More Tips for Saving Time in the Kitchen

Recently, a friend was asking me about eating a vegetarian diet. She explained that she'd like to eat less meat and more fresh produce, but she felt like vegetables take more time to prepare with all of the cutting and chopping and cooking. Meat and boxed dinners just seemed easier.

As I've said before, cooking from scratch is an important part of being a Conscious Shopper:

• When you buy basic ingredients like oats, beans, and rice from the bulk bins, you cut back on your trash production.
• When you use fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients, you cast a vote for a reformed food system and keep your family healthier.
• And perhaps most importantly, you save money, making it possible for you to afford those fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients.

But the flip side of all these benefits is TIME. Cooking from scratch takes more time. Time that, like my friend, you may not feel you have.


I've already told you my two biggest tips for saving time in the kitchen: Keep It Simple, Stupid and Have a Meal Plan. Here are a few other ideas:

• Double and Freeze. It takes about the same amount of time to make four servings as it does to make eight, so next time you're making a soup or casserole, double the recipe and freeze half. Then you'll have a frozen meal waiting for you the next time you feel too tired to cook.
• Freeze Ahead. Similar to the previous tip, I will often make a huge batch of beans and freeze them in two cup portions (about the same amount that's in a can). Or I'll make a ginormous pot of rice, use some for dinner and freeze the rest for future fried rice meals. Individual ingredients freeze just as well as a whole casserole and can be a lifesaver when you're short on time.
  
• Plan Ahead. If you know a specific day is going to be too busy to make dinner, plan for it. When you prepare your menu, choose a meal that's quick to prepare, like burritos or grilled cheese sandwiches.
  
• Prep Ahead. I just popped my casserole in the oven, now I get to go take a nap, right? I wish...Instead I use that time to prep veggies for the next day's lunch or dinner. (Or I empty my dishwasher.)
• Learn to Love Your Crockpot. Here are a few recipes (a year's worth) to get you started.
  
• Start a Dinner Co-Op. This is an intriguing concept that I've never tried. The idea is that you find a friend to swap dinners with (preferably one who lives close to you because of that whole carbon footprint thing). You make dinner, doubling the recipe and delivering half to your friend. Then on a different night, she makes dinner, doubling the recipe, and bringing half to you.
• Go frozen. Now I personally don't buy frozen fruits or vegetables anymore simply because I don't want the extra packaging waste and I can get great local produce year round here in NC. But let's face it - we're not all Marathon Runners in every category. If you need to cut a few corners to keep your family eating a healthy diet, frozen is a better choice than canned because the produce is frozen right after it's picked, preserving it at the peak of freshness. In fact, some could argue that it's healthier to eat frozen vegetables than fresh vegetables shipped halfway across the world.

I have to admit that I'm better at dishing out these tips than I am at following them. In general, I have plenty of time to cook, and it helps that I really enjoy cooking. But a few weekends ago when I was helping out with the community gardens summit and manned a booth the same day for Earth Day, I got home after ten hours of running around, plopped onto the couch, and announced, "I don't know how people who work ever make dinner from scratch. After a whole day of work, the last thing you want to do is come home and work some more!"

I had leftover soup in my freezer that I completely forgot about and a husband who wasn't volunteering to fill in for me, so we ordered a pizza. I'm not proud, but sometimes it happens.

So working readers, what tips do you have for saving time in the kitchen?

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You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the last challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays. Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook!

• image by laffy4k
• This post was shared at Works for Me Wednesday
  

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Save Time in the Kitchen by Meal Planning

A month ago, I related my K.I.S.S. method for saving time in the kitchen. Basically, the idea is that you can save time when cooking from scratch by keeping it simple: simple sides, simple meals, simple breads, simple stews...

Cooking from scratch is an important part of being a Conscious Shopper:

• When you buy basic ingredients like oats, beans, and rice from the bulk bins, you cut back on your trash production.
• When you use fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients, you cast a vote for a reformed food system and keep your family healthier.
• And perhaps most importantly, you save money, making it possible for you to afford those fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients.

But the flip side of all these benefits is TIME. Cooking from scratch takes more time. Time that you may not feel you can afford to spend.

Keeping it simple in the kitchen can save you time. And here's my other big tip for saving time when cooking from scratch:

MEAL PLAN

Do you ever have those "Oh, crap, it's 5:00!" moments? You know, those days when you're rushed, rushed, rushed, and you only have 20 minutes to get dinner on the table, and you spend 15 minutes of it staring into your fridge trying to figure out what to make. So you end up having PB&J.

Or you decide that you're going to have spaghetti for dinner, only to discover that you've run out of tomato sauce. So you eat PB&J.

A meal plan will solve your problems. No more staring blankly into the fridge - you'll know as soon as you walk in the door what you're going to make. No more running out of key ingredients...well, okay, running out of key ingredients less often. No more PB&J. (Unless you really love peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Then by all means, stick with your current system.)

Your meal plan doesn't have to be ultra detailed. It doesn't have to be overly restrictive. It should simply be a basic guide to what you have available to eat in a given week. For example, my basic meal plan goes like this:

Monday: pizza
Tuesday: Mexican
Wednesday: eggs
Thursday: stir fry
Friday: bean burgers
Saturday: pasta
Sunday: meat

On shopping day, I get more specific about what we're going to eat on a given night. Mexican changes to "nachos." Bean burgers become "butter bean burgers with collard greens." Etc. From there, I can easily make a grocery list, ensuring that I have everything I need to cook for the week.

But just because I've said Tuesday is going to be nacho night doesn't mean I can't decide to make burritos instead. Same basic ingredients so an easy swap. Or I might decide on Tuesday that I'm not in the mood for nachos and would rather make butter bean burgers. Easy enough to swap Tuesdays meal for Fridays and still have everything I need to quickly make dinner all week.

And of course, don't forget to keep your meal plan simple. I make pizza on my bread baking day because I can use some of the bread dough as pizza crust and toss the pizza onto the bottom of the oven while the rest of my bread is baking. Once a week, we eat scrambled eggs and toast for dinner because I can get the entire meal on the table in less than 30 minutes, including chopping vegetables to add to the eggs and toasting and buttering ten pieces of bread. I also make sure to plan dinners that will take more time for days I know I'll have time.

I had originally planned this post as a list of ideas for saving time in the kitchen, but meal planning took over. So you'll have to wait for the rest of the tips on another day.

Do you use a meal plan? How does it work for you?

____________________

You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the last challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays.

Like what you see? Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook! You can also find me over at The Green Phone Booth.

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The K.I.S.S. Method for Saving Time in the Kitchen

The kitchen is usually my domain, and I have a hard time giving up control. But my non-vegetarian husband and I have had an agreement since the early days of our marriage that if he wants to eat meat for dinner, he gets to cook it himself. And that is why one night after I had remarked in passing that we needed a side dish to go with dinner, I sat down to a meal of sausage, eggs, and cucumbers.

My first thought: "Cucumbers are not a side dish..."

My next thought: "Cucumbers as a side dish!"

Ah, the beautiful simplicity of it. No chopping and steaming and seasoning broccoli. No peeling and cutting and mashing potatotes. No husking and boiling and scraping corn. Just a simple plate of cucumbers. Which weren't even peeled.

So the credit for the Keep It Simple, Stupid Method for saving time in the kitchen goes completely to my husband.

The idea is basically that you do things in the kitchen to keep your meals simple and therefore save time.

I know...duh, right? But when you're cooking from scratch and you enjoy cooking like I do, it's easy to let meal preparation take over your life. You thumb through cooking magazines and scroll through cooking blogs and your weekly menus get more and more complicated and then dinnertime rolls around and you've only got 30 minutes to prepare a meal that takes an hour or more.

And that's when it's time to take a breather and remind yourself:

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Here's how:

• Simple Sides. As I mentioned above, fresh vegetables make a perfectly good side dish - especially with a heavier meal - and require almost no preparation. Fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower...Mmmm.
• Simple Potatoes. There are a billion and one ways to cook a potato, but I'd wager the simplest is to bake it. If you've got your oven on for any reason, toss a few potatoes in, bake for an hour, and serve them as a side dish later in the week. No peeling, cutting, or mashing required.
  
• Simple Bread. Bread by any other shape is still just bread. If you've got a perfectly good loaf of bread sitting around, don't waste time making rolls, breadsticks, biscuits, or flatbread (unless you're ultimate goal is to impress your kids). It might be shaped differently, it might even be a little boring, but it's not going to taste much different.
• Simple Stews. The simplest of all meals is the one where you throw a bunch of ingredients into a pot, simmer, and serve. It's extra nice if you can get your crockpot involved. As in this recipe for chili:

Vegetarian Chili

SERVES 4
COST: $1.17 per serving *

2 cups black beans (or 1 can)
2 cups kidney beans (or 1 can)
2 cups butter beans (or 1 can)
1 can diced tomatoes with juice
1 cup frozen corn
1 green pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. chili powder
1 Tbsp. parsley
1 Tbsp. oregano
1 Tbsp. basil

• Drain and rinse beans if using canned.
• Combine beans, tomatoes, corn, green pepper, and onion in a crockpot.
• Season with chili powder, parsley, oregano, and basil.
• Cook on high for two hours.
  

*Note that all costs are estimates based on prices in my area. Your costs may vary.

How do you keep it simple in the kitchen?

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You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the latest challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays here.

Like what you see? Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook! You can also find me over at The Green Phone Booth.

• This post was included in the Festival of Frugality #213 at Cooking Manager, All Things Eco #86 at Focus Organic, Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family, Frugal Friday at Life as Mom, and The Carnival of the Green at Enviroblog
  

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