Food
PREPARATION can take up a tremendous chunk of your life -- if you
let it. Between grocery shopping, planning meals, preparing ingredients,
cooking the actual meal, and cleaning up, there’s no time left for
anything else! But here are some quick tips for reducing the amount
of time you spend in the KITCHEN:
PLAN AHEAD
If you know what meals you are going to make for the upcoming week,
you will spend less time in the kitchen than if you stand in front
of the refrigerator each evening saying, “Hmm…I wonder what we should
have for dinner.” Spend a few minutes on Saturday or Sunday before
you go grocery shopping picking out your recipes for the week. Decide
which dishes you want to make before you make your GROCERY LIST,
and you won’t have to run out at the last minute because you are
all out of beans for chili.
You can do all of your shopping once a week, instead of making three
or four trips throughout the week. You can also plan ahead to make
dishes that can easily be combined after the meal is over to form
a new LEFTOVER dish. My mother’s favorite was to serve corn and
lima beans as side dishes at two meals during the week, then combine
any leftovers to make goulash. Nowadays, I just throw anything leftover
in a pan for stir fry later in the week.
STICK WITH THE OLD FAVORITES
We are often seduced by the colorful pictures and tempting-sounding
RECIPES we find in magazines and newspapers. However, the truth
of the matter is that most people make no more than 10 or 20 different
dishes regularly. Take a few minutes to gather up your FAVORITES
and store them together in a notebook or card file (depending on
how you keep your recipes). Aim for dishes that the whole family
loves, are easy to make, take very little time, and use fairly basic
ingredients. You can still keep the recipes for Truffle Souffle
with Grand Marnier and Lobster Thermidor – just store those separately
from your everyday dishes.
You might also consider setting up a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly
SCHEDULE for cooking your favorites. One of my clients with three
busy children has decided that Monday is always pasta night, Tuesday
is a casserole, Wednesday is grilling out, Thursday is soup, and
Friday is pizza. It saves her time and energy, and she never has
to deal with the question, “What’s for dinner?”
DO YOUR COOKING ALL AT ONCE
One of the best time-management decisions I ever made was to do
the majority of my cooking all on ONE DAY of the week. I usually
go grocery shopping on Sunday mornings (less crowded than Saturday),
and I’ll spend about 2 hours in the kitchen cooking for the entire
week. I make about 3 or 4 “one-dish” meals that my husband and I
can each for lunches and quick dinners – usually including a casserole,
a soup, and a pasta dish. These get stored in our fridge in MEAL-SIZED
containers, ready to be taken to work or reheated at home. I also
cut up veggies for salad and stir-fry and store them in Tupperware
containers, make a big jug of green tea for the week, and put together
a couple of quick desserts.
Then, for the rest of the week, we don’t have to do much of anything
to eat a healthy meal. We might throw together a salad, or make
a stir-fry and grill some fish, or eat one of my pre-prepared dishes.
And we save MONEY because we don’t end up eating out as much when
we’ve got plenty of good food in the house. It’s a complete win-win
situation!
MAKE MORE THAN YOU NEED
Whenever you are cooking, you get into a groove. As you do a lot
of one activity, it gets easier and quicker. So when you first start
chopping onions, the going is slow. But by the time you are on your
5th onion, you are breezing through it. So take a few minutes as
you are preparing ingredients to do more than you need for that
particular recipe. Chop an entire bag of onions, grate a whole block
of cheese, make a huge pot of tomato sauce rather than just enough
for one meal. You can freeze or refrigerate the extras and save
yourself a little time the next time you get ready to cook.
PREPARE LUNCHES AHEAD OF TIME
One of the biggest kitchen challenges my clients with kids face
is getting those SCHOOL LUNCHES ready. Not only does preparing a
lunch (or 4 lunches, depending on the number of kids) each morning
take a tremendous amount of time, it’s not a very efficient way
to get your kids ready. So on grocery shopping day when you come
home with the ingredients for your kids’ lunches, have your children
help put their meals together for the week.
Store INDIVIDUAL-SIZED portions of chips, pretzels, cookies, and
other snacks in Ziploc bags. Set up 5 brown paper bags for each
child, complete with a snack, a drink box, pudding cup, fruit roll-up,
etc. in each. Then mark the bags with the child’s name and day of
the week and line them up on a shelf in the pantry. When that day
rolls around, all you have to do is add a sandwich or soup! You
will save time each morning, and it will keep your kids from eating
all of their school snacks before the school day arrives.
DON’T WAIT UNTIL IT RUNS OUT
How many times has this happened to you – you are making dinner,
need some (garlic, mustard, milk, basil, whatever), and you pull
out an EMPTY container. Someone used the last of your precious ingredient
and didn’t bother to let you know that you needed more. This is
particularly annoying when you do it to yourself! The best way to
prevent this kind of crisis is to follow the 3/4 RULE. Whenever
you find that something is three-fourths empty, put it on the grocery
list and buy more. Keep a notepad on the front of the refrigerator
so that family members can add to the list as they notice items
running low.
Another good trick is to buy in BULK whenever money and space allows.
This is particularly important for those non-perishable items you
use all the time -- tuna fish, rice, peanut butter, juice boxes,
etc. -- your STAPLES. Keep enough of these foods on hand so that
you won’t find yourself running out at a crucial moment. Shopping
at a wholesale club like Sam’s or Costco can also save you a ton
of money over the long-run.
CLEAN AS YOU GO
Cooking scares a lot of people -- not because they dread the act
of preparing a meal, but because they dread facing the MESS that’s
left when they are done! But if you will take the time to CLEAN
as you go -- put those dirty utensils in the dishwasher, wipe up
that spill before it becomes a stain, and take out the trash from
your food preparation before it piles up mile-high -- cooking is
more enjoyable, less stressful, and incredibly less time-consuming.
Not to mention the fact that your kitchen smells a whole lot better!
Ramona
Creel is the founder of OnlineOrganizing.com
--
offering "a world of organizing solutions!"
Visit OnlineOrganizing.com
for organizing products, free tips, a speakers bureau -- and even
get a referral for a Professional Organizer near you. And if you
are interested in becoming a Professional Organizer, we have all
the tools you need to succeed. (Copyright 2000, Ramona Creel)
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