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Practical, honest, and been-there: MOMables’ Laura Fuentes on real-life family food
To say that Laura Fuentes has been packing school lunches for a long time is probably an understatement. She started MOMables in 2012, back before the bento boxes we all have now existed. She’s quick to point out that the lunch ideas were easy to come by, but keeping them from turning to mush by noon was the actual problem. Her kids are 20, 18, and 14 now, and guess what? She’s still packing lunches.
This year, with a high schooler at home and two kids in college, she went back to the beginning on purpose. She’s been filming short lunch videos as if she were starting over, asking what a brand-new parent would actually need to know, and making zero assumptions about where that parent is starting from. Check them out on the MOMables YouTube and Instagram channels!
Laura isn’t a celebrity chef, and she’ll tell you so. She taught herself to cook in her 20s from Food Network reruns and magazine recipes, mostly by making mistakes. She has melted a plastic lid onto a casserole and burned a pot of tomato sauce, and she remembers both. That’s a big part of why parents trust her: she’s been in the trenches of real school lunches.
We talked with Laura about the grandmother and single mom had her helping out in the kitchen but never explicitly taught her how to cook, the pureed-carrot disaster that ended veggie-hiding in her house for good, why execution is where parents actually get stuck, and the one small habit she says moves the needle more than anything else. Her message for the new school year is simple: a homemade meal doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to make it to the table.
A Conversation with Laura Fuentes, Founder of MOMables
Introduce Yourself: I’m Laura Fuentes, founder of MOMables. I have three kids; they’re 20, 18, and 14.
I’ve helped parents make mealtimes simpler for a long time now, from school lunches to weeknight dinners to the very best pancakes. I’ve been through every stage of eating, and I mean every eating dilemma out there has happened at our dinner table.
You’ve said you learned to cook from your grandmother in Spain and your single mom, who both cooked from scratch. What did you take from them?
There’s a big gap between my grandmother’s true, slow, homemade cooking and my mom’s homemade-but-faster version, because my mom also worked. Neither of them sat me down to teach me. I learned by helping. “Can you help with this?” Season the chicken, clean the chicken, whatever it was. There was no kid task and adult task, just what you were capable of at your age.
What I carried from that is that a homemade meal doesn’t have to be complicated. You can make something with fresh, simple ingredients that tastes great in about 30 minutes. And I try to give parents permission to let go of the picture of everyone sitting down together to a hot meal. You can make dinner, leave it on the stove, and feed one wave of kids before practice and the next when they get home. A lot of parents don’t realize that’s allowed, and that’s often what sends people to the drive-through.
You taught yourself to cook in your 20s, mostly by making mistakes. What’s one that stuck with you?
I was cooking a recipe from a magazine that said to bake it “covered.” My casserole dish happened to have one of those plastic serve-and-go lids you’d bring to a potluck. So I covered it, put it in the oven, and the plastic melted right onto the food. Seriously!
To this day, when I write a recipe, I say “cover with foil.” It sounds obvious, but we make so many assumptions about the person on the other end. I’ve also burned a pot of tomato sauce because the recipe said to simmer but never said to stir, so I left it on high and kept tasting from the top. It was delicious on top and scorched on the bottom. Every one of those mistakes made me a better recipe writer.
Your site says, “If your mom didn’t teach you how to cook, you’ve got me.” What do you wish someone had told beginner-you?
That not knowing how something will turn out is part of learning to cook, not a sign you’re bad at it. So many people are afraid to try a new recipe because what they’re really asking is, “Is this going to be a reflection of my ability?”
Everyone is unsure whether a dish will work or whether their family will like it. Once you let go of needing it to be perfect, it’s freeing. I used to tell my family, “This is the first time I’m making this, so feedback is welcome, not criticism. Do we like it or not?” That’s it. It’s just a normal part of the process.
You started MOMables in 2012 focused on lunches. Why lunches first?
I was packing lunches for my own kids, and they wanted what they saw in other kids’ lunchboxes, which was the highly processed stuff I didn’t want to feed them. So I figured out how to make those things with homemade ingredients; you can make a homemade Lunchable [Get Laura’s recipe right here]. My daughter is actually the one who named it. I said, “This is a mom-made Lunchable,” and she said, “Oh, it’s a MOMable.” It stuck.
Lunch was also a real logistics problem. We didn’t have all the bento-style compartment boxes yet, so things got soggy, fruit got mushy, cheese got melty. What made me different wasn’t just the idea, it was the idea plus how to actually pack it so it survived until lunchtime.
A lot has changed since 2012. What are parents still stuck on?
Honestly, the same thing: taking an idea and actually packing it. We’re drowning in ideas now, from cookbooks and Pinterest and Instagram reels. What almost nobody tells you is how to execute.
I tell people to pick three mains for the week. Is it a turkey week? A ham week? If it’s a turkey week, Monday is a turkey sandwich, Tuesday is turkey roll-ups, and Wednesday you use the leftover tortillas from Taco Tuesday for turkey wraps. That kind of execution is the missing piece.
Was there a recipe that flat-out did not work?
Oh, the pureed carrots in mac and cheese. Fifteen years ago I made a cheese sauce with carrots blended in because I had picky eaters and wanted to sneak in vegetables any way I could. It came out more orange than cheddar-yellow. My daughter always thought it tasted a little off but figured that was just homemade sauce. Then one day she caught me adding the carrots. She still tells people about it, fifteen years later.
That was the end of hiding vegetables for me. Instead, I started making one meal for the whole family and saying, “This is what we have, and you can choose what to eat from it.” I dropped the one-bite rule too. Every meal became a chance to discover something, and it gave me the freedom to cook anything.
Your site promises that your recipes work “the first time, every time.” How can you promise that?
It means the first person to make it, or the hundred-thousandth, should be able to recreate exactly what’s on my site, assuming you don’t swap out ingredients. Everything is tested.
I also have what I call the B-Team Taste Test. Someone on my team isn’t a strong cook, and the more complicated recipes go to her. She’ll say, “This step is vague, tell me what to expect.” So the recipe card and the post both tell you what should be happening at each step. Almost every recipe also has a start-to-finish video with no editing tricks, so you can see exactly what each step should look like. That’s how I know it’ll turn out and every cook will be able to follow the recipe.
You’ve fed three kids from toddlers to teenagers. What surprised you most about feeding teens versus little kids?
The philosophy of one meal for everyone never changed. What changed is the sheer volume. Teenagers need so much more food, especially if they play sports.
My kids will take a hot lunch over a sandwich any day, so thermos lunches have become a huge thing for us as they’ve gotten older. It’s already made, I just heat it up, and it’s more filling and more nutritious. When they were little, lunch was a bunch of small things that added variety and filled the nutrition gaps. Now it’s about substance.
For a parent who’s overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to start with homemade meals, what’s the smallest change that actually sticks?
Write it down. At the simplest level, what is everyone going to eat this week? What’s breakfast? I don’t mean cooked breakfast. If it’s cereal, write “cereal.” If it’s smoothies, write “smoothies.” What’s lunch? Even if it’s the same sandwich every day, write it down.
For dinners, don’t try to make five or six new things a week. Maybe one or two new ones, then your tried-and-true meals that already work. Writing it down is what moves the needle the most, because you can see it and it keeps you on track. I have a weekly printable with little cubbies that’s fifteen years old, and people still use it. Pen and paper works.
You’ve said you’ve flipped six million pancakes. If a reader could master one simple, forgiving recipe, should it be pancakes?
I’m biased, but yes. I think pancakes are the holy grail of kitchen happiness, because they’re guaranteed positive feedback. Everybody loves pancakes, and that positive feedback builds your confidence.
That said, master whatever your family truly loves. If it’s pasta, learn to make a great Alfredo from scratch. If it’s the thing you’d pay to eat out, learn to make it well at home. I’d keep it to something you can make often, so pasta night or pancakes over a steak dinner every night. For us it’s pancakes, because it’s the thing that brings my kids and me together. [Get her recipe here!]
What’s one cooking skill you think every home cook should practice?
Patience, first. And then searing. People are so intimidated by a simple pan-seared chicken breast or a piece of salmon, and the sear is the part that scares them. It’s basic, it’s simple, and it completely transforms the taste of the ingredient. Learn to sear and you’ve unlocked a lot.
Follow Laura on Youtube and Instagram @MOMables
& Don’t forget to follow us on IG @onepotatobox ❤️
Books, Books, Books – by Laura Fuentes
The Taco Tuesday Cookbook [Bookshop, Amazon]
Clean Treats for Everyone: Healthy Desserts and Snacks Made with Simple, Real Food Ingredients [Bookshop, Amazon]
The Best Homemade Kids’ Lunches on the Planet: Make Lunches Your Kids Will Love with More Than 200 Deliciously Nutritious Meal Ideas [Bookshop, Amazon]
The Best Homemade Kids’ Snacks on the Planet: More than 200 Healthy Homemade Snacks You and Your Kids Will Love [Bookshop, Amazon]
Super Easy and Delicious Lunches for Kids: Deliciously Nutritious Meal Ideas Your Kids Will Love [Bookshop, Amazon]
Quick and Easy Grain-Free Recipes for Families: Allergy-Friendly Meals Everyone at the Table Will Love [Bookshop, Amazon]
Best Grain-Free Family Meals on the Planet: Make Grain-Free Breakfasts, Lunches, and Dinners Your Whole Family Will Love [Bookshop, Amazon]
