Cooking: A Little Bit of What You Fancy

“A maiden that is negligent in acquiring skills in the art of cooking should resolve to change and gain lessons that will assist her. A diligent young girl will read carefully and seek to learn all she can of rules, courtesies, and the keeping of a proper kitchen. She will delight to please her family and friends with pleasant tasting foods that she has prepared.” -Mrs. Martha Greene

I have a confession to make: I am not a good cook. Cooking is something I do because we need to eat but I don’t particularly enjoy it. But having said that, I must say that I do make every effort to cook meals that Chris enjoys and that are nutritious
Something as basic as cooking should come naturally to us, but I am living proof that it doesn’t. Does that mean that I have given up and only serve canned goods or pre-packaged meals? Absolutely not!

Because I see that cooking is a vital part of keeping a home and most importantly, keeping a husband and children healthy, I often seek out recipes and tips to help me. I try to choose plain meals and I am most fortunate in that my husband loves meat, 2 veg and mashed potato! He would be happy with that for every meal.

Even knowing that he would be happy with a plain meal all the time, I try to vary it by alternating between vegetables and salads and methods of cooking. One night, I may serve a stew with the vegetables in that with a hefty serve of mashed potatoes. The next night it may be a grill with chips and salad. But basically, his favourite fare is meat based, with vegetables and mashed or chipped potato.

I feel that in preparing our menus that we should be diligent to take into account what our husband prefers and try to accommodate him. I have found that it is just as easy to prepare something he likes and enjoys than to try something new and find he doesn’t like it.

Being a good cook is important in your overall efforts to be a good homemaker. Memories are often centered around meals that were tasty and served with pleasant company. I feel there is nothing that deflates one’s spirit more than sitting down to a poorly cooked meal served with indifference.

Trying to feed your family well not only pays off dividends in better health through good nutrition, but it also livens ones’ spirit. Taking the time to plan and prepare meals will enhance family life and create a more pleasant meal time.

Let’s seek to improve our cooking as we remember the proverb that says “a little bit of what you fancy does you good!” It truly does everyone good!

“Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he loveth:” Genesis 27:9

Before Mealtime: Grocery Shopping Plan

I’m not the best house keeper. I’m working on it and have much improved in over 10 years of marriage, but I’m still learning and disciplining myself on making sure that everything HAS a place, let alone keeping everything IN its place. The kitchen is where I spend most of my time, or at least a good portion of it, and may be the furthest along in my quest for order in my home, but next to the other ladies who contribute here I am just beginning! I love that being here with them means I can not only contribute, but learn and grow in this area as well.

That said, one thing I’ve become pretty good at doing is keeping our grocery bill down. I’ve become good enough at this that not only both of my sisters, but also my own mother have all called for my help in better planning their grocery trips when the month’s budget is going to be more crunched than usual for whatever reason. I’ll tell you what, that speaks to me! I feel it’s the ultimate compliment, for my mother to call and ask my advice or opinion on something. She taught me so much and continues to be my spiritual mother, that her calling or seeking my thoughts on anything just really makes me feel like I must know my stuff in that area.

So what is it about my grocery shopping that helps the budget?

Mostly it’s about meal planning. I discovered several years ago that I spend less money when I go to the store with a list. I also make less trips to the grocery store if I already have everything I need for a given meal, rather than deciding that I have “most” of the things to make something but still lack this ingredient or that. Inevitably, if I go back to the store, I get more than just those one or two ingredients and end up blowing my grocery budget for the week or month.

Having mentioned both weekly and monthly budgets, I want to say that I’ve done this plan both ways. When we lived in the big middle of a large city, I planned and shopped weekly. Now that we’re back out in the middle of nowhere, it makes more sense for us to plan and shop monthly. There is a little store in our town where I can get replenishables like bread and milk, but for the most of my shopping I go once monthly to the big chains in the city. You can do it either way; they both work wonderfully and I may even suggest – if stores are close to you – that for a beginner doing it weekly is a good way to learn. Just be sure to stick to the plan of only going to the store that once in a week! Get all the bread and milk you’ll need for a single week; you shouldn’t have to worry about it going bad that quickly.

The first thing I do is go through my cabinets, pantry, refrigerator, and freezer(s) and see what I already have. For the first several times, it’s good to write down what’s there just so it congeals better in my mind. Don’t forget to put down how much of each item there is, as well. I might still have on hand a can of ranch style beans, but if I need TWO cans to finish my meal then I need to know that I still need one more can. On any given pantry sweep, I might have plenty of flour, a little rice, a couple of cans of green beans, a can of tomato sauce, several cans of cream soup, and whatever. I might also still have a roast in the freezer, a bag of frozen broccoli, or a container of yogurt that needs to be eaten up soon. Write it down!

I then take that list and think of the meals which can be made from those ingredients. For instance, with the creamed soup, rice, and broccoli I have almost a complete meal; I just need to add some meat, so begins my third list – what I lack of any meals I can make from what I already have.

As I make my grocery list, more meal ideas transpire. If I’m going to get chicken to go with my rice meal, it’s often cheaper to buy a larger package that will do for two or three meals. The same goes if I need to purchase potatoes as an ingredient for a meal that I have most things for; a bag of potatoes will do another couple of meals as well. Thinking about my purchases and making the economical choice of the larger packages (when it is the more frugal option, of course!) helps keep me from wasting extras as well as using up what is older first. If I’m going to buy a big box of Bisquick for pancakes, I might not buy refrigerated biscuits this month so I can use what I have. I also might google some recipes (I personally have a Bisquick cookbook, and it has been handy in a crunch more than once) and find an easy pie recipe to use it with as well.

I often have people ask me about coupons. I don’t do much couponing at all. I do some; we are blessed in that one of the major stores nearby has in-store coupons as well as weekly meal deal specials. Often, the coupons are for purchasing the major brand of something and receiving the store brand item for free. Sometimes it is money off, or money off when purchasing multiples. The meal deals are often great values; I can purchase the main meat and get almost everything I need for the meal to go with it.

Besides the in-store coupons, I don’t use a lot of newspaper or manufacturer coupons. I just haven’t found them to save me money in most cases. The coupons are usually for national brand items, and even with cents-off they are usually still more expensive than purchasing the store brand. This isn’t always true, but because of how rare I’ve found the exceptions to be, I haven’t found couponing worth my time. I know that there are others that have and really enjoy it, but even having retried with coupons recently I just can’t make it add up with savings over store brand items. For me, for most items, coupons are only a time-sucking black hole that I usually try to avoid.

As my meal plan comes together, I count out how many meals I’ll need to fix before my next shopping trip. If I’m planning for a week’s eating, that would be 14 meals – 2 meals each day for a week. Usually in the course of a week we’ll eat at church on Wednesday evenings, sometimes at my mom’s or mother-in-law’s for Sunday lunch, and often do leftovers on Sunday evening. That’s immediately 3 meals I don’ t have to plan, so I’m looking at 11 meals including 6 lunches and 5 dinners. I take into consideration depending on if my husband is going to be home for lunch and for which meals can be quick and easy. I also consider our schedule, if we’re going to have a full day of activity and will need a hearty meal on a specific night, or if we’ll have a busy day and need to do something like frozen pizza once. I also like to include a variety of the types of meats we eat each week; if we eat nothing but chicken for 4 days, we’re going to be very tired of chicken!

Some of these things are going to be family specific, but I hope that I have given you some ideas on how to go about organizing your meal plans so you can grocery shop most effectively! I’m all about saving money wherever I can, and food doesn’t have to be expensive! Have fun, and let me know how you do with your next grocery trip!

Organizing your Kitchen

I will be the first to raise my hand and say that my kitchen is NOT fully organized. I have my areas of weakness and areas where I am strong. I hope to share today some things that might be of help to you and ask you for YOUR HELP as well! So, my addition to our theme week is definitely something I’m opening up my kitchen to you and sharing the good, the bad and the clueless! Smiles! I hope you enjoy being here today!

My pots, pans and containers are each set up in a cabinet where we can easily find them and the girls can easily put away the dishes knowing where they go. I use one cabinet to hold my bake wear and my pots and pans. On the top shelf you can find all of my bake wear. This includes things like my casserole dishes, cookie sheet, etc.. On the bottom shelf of that cabinet you can find my pots and pans. We stack them from biggest to smallest so they can easily fit in there and we can find them at a moment’s notice! In a second cabinet I use the top shelf for my large bowls all the way down to my small bowls. Again, I nestle them inside each other and have two sets of nestled bowls where those are easy to grab. Under that shelf, on the bottom, I have all of my “containers”…. All the way from Tupperware to saving containers from butter containers, cool whip containers, you name it!

My pantry is organized to where I have canned goods together, noddles and rice items together, and “boxed” items together. This makes it really easy to look at a glance and see what I need. I put like items together. So, for example, I can check when getting groceries if I need something like green beans. I can just look and count the cans. Same thing with the other items of food in my kitchen.

I also have a LARGE cabinet that holds all of my “helpers” like the blender, stock pot, etc… We have a cabinet up top that we keep all of our spices in and I really don’t have a good way to order these. Alphabetically would drive me crazy and hubby wouldn’t keep them that way anyhow. So, on the bottom shelf are our “most often used” spices. The shelf above holds all the rest. We also have a medicine cabinet above the kitchen sink where it’s safe from children. It’s not very organized and I find myself digging to find what I need. Do you have a solution to offer? I used to use baskets and I would put kids meds in one basket, vitamins and minerals in another basket and finally meds like Tylenol, Advil, etc…. for adults in the last basket. This worked well. I might try that again as I’m thinking of it!

What are some special ways you organize your kitchen? I would love to hear ideas from you to help me out as well! Blessings!!

How I Organize My Kitchen

Organization to me  means to organize things in an effective way  that enables you to find and use things more conveniently.

This applies especially to the kitchen!

To that end I have organized my cupboards  in a method that makes sense with the area it is in. I have all my coffee and tea supplies in the cabinet above the coffeemaker. Baskets help corral any small bags of unopened coffee- once open they get poured into a glass decanter-and single teabags that I get from freebie sites.

I have all my baking supplies in the cabinet above the baking counter which holds the mixer. Canned goods, whether I canned them myself or bought them, have 1 cabinet and and bags of beans and rice share a cabinet with daily snacks.

My blender and toaster oven share  counterspace since these are the 2 items the kids use the most for their snacking. Mmmmmm, smoothies!

I also have a set of shelves in my kitchen  that hold  Tupperware containers or large jars of flour, sugar and the like. Next to this I have several 5 gallon buckets  of wheat stacked up. Another set of shelves holds items that I use often but not often enough to put on the counter, like  a dehydrator, prepping food storage and the like.

Dishes, Tupperware and pots each have their own  cabinet too.They make terrific lid holders you can buy at Walmart or Target to organize your pan lids, making it easier to find what you want quickly. There are small shelves you can stack your dishes on to , to make more room in a small cabinet.

I keep all paper items and wrapping in a large drawer and cleaners- all homemade of course!- in a cabinet above the wash machine.

Yes I have been abundantly blessed with cabinets in this home and I plan to copy the idea once I build my own home!

How do YOU organize your kitchen? Share in the comments below. ~smile

Coming Soon :: A Week of Kitchen Organization!

Be sure to keep your eyes open and come back the week of September 2, 2012 through September 8, 2012 for or very first theme week!!  Our theme for September is Kitchen Organization. So stop by and visit us each day that week to get some really great kitchen organization tips!