 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| |
|
THREE STEPS TO ELIMINATE MEALTIME STRESS
|
|
Dinner Tonight: Deliciously Simple Weekday Meals by Heidi Johnson 1) Use your regular meal prep time to cook a quadruple meal once a week or less. Focus on one meal you're already cooking. Eat one meal that night and put up to three more in the freezer for another busy day. Do this 3 times and you have 3 good, healthy home-cooked meals you have eaten and nine meals in the freezer! "Deliciously Simple" will provide you with tested, freezable recipes. The quantities are written out 1-2-3. The math is done for you and it is very easy to follow. I had over 50 meals in the freezer when my third daughter was born! This happened without any conscious planning on my part and with very little extra effort. I just cooked a quadruple meal once a week for the last few months of the pregnancy. Imagine my surprise when I counted the meals in my freezer one day and found such a quantity of meals available. The beauty of this system is that you can do it as little or as much as you want to. You can cook 2 or 3 quadruple meals a week for a while and not cook at all during a time when you have out of town guests, or during summer vacation, or Christmas vacation, or when you have an operation planned. You can also go without cooking any quadruple meals for several months if you so choose. This system is so adaptable to your needs. 2) Realize inefficient cooking and cleaning up when you see it. Always double (preferably quadruple) a freezable meal. Look at how you cook. Next time you fix a meal, see if any of the steps you are taking in preparing your meal can be done in larger quantities. Are you browning only 1 pound of ground beef? Are you chopping only 1 onion? How much harder is it to put a tablespoon of oregano in a pot as opposed to a teaspoon? I know many people double meals, but I really believe in quadrupling because the meals multiply so much faster. If you have ever doubled a meal you know how good it feels to have a meal in the freezer. On the day that you use a freezer meal all you will have to do is put the meal in a dish and either bake it or heat it on the stove. Then when it is time to do dishes all you have to wash is the plate, silverware and serving dish. All the pots were washed at the time when you made the meal several months ago. Some people tell me that cooking really isn't that difficult or time consuming. Cooking healthy, low-fat, low-meat dishes does take more time than putting a prepared grocery store meal in the microwave or throwing a piece of meat in a deep fryer or plopping a can of cream of mushroom soup over a piece of meat. 3) Prepare - Take 5-10 minutes twice a month to plan 8-12 meals that can be fixed during the course of the next 2 weeks. When you plan menus, you save 30% more money than the person who doesn't plan. Always go to the grocery store with a list and buy what is on that list. Take a 1/2 sheet of paper and divide it into 2 columns. Column 1: 8-12 meals I can fix Column 2: Ingredients I need for those meals If you mention this article when you order "Deliciously Simple", you can purchase it for only $4.00! (Retail $9.00) To order "Deliciously Simple" just send a check or money order for $4.00 to: Deliciously Simple P.O. Box 54 Greenwich, OH 44837 If you have any questions you can contact the author Heidi Johnson or for more information and a recipe from the book, check www.accnorwalk.com/~heidijo. You can take this list with you when you go grocery shopping. This way you know exactly what you will need to prepare meals for the next 2 weeks. You don't need to assign a day to each meal. It is very refreshing to know that you can look at your list each morning and depending on the mood you are in you can choose from your list of meals and know that you have the ingredients needed to prepare that meal. The number of meals you choose to plan for will depend on your lifestyle. If you eat out more often, you will not need to plan as many meals. When you have some meals stocked in the freezer you can assign some of those to the first column. Then on the days when you are busy, you can just take that meal out of the freezer in the morning. When I have a large supply of freezer meals in the freezer I take 1-2 weeks when I use just freezer meals. This is especially handy the week or two before a special occasion at your house. This system has revolutionized my view of cooking and I love to share it with others. I wish someone had shared this with me when I was married or at least when I had my first child. |
|
|||||
|
|||||
Happy Halloween
