Woman's Day

Woman's Day is telling us how Kate Gosselin feeds 10 people on a budget, oh boy, I wonder if we will get more of Kate's fine recipes too? I find this to be another ad for the Grains Food Foundation, we really need to start writing this company.
Ok how does she do it? Here is a link to the article and the story.

Contacting the Grains Food Foundation
Jennifer Geiger
978.468.8958
jennifer.geiger@mullen.com

If you're interested in participating in the campaign or becoming an investor, please contact:
Judi Adams, MS, RD, PresidentGrain Foods Foundation
490 Bear Cub DriveRidgway, CO 81432
Phone: 970-626-5183
Fax: 970-626-5814



How She Does It: Kate Gosselin
Learn this mother of eight’s secrets for feeding her family on a budget
By Jennifer Rainey Marquez Posted September 22, 2008

She may not wield a lasso or own a red cape, but 33-year-old Kate Gosselin is a real-life Wonder Woman. As a mother of 7-year-old twins and 4-year-old sextuplets, the star of TLC’s reality show Jon and Kate Plus 8 gives viewers a peek at what it’s like to manage a household with eight energetic kids running around underfoot. Now, the former nurse is partnering with the Grain Foods Foundation to spread the word about creating healthy lunches on a budget for schoolkids. WomansDay.com recently chatted with Kate about how she feeds a family of 10 without breaking the bank, her passion for healthy food and how many boxes—yes, we said boxes!—of cereal she goes through every morning.

This is a big year for you—the first that all eight kids are in elementary or preschool. Can you describe your typical routine getting the kids ready for school?
I’m all about planning ahead. Otherwise, I don’t know how I would function in the morning, because I am not a morning person! I pack the twins’—Cara and Mady’s—lunches the night before, so that everything’s ready to go the next day. I also lay out the little kids’ lunches in my mind. I’m always thinking: Can I turn that roast turkey into a turkey sandwich tomorrow morning? We live an hour from the preschool, so the little kids and I have to get a very early start.
An hour each way is quite a trip! Is it tough to keep six 4-year-olds entertained in the car?
It’s really the same as having two kids in the backseat, except multiplied by three (or four, when the twins are with us). They’ve got built-in playmates, so on the days that they’re getting along, they can usually entertain each other. My main trick is to have plenty of snacks on hand—I’ve been known to make sandwiches in our van. Hungry kids are cranky kids!

What type of lunch do you usually send the kids off to school with?
I make eight lunches every morning, and I try to mix it up from day to day. I’m a big believer in whole grains, so I do a lot of sandwiches on whole-wheat bread: They love easy stuff like peanut butter–and-jelly and ham-and-cheese. Today I made grilled cheese sandwiches. Nothing is better than a toasted sandwich—the crunch, the melted cheese. I like to use my toaster oven to make homemade panini. And the kids also love whole-grain chips and salsa, or vegetables they can dip. [Ed. note: The Grain Foods Foundation has created an online tool at grainpower.org where you can track how much money (and calories) you're saving each day by packing a lunch. You can also download coupons, get sandwich recipes and register to win a year’s worth of free groceries.]

How do you deal with feeding eight picky eaters who may want different things for each meal?
Well, I’m not a restaurant, so I’m not taking requests. Each of the kids does have their own favorite foods or things that they hate to eat—they don’t have identical tastes. To encourage them to try new foods or eat things they may not like, I try to make the food fun. I’ll take a slice of whole wheat and pair it with enriched white bread, and then after cutting the sandwiches into quarters, flip two of the quarters over to make a checkerboard. Or, I might use cookie cutters to make the sandwiches in the shape of their initials. Sometimes I do a color theme, like all orange foods. The little kids like to guess what the theme is. They’re usually pretty good about eating fruits and veggies, but they’re getting pickier as they get older. Sometimes it’s a matter of sneaking it in—like I’ll make oatmeal in the morning and blend in fruit purée that they can’t detect.

I’ve heard you say that you try to cook with organic ingredients. Why is that important to you?
When I can use organic, I do. It can be more expensive, so it’s not always possible, but I just feel like foods that are grown naturally and locally help the earth. I buy most of my produce at local markets or farmers’ stands. And I feel better serving my kids foods that haven’t been sprayed with pesticides or chemicals.

We all have days when we don’t want to cook an elaborate dinner. Do you have any tips for making fast, easy meals?
It’s almost impossible to create a 10-person meal quickly, so I’m big on making things ahead and then freezing them. The kids love spaghetti, so I will make a homemade spaghetti sauce and then stick it in the freezer. It’s so easy to thaw it on the stove while the pasta’s heating up. And I also freeze a lot of soups ahead of time. I try not to get to the point where I’m in a pinch, because I don’t want to be faced with eight starving, cranky children.

I saw one episode where Jon made a special Korean meal for the family. Does he help out with the cooking regularly, or was that a rare event?
I make about 99.9% of our meals, and that .1% percent he cooks is when we’re making Asian food. Evidently, Jon is the master of Asian cooking in the house! It’s actually a great treat when he does it because I get a bit of a break—although I hate having him mess up my kitchen. But I actually really enjoy cooking, and I make everything from scratch. I love seeing how many healthy calories I can pump into my family. It’s a labor of love for me.

You guys must go through a lot of food in a week!
You have no idea. We go through a loaf of bread in one meal. I guess the bright side of that is, it doesn’t ever have a chance to go stale. We use two to three boxes of cereal in a single morning. Milk, we pretty much go through a half-gallon during breakfast alone. When I’m making eggs for breakfast, we use close to two dozen!

Wow! Do you have any secrets for feeding such a large family on a budget?
Well, I try not to take the kids shopping with me, because it’s tough to get through the supermarket without ending up with some extra treats in the cart. I’m definitely a coupon clipper. I stock up when something is on sale—I can tell you what the normal price is for almost anything, and what a good sale price is. In our state [Pennsylvania], we also have something called rain checks, which means if a store is out of a sale item, you can get a voucher for the same item at the same price. For me, comparison shopping is a fun challenge, and I love knowing that I’m getting the best deals.

Is it tough to create healthy meals that don’t break the bank?
I was always a healthy eater, even before I had kids, so I try not to compromise nutrition for cost. And honestly, cooking a lot from scratch means you don’t have to buy the expensive processed stuff. When you buy the ingredients in bulk and make it yourself, you can make each serving for half the price of what you’d buy it for premade.

I’m sure it’s difficult to keep a household organized with eight young children. Do the kids help out with chores?
Yes! Our twins, Cara and Mady, are old enough now that they can feed the little kids breakfast if we’re having cereal. They even did it this morning on a school day! I try to encourage them, even if they don’t do it exactly the way I would have. And the little kids help put toys away. Soon I’m going to start a chore assignment where they rotate every week. Honestly, with everything that I have to get done in a day, it really does help when they pitch in. I give them a job, and it’s done before I can turn around. They’re fast!

What one thing do you do that makes the most difference in terms of keeping things organized?
For me, it’s all about maximizing my time. I plan everything out to the nth degree. For example, as you can imagine, we have a lot of laundry. To avoid confusion, I wash each category of clothes together—meaning the twins (who share a room) have their clothes washed in one load, or Jon and I have our clothes washed in one load. That way, once they’re out of the dryer, I know that everything is going back to the same room and the same closet.

Can you tell us a little bit about your book Multiple Blessings: Surviving to Thriving With Twins and Sextuplets that’s coming out this fall? Why did you and Jon decide to write it?
We actually started writing it to get down all of our memories from when the kids were little, before we forgot them. And the best part of it is that we have it for them—so they can know how much we love them, how much they were wanted and why we do what we do. It also shows our viewers what we were doing before the show started in 2005. I saw the cover the other day, and I just gasped! I love having such a beautiful family portrait and a record of our memories.