When life is busy one of the hardest parts of keeping meal’s costs down is doing the preparation at home. The more prepared we purchase our food, the higher the price. What if we could have the convenience of prepared foods but pay for unprepared ones?
Last week I showed you two ways to do that, make your own mixes by pre-assembling dry ingredients of scratch recipes and cooking more than you need of rice, hamburger, or pasta and freezing the excess for another meal.
The most time effective way to do these things is while you are cooking the same food for immediate use. Make your cornbread mixes when you are baking cornbread. You were going to get all of those ingredients out anyway, might as well measure more than one batch.
Another way of saving time is to only touch the food one time. For example, when you come home from the store, wash your produce for the week and prepare it for eating. Then put it in the fridge ready to go. This will encourage you to grab a healthy snack since it’s just as fast as grabbing a bag of chips.
If you purchased chicken breast, pour the marinade on now. You can even freeze it this way until you are ready to use it.
I’m eating differently from the rest of my family right now and whlie I can usually cook 1 meal, cooking 2 different ones puts me over the edge. To make things easier, I premeasure my snacks (like almonds, baby carrots and edamame). I also cook up a weeks worth of chicken breast and premeasure it in 30z servings. Now I have the makings of a variety of meals just ready to toss and go.
This is genius! I hate cutting and chopping veggies, so I tend to stay away from meals that require that. Now with your plan, I’ll just take one day to have everything already sliced and diced and stored in the refrigerator, that way when I am ready, I can just grab it and throw it in. After a long day of working, it’s hard to get motivated to do all that cooking.
tiannamae.blogspot.com
Why are you eating differently? Is it because you are trying to lose the baby weight? I struggle with this because although I want to lose the extra baby weight I have, I am afraid that my children won’t understand why I am eating different food than them. I don’t want them to think Mommy is on a “diet” because I’m afraid that can make them too aware of image. Any thoughts?
BTW, what’s your different diet?
Thanks 🙂
Yes, that’s exactly why I’m eating differently. I gained 50lbs with this pregnancy and am at a really unhealthy weight right now. My girls are aware of image, but not as self conscious as I was at their age. I don’t tell them I’m on a diet, it’s a semi-permanent change for me. When they ask me why I’m eating differently, I tell them “I’m going to be a Fit Yummy Mummy.” And they roll their eyes, lol.
I’m focusing my eating on protein and produce right now–with a tiny amount of grains. My kids are growing and need way more grains for energy than I do. They can sit down and eat a plate of whole wheat spaghetti and it be healthy for them, but that would be way too many carbs for me to burn any fat. I’m trying to get in 10 full servings of fruits and vegetables with 100 grams of protein a day. My protein is usually chicken breast, salmon, shrimp or eggs. I also use skim milk, yogurt, almonds and edamame. My food is gorgeous, but the kids turn up their nose at the sheer amount of veggies like spinach, bell peppers, zucchini, onions etc. I hope I’m being a good example for them and an encouragement to eat more veggies than to make them have an eating disorder because they are afraid they are fat.
Wonderful answer. Thank you 🙂
Dear Angela,
I like your idea of pre-cutting produce all at once for the entire week, but have a question. I read you are not supposed to wash produce until you will use it because it spoils faster that way. How do you keep this from happening?
Ann
Ann, I’ve never had a problem, but my mother in law keeps a paper towel with her washed produce to absorb the excess water and keep it fresh.