Homebodies
Experts > Simply Living
A Simple
Choice
If
your home is anything like mine, you've probably found that five
o'clock each evening is one of the most hectic times of the day.
Mom and dad are just finishing up a long day of work at home or
at the office. The kids are hungry and tired after a full
day of school and afternoon sports. It's time to fix supper
-- or at least we should be getting dinner started if we want to
eat a meal before midnight!
But
what's for dinner tonight? Well, your guess is probably as
good as mine ... and it seems like more often than not, nobody knows!
So the whole family hops into the car and heads through the local
drive-thru for the third time this week.
Someone
I know once called it "crisis meal planning." Each
night's dinner is the latest in a string of mealtime crisis management
decisions. Everyone's tired. The kids are hungry.
The whining has started in earnest. What's a parent to do?
Rather
than planning ahead to prevent panic and poor nutritional choices,
many families coast through their day without giving a thought to
dinner, and then discover that they've crashed headlong into that
nightly mealtime crisis once again.
Cooking
ahead for the freezer can be the answer to this all-too-frequent
mealtime dilemma. I've discovered as people become more adept and
experienced at cooking for the freezer, they often switch from doing
a full one-day-each-month cooking frenzy to using a simpler process
referred to as "mini-sessions." A mini-session
consists of choosing one main ingredient, such as chicken, and then
preparing a group of chicken recipes in a single afternoon or evening.
A mini-session usually involves only an hour or two of cooking rather
than the eight to ten hours often required for a complete month
of cooking.
By
waiting for main ingredients to go on sale at your local market,
you can stock up on large quantities and take advantage of great
prices. For example, if you stock up on lean ground beef
at this week's sale, a relatively short mini-session could easily
supply you with five to ten ground beef meals tucked away in the
freezer. When chicken goes on sale later in the month, you
can add another five to ten meals to your personal stash of Frozen
Assets.
Simply
by purchasing and cooking in bulk as you follow the sale flyers
from the grocery store, you can save a great deal of time and money
without ever investing an entire day in a monthly cooking session.
For
more information on cooking ahead for the freezer, go to:
http://hometown.aol.com/oamcloop/
Or
consider joining the Frozen Assets Email Discussion Group to share
tips, recipes and encouragement with other cooking investigating
the benefits of preparing meals ahead of time for the freezer.
For details and subscribing information, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/frozen-assets/
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Deborah
Taylor-Hough (free-lance writer, wife and mother of three) is the
editor of the Simple Times and Bright-Kids email newsletters. She's
also the author of the popular book, Frozen Assets: how to cook
for a day and eat for a month, and the newly released Frugal Living
For Dummies(r) (Wiley Publishing, 2003). For more information, visit
Debi online: http://hometown.aol.com/dsimple/
You can also subscribe to one of her free ezines!
Deborah Taylor-Hough is a full-time
homemaker, wife and mother of three. She's also the author of A Simple Choice: A Practical Guide
to Saving Your Time, Money and Sanity and the best-selling books, Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day
and Eat for a Month and Frozen Assets Lite & Easy.
And
don't forget her Mix
and Match Recipes: Creative Ideas for Busy Kitchens (Champion
Press, 2002)!
Debi edits several e-newsletters
including Simple Times, a publication dedicated to simplifying daily
life. To subscribe, mailto:subscribe-simple-times@ds.xc.org
Visit Debi online at:
http://members.aol.com/dsimple/
|
