Time Saver

In our efforts to both eat healthier and save money we are trying to be more consistent with packing lunches and not eating out. I am not a morning person at all, so if I waited til morning to make lunches they wouldn't get made most mornings. I cook dinner every night and often make extras for our lunch and "everyone for themselves" dinner night. I find that if I go ahead and assemble meals as I am cleaning up for dinner, it makes my life much easier. All we do is grab one and stick it in the lunch box along with a piece of fruit.

In addition to being a huge time saver, it also saves us money in a couple of ways--they are quick to grab so on those crazy mornings, lunch still gets packed and we don't have to rely on fast food, and on nights that one of us is not here, we have a ready meal that can just be reheated--no calling for pizza delivery! Another benefit is that I don't have a bunch of containers of leftovers in the fridge that get overlooked and just end up getting tossed. I hate throwing away food!

For most meals, I like these Easy Lunch Boxes. The have three sections, so I can make sure lunch also included veggies. I also like that they have different colored lids so that I can tell which lunches need to be eaten first or who I packed it for! I also have a thing for Bento boxes so I have lots of great containers for lunch.

More Time Savers

Learning and transitioning to a real food way of life can lead to some initial frustrations. Even though I knew how to cook most things from scratch, it was something that I did when I had time, and when I didn't I relied on fast food or overly processed foods on the days that I didn't have the time or energy. I listed some of my time saving tips in this post and will add some more here.

***Create your own fast food. Come up with a list of quick meals that you can easily pull together at home and keep the ingredients for those meals on hand. Here are a couple of my meal suggestions, but these will be different for every family. Knowing what your family likes and keeping some basic ingredients on hand and you can have a real food dinner on the table before the pizza guy can deliver.

The goal here is to anticipate those crazy nights when you don't have a ton of prep time and already have a plan in place. If you have a plan and keep the ingredients on hand, it is much easier to resist the drive-thru.

Chicken Noodle Soup: I always chicken in my freezer that has been cooked and shredded and frozen in 2 cup portions and I try to never run out of chicken broth. I usually have homemade egg noodles in the freezer too, and combined with the broth and chicken and even some veggies, homemade chicken noodle soup can be a pretty quick hearty meal.

Breakfast for Dinner: This is something that I like to do and can make very quickly. I always have eggs and some type of veggie in the fridge. A scrambled egg dish cooks in just a few minutes in the skillet, or add even more veggies and make a fritter in the oven. My freezer comes in handy here too, when I make waffles or pancakes, I always make extra and freeze them and they are ready to be eaten after a very quick defrost in the toaster.

Quick Spicy Chicken Chili: once again starting with cooked chicken in the freezer, add a cup of chicken broth, the chicken, 2 cups of salsa and 2 cans of white beans to a pan and simmer for just a few minutes.

Fried Rice: Basically I do this when I have a lot of left overs in the fridge, enough to save, but not enough to serve as a meal. I cook some rice or take out a pouch of already cooked that I have frozen, then add a bunch of veggies and cook til tender. Top with a little Tamari, and it is much better than carry out rice.

***Cooking for the freezer/pantry: I am not talking about the plans where you spend one day shopping and then another entire day of cooking and you have a month's worth of meals ready to go in the oven. I have never had that much freezer room to make those plans work. I am talking about cooking a little extra when you are cooking. For instance, if you are cooking chicken for a meal, then cook some extra, let it cook, chop or shred it, cool the freeze it.

I am an avid canner so I have several soups and meal options that are on my pantry shelves. I spend a couple of hours once a month or so making a canning project, which sounds like a lot of time, but I can have 14 meals ready for my shelf in those couple of hours. You can do the same with freezer meals if you are not a canner.

Prepping: I prep a lot of my food when I get home from the store. I will wash all the berries and veggies, go ahead and chop an onion or two, cut up carrot sticks, wash the fruit, etc. It is just one quick step more than just putting it away and on crazy nights, having those things done helps you get dinner on the table a little faster. 

Packing lunches: Dinner left overs make up much of our lunch menu. After dinner, I pull out the lunch containers and go ahead and make lunches right then. I would be putting away the leftovers any way, and by going ahead and getting lunches ready, I save time in the mornings and have less dishes to wash.

Use a crock pot: If you have one night a week that you are always pressed for time, designate that day as a crock pot day. When you get home from the store, prep everything for that crock pot meal and then place it in the freezer. The night before cooking, set it in the fridge to defrost, then in the morning, place it in the crock pot and let it cook while you are at work. I always loved coming home from work after a long day, open the front door and know that dinner is already done. 

Enlist help: Designate part of dinner to different family members or have one sous chef responsible for helping you on designated nights. Even little kids can help chop veggies, tear lettuce for a salad or help in some way. I have used knives similar to these with kids as young as two.

It does get easier the longer you do it and you will find your own tips that work for you!

Food Prep Day

One of the things I get asked a lot deals with the amount of time that I spend cooking and how I find the time to make so much food from scratch. I also get asked how much time I spend cooking each day. I'm not going to lie, switching over to eating real foods did take some getting used to and at first I was overwhelmed by how long it took me to do everything. But the longer you do something, the faster it becomes and you learn time saving tips as you go. 

I will share some of my other tips:

MENU PLANNING I wrote more about meal planning in the post below, but I do consider this my number one time saver. Knowing what I am having through the week allows me to do prep work one time for multiple meals. If I know that I need chopped onions for three different meals, I can go ahead and chop three onions while I am preparing for that first meal, it only takes a couple of extra minutes and I only have to wash my cutting board and knife once, not three different times. Not only does that save time it also gives me less dishes to wash! 

BULK COOKING If I am at all able I will make extras of something so that I can freeze part of them. If I make waffles, I make extra and some go in the freezer. I let them cool, then wrap them in wax paper and place into a freezer bag. Lots of prepared foods can be frozen and if I am not sure, I search on Google "do waffles freeze well?" and can find the answer pretty quickly. I then have the convenience of  the processed foods that I gave up, and I have the peace of mind of knowing that the food is prepared with ingredients that I want in my body.

FOOD PREP DAY I have one day a week that I put some effort into preparing food to be eaten on those crazy days that I don't have a lot of time to cook, don't feel like cooking, or if I am just having a bad pain day and am unable to cook. I usually plan at least one meal a week that can be easily doubled or tripled. We will eat one of those meals on the night they are planned, and the other one or two meals go in the freezer to be eaten at a later time.

Another food prep day may include a canning project. I can throughout the year and the majority of my canning is done seasonally. Since nothing is coming in during the winter months, I focus on canning things like soups, chili, meat that I find on sale and different types of  beans. This week I will be making a batch of pork and beans to go in the pantry. 

Sometimes my food prep might be making a dessert item. If I make a full batch of a dessert we either eat too much of it or part of it gets thrown away. On a food prep day I might make a couple of batches of  different cookies. I will use my scoop to measure out the cookie dough and then freeze them on a cookie sheet in a single layer. When they are frozen I will put them in a freezer bag and I can pull out enough to make for dessert that night without having too much of it sitting around. 

These tips help me save time and still allows us to have food prepared with real ingredients and allows me to have my own stash of "fast food". If you know me personally, you know that I deal with a chronic pain condition and sometimes I have flare ups that leave me unable to stand for very long. In the past, when this would happen I would call my husband and he would pick up dinner at a drive through which kind of defeats our goal of giving up processed foods. Since I have meals in jars or in the freezer, I can now get a home coked meal on the table quicker than he can go to the drive through and with almost no effort on my part. (In his defense, he could cook dinner, but we would be eating dinner pretty late by the time he got home and got dinner going).

My next post will be how I keep up with all the food in the freezer!