These are some of the tips I've discovered in my quest to try to balance life as first a Wife, Mom, Full Time Employee, Business Owner, and Seamstress. I plan to post a tip weekly or biweekly and feel free to chime in with your thoughts. Here goes for the first one.......BTW they're not in chronological order--it just feel more fun this way! LOL!
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Maximizing your Sewing Time: Tip #32- Prepare Meals Ahead of Time
I love home cooked meals but I don't necessarily like to come home after working 8 or so hours and cook a healthy meal from scratch every single day. A couple nights a week is one thing but just not every single night. For the night that I can't cook, I rely on meals that I've prepared ahead of time and put in the freezer.....you know, "freezer meals".
Several year ago I began to notice how much time I was investing in making meals and searched for an idea that would allow me to provide my family with some "Home Cookin' " and at the same time free up some extra time----time that could be spent SEWING!!! Fortunately, I ran across the idea of making meals ahead of time and freezing them several years back. I bought a sizable chest freezer and a few great cookbooks with freezer compatible recipes and tips. I eventually settled on the idea of cooking one to 2 weeks in advance (planning a month ahead was just a little too much work for me).
I have to admit that this method really has revolutionized how I prepare meals for my family. Now I don't stress out as much about what we're going to eat. I also discovered that it has saved me a good bit of money as well. Planning my meals and making them ahead of time have helped prevent buying last minute take-out that wasn't factored into our budget! And it has indeed freed up extra sewing time for me which is definitely a plus. Now I can usually come home, spend time with my family, and then hide out in my sewing room for a few hours:)
Here are a few of the books I use and recommend. The recipes in these are amazing and I usually will always make a double batch of anything I cook. I'll make some to eat for the night and some to freeze for next time. You can go to Amazon.com to check get a sneak peak into a few of things and check out the recipes for yourself:
What meal preparation tips do you have to share???
I wish I did this - but not enough to actually do it :-) One of my quick meal tips is eggs (in many forms), with a veg and a carb. You can put together this meal in 10 minutes. One example: hard boiled eggs, tomatoes and feta, toast with butter. Voila!
ReplyDeleteI love this idea of sewing tips! What a great tip to start with!!! I've often thought about planning meals ahead of time and freezing them, but I didn't know there were books w/ freezer-ready recipes! That really makes sense! One thing that I often do is buy one or two extra loaves of bread, and when I get home I make a bunch of PB&J sandwiches and some lunchmeat sandwiches (w/out mayo) with the extra loaves. That way I always have sandwiches ready for lunches or snacks or whatever. Oh, and I always have a bunch of hardboiled eggs in the fridge, too...
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the book recommendation, just what I am looking for. I am with you when it comes to preparing a healthy yet not-so-time-consuming meals. I have been relying on Everyday Food magazine from Martha Stewart. It is published monthly and I tried almost all recipes for the last 6 months and they are good. Their specialities are recipes with 6 ingredients or less that can be prepared ahead of time or in a short time. I highly recommend it
ReplyDeleteI read the Taylor-Hough book and tried to make ahead meals but that didn't quite work for me. I came up with a modified approach.
ReplyDeleteI pack serving sizes of plain meats, veggies, etc, into small bags. Then I look at my array and start packing up my own "meal packs" in the larger bags: a meat, 2 veggies and any seasoning packets I throw in. I try and make sure that I vary it up as I pack the chest freezer so no one kind of pack gets repeated too often.
This has worked well for me in times of stress when I can't even come up with a menu or weekly meal plan: then the meal plan is - whatever is on top in the freezer, that's what we are going to work with. This approach has taken a load off of my mind because I tend to be lax in the meal planning department, but if my family has a real meal then they don't feel like I gave them short shrift so I could go and sew.