Life Balance - The Balanced Kitchen

Easing the Burden of Cooking in 5 Simple Steps

January 14, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

It’s true. Cooking can feel like a burden sometimes. It can feel like yet another thing that has to get done in the day, another obligation, another chore. And yet we also all know that eating home-cooked foods is better for our health, our wallet, and our emotional well-being. So how do we reconcile these two competing realities? How do we find a way to make it less of a chore and even more enjoyable?

There are things we can do to change the environment while we are cooking such as cooking with someone, playing fun music, or having a glass of wine. But there are also some simple steps you can take to make the actual cooking easier. They will save you time, which will, in turn, make the whole process feel less burdensome….

Just Tiles on a Board: My New Year’s Commitment to Myself

December 31, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Over the winter holidays I was lucky enough to get to spend a week with my whole family in Colorado. This year, as all of us gathered together, a good number of us were preoccupied because of various transitions we are going through. Despite that preoccupation, though, we all launched into our favorite activities with one another—cooking, eating, hiking, and playing games. We were really trying to have fun and enjoy our time with one another but there were definitely moments of disconnect because of our distracted states.

All of that changed, though, in about five minutes one evening after dinner. A group of us had sat down to play one of our favorite games, a tile-based game called Qwirkle. As a family full of competitive people there were often exclamations of, “how could you do that?!” or “you just ruined my move!” All of which is meant in good fun, but can definitely have some edge to it. My brother, one of the most competitive of the bunch, was watching the round rather than playing and took it upon himself to take on the persona of a very mellow, non-competitive person to remind us that the game didn’t really mean anything, that it was “just tiles on a board” and then he went on to reference #jtob as the way we should all look at life….

The Truth About Family Dinners: What it looks like in our house and simple guidelines that helped to make it better

November 5, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

We all know the benefits of family dinners— less picky eating, lower risk of obesity and eating disorders, higher academic achievement, lower risk of teen pregnancy and substance abuse, the list goes on and on. And we all have that idyllic idea of what it should look like—perfect table manners, no tension, everyone together, beautifully prepared meals.

The reality, though, can be very different. People can feel frantic, tired, and stressed. Family members can arrive late. Someone refuses to eat the meal in front of him or her. The presentation of the meal is haphazard. Or family dinners just aren’t even happening.

The truth is that family dinners can be a challenge, but they are a challenge worth having.

From my own childhood I have memories of long family dinners with wonderful food and tons of laughter from a seemingly endless stream of puns (yes, I come from a very verbal family), but I also have memories of tears, slamming doors, and meals I found unappetizing. The truth is, that is what family dinners are. They are a chance for us to be our best selves and our worst selves. It is an opportunity for everyone in the family to be themselves as they are in that moment, and to still be loved at the end of it.

A lot of my clients feel really guilty about what their family dinners looks like. People stressed, less-than-perfect food on the table, or not everyone eating together. And what I tell them, and myself, is that it is ok. We are doing the best we can and making due with what we’ve got.

So in an effort to help to take some of the angst out of the concept of family dinner I thought I would share what our family dinners look like at this stage in our family life….

The Night When I Should Have Ordered Delivery Pizza But Didn’t

October 15, 2015 By Jessica Braider 4 Comments

Warning: This story contains injury, floods, smoke detectors, yelling and tears. And no pizza.

Last week was a rough one at our house. My husband had major deadlines that resulted in his working late every night, including one almost-all-nighter (he got 2 hours of sleep, can we just call that an all-nighter at our age?), and I was swamped with work and picking up the slack at home. So by Wednesday night I announced that on Friday evening we were going to order pizza. This was a bold statement for me as we almost never order delivery, but I was really reaching my limit and needed to have that light at the end of the tunnel. To be honest, I felt good about the decision. I was looking forward to that pizza. It was a motivator.

But then Friday came and I remembered that the boys were having pizza day at school and my guilt started to sneak in. Could I really legitimize feeding them pizza twice in one day just because I was tired? Pizza is one of those demonized foods and I am an advocate for home cooking, what was I thinking? Surely I could power through and make another home-cooked meal. So I tried to muster up a second wind. I took stock of what was in our freezer, fridge, and pantry and decided that I would make it easy on myself. We’d have a meal of appetizers. Some would be things I had stockpiled in the freezer and some I would make from scratch. In all, it would only take, I estimated, about 45 minutes, most of that just cooking time. I felt virtuous.

So I started cooking. I decided that since I was making mostly stuff straight out of the freezer, that I was going to try out a new recipe for the additional dish. It was labor intensive, but I figured I could make it work. I put the ingredients on to boil and started pre-heating the oven to a high heat and that’s when the trouble started. …

Freezer Breakfast Pockets: A flexible, portable breakfast

October 8, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

We all know the drill. Scrambling to get lunches packed, breakfast eaten, teeth brushed, clothes on, maybe showered. There is a lot to do before leaving the house for work/school in the morning! One of the ways I try to streamline that process for our household is to prepare breakfast foods over the weekend that can go into the freezer to be pulled out throughout the week. Muffins, mini-frittatas, spinach pop-outs, waffles, pancakes, oatmeal, I make them all. But even with all of that variety, my kids have been starting to get a little sick of the offerings. So I wanted to come up with a different option: breakfast pockets.

That’s right. I wanted to come up with homemade hot pockets (a treat I was never allowed to have as a kid, but that’s a story for another post)….

Cooking Projects for When You’re Homebound

October 1, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

As you have very likely heard, the East Coast is bracing for a weekend full of rain (if not a hurricane), which means many of us will be stuck indoors quite a bit in the coming days. I’m not going to lie, weather events like this and snow days (which hopefully we won’t get too many of this year) can be stressful and loooong when you are stuck at home. But instead of looking at these as an annoyance, it can be helpful to shift our perspective and look at them as an opportunity to get some cooking projects done!

So I thought I would share with you my steps to making an impending day at home a culinary hit. Plus I’ll share some recipes that might be fun to try….

The Mindfulness of Cooking

September 17, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

I have been talking to a lot of people recently who find cooking to be a chore, a bore, a burden. People feel overwhelmed by the prospect of having to make dinner. I get it, I really do!

But recently I suddenly had this epiphany about cooking that has really changed the way I look at my time in the kitchen. Now I will acknowledge that I really enjoy cooking. I like the creativity it provides in my life. I like the ritual. But recently I also realized that one of the things that calls me back to the kitchen over and over again is the mindfulness of cooking. And this is something that I think can be true for people who like to cook and also those who struggle with it.

Cooking requires mindful attention. If you let your mind wander to your to do list, your worries, your fears, your anxieties, you are much more likely to hurt yourself (as I did yesterday when I was rushing through my to do list in my head and cut myself). Cooking requires you to focus in on what you are doing. It asks that you put other things aside. It compels you to be present in that moment. For someone like me who struggles a lot with meditation and getting my mind to slow down, I have come to look upon my time in the kitchen as a respite.

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Recipes That Help Me Survive the Busy Weeks

September 3, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

My sons and I got back from being away for almost a month this past weekend and jumped right back into busy life (plus the boys don’t start school until next week, so I’ve had them around a bunch). Which has meant that this week has been one of those weeks where your main priority is to just keep your head above water. As I have struggled to figure out what’s for dinner based our CSA for the week and the on the quick (read: not planned well) shop I did on Sunday, I have been deeply grateful for two things: my super-quick staple recipes and foods in my freezer.

So in honor of those foods, I wanted to share some of the recipes that have saved me this week….

Self-Care: How my mother and my Facebook feed got me off my butt and taking care of myself when I needed it most

August 20, 2015 By Jessica Braider 1 Comment

Every August my boys and I head out to Colorado to stay with my parents for a few weeks. It is a very special time of year for us. We have very little planned or scheduled, we go on hikes, we ride horses, and we eat amazing food, much of which comes straight from the garden. It is wonderful, rejuvenating, and lots and lots of fun!

But in the past two years, as my business has grown, I have had to do more and more work while I am in Colorado and have had to try to find a balance between working and vacationing. This time around I have found it really difficult to turn my work brain off, especially with so many exciting things happening this Fall (like the 10-Day Cooking Challenge and this family-friendly workshop). And yesterday, after a morning of working, I found that I was grumpy, stressed, and having trouble engaging with my boys. My mom, being the insightful woman she is, noticed and suggested that she and my dad take the boys so I could work more and maybe go for a walk. I guiltily took them up on the offer, and off they went.

When they left I thought to myself: “Ok. I’ll just work while they are gone, that will get me into a better mood.” And then something small, but powerful happened that reset my day. I set down to work. I was busy getting things checked off my list when a blog post showed up on my feed about the importance of self-care. Just seeing the title (confession: I didn’t even read the post) was enough of a wake-up call. At that moment I knew: more than getting work done I needed to practice some self-care.…

4 Actually Realistic Lunch-Packing Tips

August 12, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

This is the time of year when back-to-school tips and tricks are everywhere. We are bombarded with beautiful pictures of backpacks, lunch boxes, school supplies, organized desks, freezers full of already prepared lunch foods, and the list goes on and on. It is enough to make anyone feel like a complete slacker.

And while I actually love all of those posts for the ideas and approaches they share, I think it is also important to acknowledge that sometimes (or all the time) the lunches we pack for our kids or ourselves will not be that beautiful and sometimes not as healthy. And that is ok!

In my progression as a lunch packer for all three of my boys, I have come up with a couple of guidelines that help me to stay sane, pack lunches quickly, and still feel pretty good about what is being sent, so I thought I would share those with you:…