childcare for 10 years now and have never cracked a nanny who was a decent cook. I have tried those Gusto/Hello Fresh packs but they’re so expensive. Other than that it’s one night pizza, one night spag bol and one night some freezer thing I’ve previously done and me cooking after work two nights. Has anyone made recipe cards and a plan for their nanny/au pair or is there a good book with step by steps with simple meals so I can give them more responsibility here? Any ideas appreciated…

Try lollipop? It's a bit like hello fresh but directly linked to your supermarket shop

Could you sit with them and make a monthly menu of things they and the children like, and then provide easy recipes?
Depending on her home country a lot may be unfamiliar to her.
simple things like slow cooker casserole? Stir fry? Lasagne?
Maybe the compromise is one cooked from scratch one pizza and one easy pasta meal a week?

We had au pairs for years, some were okay cooks other awful. (I especially remember the exploding baked potato incident!)

Meal plans are a good idea, but start small. Ask what she can already cook and base the first week on that and then add things which she would like to cook and and show her how to do them. If you've got two days, maybe one can be a cook from scratch evening and the other a bung in the oven meal.

If you don’t need to be chippy then why be chippy?

This is so amazing thank you thank you thank you. I feel totally out of inspiration at the moment so this might help me too ❤️

dont know that one but it sounds ideal so will take a look. I found hello fresh a bit random and Gousto all chilli flakes and plastic waste.

There's Jamie's 15-minute meals (which take 25 or 30 minutes). Or his son's cookery channel:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/sep/09/buddy-oliver-ready-to-follow-in-chef-jamie-oliver-tv-footsteps

If it's a simple kid-focussed recipe book you're after, you could do worse than the Mumsnet one from a few years back. Easy quick recipes which my DC actually like, and older DC can cook themselves.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/top-bananas/claire-mcdonald/lucy-mcdonald/9781408850497

Au pair is to look after the child right not cooking your meals surely? I was an aupair too and was expected to cook only for the child not the whole family.

Yes 100%

What's wrong with pizza and spag bol for the kids? It's only two meals out of the week.

I use bbc food family meals, when looking for ideas for things to cook with the teens that I work with. For quick meals to cook at home I often follow the gousto recipes from their web site, and chose a recipe according to whatever may be in the fridge!!

That's a silly comment. If you have two or three children, a nanny is likely to be cheaper. Most people who have to pay it are just waiting for the childcare years to end, so that they have spare cash again.

Jamie Oliver has simple books if your children eat a wide range of food; One Pan and Five are simple.

30-Minute One-Pot Meals: Feed Your Family Incredible Food in Less Time and with Less Cleanup amzn.eu/d/1ii0GGx

This is a good book :-)

What age are the kids? Could they do a day with her taking on the load of supervision? They plan, write a list of ingredients, cook and clear up?

Hello parents! So I have an 8 month old baby who is in need of having a circumcision and we don’t want to wait for the NHS. So we are hoping for some advice for where we can go to get this done considering his age. I’m finding it hard to find a trustworthy source.

If you know somewhere / could recommend a practice, ideally close to Cambridgeshire, as I can’t imagine it’ll be comfortable in his car seat afterwards . :(

Back story: Little one has had six recurring utis over the last almost three months (With six courses of antibiotics) and contracted Pseudomonas uti so we are very worried and this seems to be the only route to fix everything. We have had scans of his kidneys and bladder (which we had to go private for) and he has seen a peads consultant but they are complaining about budgets for a urologist.

Thank so much for you advice in advance!
—Worried mumma

An au pair lives as one of the family so I think it’s reasonable for them to cook for the family occasionally- not all the time obviously.

We had two au pairs, both from France, and the agreement was they cooked the family meal one night per week and we cooked all other meals and we all ate together. We picked a couple of our favourite and easy cookbooks and bought the French language editions for them - I think one was a Nigella and one was a simple Jamie Oliver. They told us before we put the online grocery order in each week what they were cooking that week and what ingredients they would need.

This plus a combination of what they already knew how to cook worked well for us. We did end up with a fair amount of croque monsieur meals but that was fine!

Simply cook are a good alternative to HF and Gusto. You need to buy the few main and simple ingredients for each recipe (I just do an online shop with rest of shopping) Then the flavour pots they supply for £10 for 4 turn them into something delicious and v easy to follow. Think they do a trial for £1.

@NewMumma95 you need to create a new thread in the appropriate section of the forum for your question. You are unlikely to get many answers to a question about circumcision on a cookery/childcare thread!

This was my first thought too! We get Gousto every week and it’s not badly priced.

Just pre chop everything for them to chuck in a pan for a stir fry if need be

Or prepare food for them to heat up

My au pairs never cooked for me and barely looked after me tbh. They just came over to learn English and they're expected to do the bare minimum really for their pittance of a wage as their lodgings is free

Give her a recipe book - most people need instructions to do things.

Baked potatoes

I recommend Sam Stern's Student Cookbook, written a few years ago but still available on Amazon, etc. I originally bought it (back in 2009) for my daughter's best friend when he was off to uni. I had a quick look before giving it to him and was so impressed I bought my own copy. It's been my go-to cookbook ever since, and it's definitely not just for students. It covers just about everything for a healthy and budget-friendly diet. Two staples I often cook are Best Beef Chilli and Chickpea, Spinach and Potato Curry.