New nanny and cooking

[Tazzie2323]

Hi there,

I’d be really grateful for some advice on how people manage meal planning and cooking with their nanny.

We’ve had a new nanny start recently (our first one) and she seems great, but I’m a bit unsure about how directive to be about what she cooks for our DC. She makes them lunch and dinner in the week.

I’m a real recipe follower and she seems more keen to just throw things together from what’s in the cupboard - which would be fine but I’m not sure what to stock! Also one of the kids has a slightly complicated diet as, due to existing allergies, we’ve been advised to keep other allergens like egg, fish, sesame in her diet on a weekly basis which does require some additional planning.

I’m not sure if it would be better to just add the nanny to cook very specific things and get the ingredients for these? Or just let her get on with it and make sure we’re stocked with what DC need in their diet? We’ve had a couple of chats about it but not come to any consensus yet. Any tips greatly appreciated!

Presumably you've explained the DC's dietary requirements to her already, so I'd just explain that going forwards you'd like her to meal plan a week ahead of time based on these and provide you with a list of ingredients she'll need to you can ensure you have these in for her.

I’d make a meal plan for her and make sure you’ve got the ingredients in.

Just ask her what food she wants you to buy. Make sure you buy all the food that needs to be included and she can incorporate during the week. I hate cooking to meal plans too!

Not entirely sure what's complicated about having eggs, fish and sesame in a diet...

As a former nanny I would say ask her what she would prefer: either she makes a meal plan and leaves you a shopping list, or you do the meal plan for her to follow. If it feels awkward you could always say that you want to try not to duplicate meals when she’s not there.

Could you pull together a list of around 20 meals and recipes, and she chooses which ones she's planning to cook each week. So you're keeping control of what kind of meals are cooked and know what to buy, but you're not micromanaging her on a day to day basis or dictating what gets cooked when.

Alternatively a meal planning app might work (look at something like CherryPick).

Thanks for all the advice! I’ve asked her what approach she prefers but it’s been quite vague - I think maybe we are both being too polite.

I might suggest we have a chat every Friday and discuss meals for the following week to make sure everything is covered and I get the right things in, but not so much developing a rigid meal plan. Hopefully that would be a balance of having some oversight but not to micro-managey

I hate meal plans

I either use what's in the fridge

Or ask for

Mince chicken salamon etx

And decide what to cook

Same. Meal plans don’t work for me, plans change and i hate the rigidity of it.

I like protein in the fridge/Freezer and a well stocked pantry and fridge and I’ll go from there.

Would letting the nanny to shop herself?

If she is the type to cook what she feels like on the day and has ingredients for, she can possibly find any "meal planning" discussions hard or weird. You sound like cooking or meal planning are difficult or some other kind of issue for you while she might not even understand where you are coming from. Having to include eggs, fish and sesame doesnt shouldnt take special planning imho.

You can ask what systems she had with previous families and what she liked the best?

Just write down some meals you want the kids to eat then she can choose which she does each day

Nanny here.

I’ve had different routines with different families.

some have stuff already made up for me to reheat for the kids, some tell me what they’d like me to make up and some I just open the fridge and cupboard and see what I can pull together.

either way, I do what works best for the individual family. I’m being paid to make their life easier so I’m happy to do whatever.

Also worth considering whether you want her to do any batch cooking or she does as that will up the quantities. Having an emergency toddler meal in the freezer was a godsend occasionally.