Planning For Guests- Series

Planning for Guests-Series

Meal Plan

Everyone enjoys some moments with beloved ones. We spend most of our time with our family but once in a while the joy of having visitors is something we look forward to. I personally take it as an honor when someone leaves their special home just to be with us. Throughout my life, I have learnt that planning is a day to day tool that is essential in oiling what we do.

One of the things that I take pride in is receiving my visitors or guests and one of the greatest things that makes receiving them an enjoyable experience for me is prior planning and organizing. I plan around the great Shona (my native language) proverb (Ukama igasva huno zadziswa nekudya- relationships are reinforced at the table)- Meal plan.

Meal plan is a great way to enjoy your visitors. I find it easier to plan when I know the time frame I will be hosting visitors. When visitors go beyond a week, I make sure the first week is planned and the period beyond that my guests will enjoy our family routine but still seasoned with our warm welcome.

Below are the benefits that accrues with Meal Planning

·        Resources: Planning enables you to work within available resources. It eradicates the stress of having to figure out what to cook and it allows you to plan around what you can afford.

Remember that receiving your visitors and making them feel at home has nothing to do with money/riches but has all to do with the heart. You can play around with what you have to make your guests feel at home. It's the heart's attitude that counts.

·        Confidence: planning for your guests enables you to be confident and in control of your household. It makes everyone's work easier from your helpers to every family member. I personally find it creating a cohesion whereby family members volunteer their best. In the past two months I was carried away with joy when our 12 year old boy woke up earlier to wash our guests' car followed by ours. When I asked him why he washed the guest car first, he replied he knew the guests were leaving in the morning.

·        Empowerment: having to do meal plans empowers you with a number of choices to make. You will put effort to put the first meal plan, second and third. What follows thereafter is just  rescheduling of what you already have. Usually when I do a meal plan for my guest I write the name of the guest and the meal plan, print it out and stick it on a hidden place where my guest will not access it. This means that if you happen to have the same guests sometime in the future, you will not give them the same meal plan. You will look into your meal plans file or saved files on your computer and choose something different.

·        Control: It results in a well organized environment that brings out the beauty of the home and the host. The host is stress free and has energy to attend to her guests. I attach this to a fraction of the Proverbs 31 Woman. Her husband is confident and trust her with the management of the affairs of their household.

Below is an example of a two day Meal Plan

Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Monday
	Breakfast Cornflakes Eggs Mince meat Bread Sliced tomato	Breakfast Cornflakes Cake slice Fruit (available fruit is ok) Tea	Breakfast Cornflakes Egg Sausage Fruit salad Guests Leave
	Lunch Starch: Potatoes in soup Meat: Fish Vegetable: cabbage salad Desert: Mango/ papaya	Lunch Starch: Bread Rolls Stir fry vegetable Cheese Juice Tea
Dinner Starch: Rice Meat: Tinashe's chicken, Sausage Vegetable: Lettuce salad Desert-Halloween cake Guests arrive	Dinner Starter-Butternut soup Starch: Spaghetti Meat: Roast Steak, Pork chops Steamed vegetable Desert- Fruit Salad	Dinner Starch: Sadza Meat: Traditional chicken, Beef stew Vegetable: Spinach Dessert- Malva pudding

My encouragement for hosting my guest is rooted in  the word of God.

Hebrews 13:2 NIV

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

Hebrews 13:2 Bible in Basic English (BBE)

Take care to keep your house open: because in this way some have had angels as their guests, without being conscious of it.

Be blessed

Naomi Chitambira

"The Art of Cooking"

Dear Friends

I'm wishing you all a blessed year. A year with a difference. To those not yet married and to the married; I say may grace increase.

There is a saying which goes, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. I have heard it several times and I interpreted it this way; because most men can’t cook, they will love and appreciate the women who cooks for them. My understanding changed when I saw that my dad cooked better than all of us in the house but still  he would appreciate my mother's dishes.

I’m sitting down on the couch after a long day, my son and I loves the food channel and he has a taste for good food. There we are watching Jamie Oliver cooking and I’m saying to myself, so how does his wife get to his heart?

Cooking is an opportunity to demonstrate love. It’s not about getting a degree in food science. It’s not being the head chef at a five star hotel.  It’s deeper than that; it’s an act of love. The demonstration of love in this simple and natural way is profound. I call it natural because eating is an every day business and I look at it as the best opportunity to show love.  

I grew up cooking food at home before I got married. In this process, I realized that the best meal was the one that I put my heart, mind and energy to make whether meat or vegetable. The family would always applaud that dish. This reveals the other side of the story. Often we cook out of duty because we need to eat so we must prepare a dish for the family. So cooking can turn out to be one of the duties we should do.

I reflect back in my family, my mother had a special plate to serve her husband and she had her ways of showing love using our traditional meals. For example, I remember how she made round nuts and ground nuts special for my dad. She would peel many and then select the best for him. It's only when I started writing my book, "Cooking is An Act of Love" that I reflected on the past and appreciating how it shaped my thinking.

Just the time that a person spends on making sure the family eats breakfast, lunch and supper is worthy of praise. When I was newly married, I enjoyed every moment I cooked for my husband (Tinashe) because he really appreciated the effort.

I learned that within the heart of an appreciated person dwells a spirit to do more. My cooking skills have gone far beyond my expectations. Sometimes I ask myself, if what I was making for my hubby when we got married was far less than the dishes I make today in the home. Did he really mean it was good? The truth is that it was good for that time. The appreciation I receive from my family has made me grow from cooking other people's recipes to making my own recipes.

In the next post we shall be sharing on tips to making a meal plan for visitors.

Blessings

Naomi

Slow Cooked beef Steak

Beef steak

Ingredients

1kg beef steak

1 medium carrot

Juice of 2 medium tomatoes

1 grated medium onion

2 crushed garlic cloves

1 beef stock cube

2Tbsn olive oil

2 Tbsn knorr Rich hearty beef soup

Tablespoon fresh thyme & a teaspoon for sprinkling

Preparation

With a knife pierce the centre of the steak to prepare passage for the carrot.

Grease a non-stick pan with 1 tbsn olive oil and Sauté the beef steak.

Grease the pan with 1 tbsn olive oil to make the sauce. Add the onion, garlic, thyme and tomatoes. Add the beef stock cube. In a cup mix the rich hearty beef with warm water and pour in. Add 1 litre of boiling water.

Put the meat in a slow cooker and pour the sauce. Let it cook for about 10 hours. You can check after 8hrs.

When the meat is cooked, take it out and slice it.

Take out the sauce from the slow cooker and cook it over a hot plate to thicken it and then pour it over the sliced steak.

Sprinkle some fresh thyme over the sliced steak.

Note* thin slices absorb the sauce easily. You can thicken the source to your liking but medium thickness gives a nicer finish.

Creamy Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

1 packet Knorr Cream of Chicken soup
1 large garlic clove
2 medium carrots
100g Broccoli
100g Cauliflower
1 Leak
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup milk
3 cups hot water
¼ teaspoon coriander
¼ teaspoon mixed spice
1 tablespoon fresh Cream
1 teaspoon corn flour

Cut the vegetables and leak into medium size cubes. Crush the garlic. In a non- stick pot, fry the vegetables, leaks and garlic for five minutes or until tender(not fully cooked) (start with the cauliflower, carrot and then add others). Put the cream of chicken soup into a bowl and add the milk, spices and water and stir well. Pour the soup mixture into the pot with the vegetables and let it cook at medium temperature until the vegetables are cooked (10 min). Blend half of the contents (optional), and then mix with the other half and let to simmer for 5 minutes on low heat. This gives you a delicious soup with something to chew.

You can also blend the whole contents and the results are still fantastic. You can achieve the thickness you desire by adding more water. It’s a delicious serving; the cream of chicken soup gives a creamy yummy test and it’s delicious.

*Tip: My family craves for this soup on cold and rainy days and we have always enjoyed the warmth it brings even sitting around the fire.

Serves 8 people

(Naomi chitambira)

Birthdays!!

We celebrated our first princess Rhulani Kundainashe's birthday on the 14 of June. One thing that I have experienced as a mother is that children appreciate the effort put in making their day special not the size of the budget. For our family birthday is highly favoured and celebrated in the most simple, easy and less costly way but the out pouring of love is engraved in the way we prepare for it. As a mum I have always taken the initiative to make every member know that their birthday means a lot to the family. Below is the cake that we joined hands to make and bring the beauty that we wanted the girl to feel on her day. Really she did, she stood there watching it as if she didn’t want it cut. The 6 year old said, “You guys it’s so beautiful”.

Light Fruit Cake

This recipe makes one large 35cm square by 12cm deep cake. Line tin with 3 layers of greaseproof paper and grease top layer, or line with a double layer of heavy- duty foil, which does not require greasing.

Ingredients

1Kg Cake mix

500 g butter

9 eggs

1ml salt

500g brown sugar

125ml of brandy

30ml mixed spice

125g cherries, chopped

100g slivered almonds

Grated rind of 1 lemon

10ml cocoa or coffee essence

625g cake flour

5ml grated nutmeg

 7.5ml Royal baking powder

Method

Preheat oven to 150⁰ C / 300⁰ F. Wash fruits well, place in a bowl with nuts and pour brandy over. Mix well.  Cream butter and sugar; add eggs 2 at a time, beating well. Add cocoa, and then add prepared fruits. Sift dry ingredients and add to fruit mixture, mixing well. Pour mixture into a prepared tin. Bake for 3-3.5 hours, reducing temperature to 140⁰ C / 275⁰ F after 1 hour. Leave in tin until cold. Retain paper lining until ready to ice cake. You can feed it with brandy once before covering with Marzipan. Cover top of cake with Marzipan (almond paste) over night before icing with icing. This cake can be made a day before the function so there is no need for much brandy to preserve.

  

Sweet & Sour Chicken

Ingredients

1 medium chicken

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp mild Veriperi Saurce

2 tbsp sweet chutney

1tbsp paprika

1tbsp sweet basil

1tbsp vinegar

1tbsp olive oil

Cut the chicken into pieces and put in a non-stick pan to boil for 10 minutes. In a separate bowl prepare the marinade by mixing the rest of the ingredients. Let the chicken pieces to cool and then marinade. Leave to chill for 20 minutes in the refrigerator. Cook at low heat for 15minutes.

Serve hot on a bed of lettuce.