Kitchen Klatter - Real Food Time Savers

I know that sometimes it's a challenge because we feel that cooking traditional meals is just way to time consuming...........after all, I can just take a meal from the store out of the freezer or whip up a box meal in minutes.

I searched the web and found some great ideas for time savers when cooking traditional, REAL food just to share with you today.

Make Ahead Food Prep

The professional chefs do it, why can't you?  Get your family involved.  Even the 2-3 years olds can stand on a stool to watch and learn.  Chefs don't do it on their own, they have souse chefs (helpers).  Engage your family!

1.  Have a weekly meal plan and choose a day (I do Saturdays) to dice onions, chop and slice carrots, celery and other veggies.  Make finger snack veggies for your refrigerator.  Then even a 3 year old can go to the refrigerator and get a few carrots, celery and zucchini sticks.

Menu Planning

I used to tell my 4-H kids all the time, "When you fail to plan you plan to fail".  Planning saves you time and money.  It will save you more time than what it takes you to create the plan.

When beginning to plan take into account special allergies or health concerns.  Don't compare yourself to other people (bloggers or friends).  Be what and who God wants you to be.

In the Kitchen

Be the best YOU can be.  Know your strengths. 

• What time of day do you work best in and plan your major kitchen tasks around that time frame.
• Don't be afraid of change.  See what others are doing and adapt it to something that might make your work in the kitchen easier.
• My mother had a saying, "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today."  So, why put off something until later that you could do at the moment.  I've found that things put off tend to build into much bigger tasks.
• Have something you are dreading doing?  Do it first and get it over with!
• When it comes to Healthy cooking and sticking to the meal plan it always pays to think one or two days ahead.  That way you don't get off track.  You'll also know when you need to do certain prep things like taking the meat out of the freezer and getting stuck with, "now what am I going to do?"
• Clean up as you go.  I was the worst at this.  I hate clean-up.  However, I soon discovered that if I cleaned up as I went it wasn't such a huge, dreaded ordeal.

I have tons of other ideas that I'll save for another time or this will get way to long......so until we meet again...............HAPPY TRAILS!