“My recipes aren’t elaborate; they’re not going to have you spending hours in the kitchen or with ingredients you’ve never heard of,” says Rachel Mansfield. Photo: Courtesy of Rachel Mansfield/Julia D’Agostino Pierce
It’s a familiar scenario for any busy parent: It’s 4:30 pm and you’ve just arrived home. The kids make a mad dash for the kitchen, grabbing whatever snacks they can get their hands on. Amid the chaos, you need to figure out a plan for dinner.
That’s where Rachel Mansfield comes in.
Mansfield’s cookbook is out August 4 from Simon & Schuster.
Over the last 10 years, Mansfield, a Short Hills mom of three, has built a brand around healthy, simple, kid-friendly recipes, which she shares with her 1.3 million-strong Instagram community and in her new cookbook, More, Please!: Feel-Good Meals for Busy Families and Their Picky Eaters, out August 4 from Simon & Schuster. Earlier this year, she also launched a kids’ snack-food line, Cadootz, which sells organic, non-GMO, gluten-free—and actually tasty—products.
“My recipes aren’t elaborate; they’re not going to have you spending hours in the kitchen or with ingredients you’ve never heard of,” she says. Her recipes are ready in 30 minutes to under an hour.
It all started 10 years ago, when Mansfield was let go from her full-time executive assistant job. Equipped with a love of cooking and baking, she started sharing her healthy recipes for overnight oats online, expanding from there as her popularity grew.
“I’ve always had a passion for making food that tastes good but also makes you feel good,” she says. “I don’t want people to sacrifice flavor for health.”
She gave herself six months to see if she could turn her passion into a profitable business. She succeeded.
Beyond recipes, planning is a key part of Mansfield’s success in her own home. “On Sundays I map out our entire week,” she says, from her kids’ activities to a detailed meal plan for lunches and dinners. She doesn’t meal prep, per se, but does prepare a lot of lunchbox items, like washed and cut fruits and veggies.
“Having a plan makes such a difference because then you’re not frazzled,” she says. “And if you keep your pantry and your fridge stocked up, you’re not going to want to spend the money ordering food.”
Her new book features 100 of her top recipes, from Breakfast-for-Dinner Burrito Bowls to 20-Minute Quicker-than-Takeout Shrimp Teriyaki. Instead of being organized by appetizer, entrée and dessert, it’s categorized by the way a person might actually decide what to cook for a family, with chapters like “What to Do With a Pound of Ground Meat” and “Not-So-Boring Chicken.”
“I came from a house where my mom made three to four different meals every night; she was running around like a crazy person trying to make me the pizza bagels I wanted, and my brother the chicken fingers, and my dad a meatloaf,” Mansfield says. “And I said, ‘I’m not doing that.’ Like, ‘You get what you get and and you don’t get upset—that is what we’re having.’”
