Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it's more important to make yourself feel good.
Ina Garten
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I love cooking. There are times when I don’t love cooking because I don’t have a backup plan for dinner or we’re out of an ingredient we use all the time like peanut butter or milk. Since I’m working longer hours at home, I need to be better organized in the kitchen. I need to embrace the season of cooking I’m in.
Each month, I will write and post my plan for my kitchen covering 5 areas: Food Budget, Menu Planning, Cooking with Kids, Food Preparation, and Kitchen Organization. I have a month’s time to work on these goals 15 minutes or more at a time. I may find some goals don’t fit with my available time. Some like the recipe lists and the Kombucha may take several months to finish.
Food Budget
- Continue updating price book. Add seasonal produce sale info thanks to Premeditated Leftovers.
- Write out a food shopping plan for the month to better use my time. Keep a running list in ZipList of everything we need. Explore the capabilities in ZipList.
Menu Planning
When I started revising my Home Management Binder in February, Menu Planning and Cleaning were the first sections I focused on. Since my life revolves around the kitchen with 7 mouths to feed, I’m continuing to better organize my menu planning with the help of ListPlanIt.
Continue working on:
- 21 Meal List
- List of Main Dishes
- List of Side Dishes
- Meatless Meals List
- List of Snacks to Bake for the Freezer (includes oven temperatures)
Add the following:
- St. Patrick’s Day Menu
Easter Menu
Quick Meals with list of ingredients to keep on hand (this is so important for last minute schedule changes!)
Lunch Foods to Make for Freezer
Breakfast Foods to Make for Freezer
Plan and do a freezer session of snacks.
Cooking with Kids
We’re trying something new in the kitchen this month. I’m going to give all the kids a chance to be a kitchen helper for a week. On the weeks they aren’t responsible for setting the table, they can help in the kitchen at dinner time.
Food Preparation
Kombucha
My kombucha making has been lagging thanks to taste issues. Too many of my batches are turning out vinegary, probably due to the store-bought juice I started using for flavoring. I need to choose between no more juice for several batches or dump the current batches and start over with fresh Scobies.
Bread
Since my bread machine pan fell apart, I haven’t been making bread. While buying bread would help, I still have a lot of bread flour and whole wheat flour in stock. The kids miss my homemade bread for their toast and sandwiches. My plan is to make bread once a week with my Kitchen Aid mixer and fill in the gap with store bought bread.
Beef Bone Stock
I made a batch of beef bone stock in February with marginal success. After talking about it with my husband who is cook extraordinaire, I will tackle making beef broth again.
Kitchen Organization
Freezer Clean Out
I cleaned out the pantry cabinets and basement pantry in February. Now I need to tackle the freezer. I’ll find and group together the old items, and make a list of what I need to use up. If I can, I’ll consolidate everything into one freezer and clean the other one. Then, switch and do the same to the second freezer.
Disclosure: To help pay for running this blog, I am a ListPlanIt Affiliate.
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Hi Barb! My first time stopping by your blog. I love it and I really appreciate the meal plans. Please post when you come up with a good beef broth. Happy St. Patricks Day!
Even if you don’t fulfill all of your goals you have such a great structure in place… admirable planning.
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