Tag: Meal Planning

Want To Clear Clutter? Shop Better!

We need stuff.  I recognize that we and our homes require stuff to operate.  Yep, I get it.

But do we really require ALL that we keep? Are those trips to Costco or Sam’s Club, Target or Walmart really helping?

Let’s talk consumables. Consumables are, well, items we consume. Food and drink, paper goods, toiletries, even candles. Consumables are products that we use up and need to replace regularly.  Let’s call them our supplies or inventory.

Groceries? Shampoo and soap? Toilet paper, paper towels? Laundry detergent and cleaning supplies? Yes – All of these things take up space in our homes and require $$$ and time to be replaced.

How we use and replace our consumables can be directly related to our clutter struggles, though, and getting a handle on consumables is a step towards getting a handle on our clutter! Here is how to consume differently.

1. Opt out of your usual trip to the grocery this week. Delve a little deeper into your cluttered pantry, crowded cabinets or over-full freezer and use what you have.

2. Assign a home (shelf, cabinet, closet, etc.) for your consumables so you can find things when you need them (and not have to re-purchase them). Imagine if a store owner didn’t bother to organize her stock room.  The store could lose money and sales if they couldn’t put their hands on their inventory.  We dedicated a shelf in the laundry room to big purchases of toilet paper, paper towels and cleaning supplies, so we can grab what we need, and also easily determine when we need to buy more.

3.  Check your inventory before you shop.  Now that you have a home for your inventory, be sure to check it before you shop.  We usually have extra toiletries like toothbrushes and deodorant, so when those need replaced, we check the inventory basket before adding those to the grocery list.  Which leads me to…..

4.  USE A LIST!  We have a pre-printed grocery list hanging on the fridge all the time.  We are all supposed to add to the list when we realize a need, and then the list in theory is ready for me when I go to the store.  We all, including me, drop the ball sometimes and forget to add items, but that is why I also check our inventory before I leave.  And when I shop, I try to stick to the list.  Not even a great sale price may persuade me to buy an item if I know I neither need it nor have room for it at home.  (And, remember to bring the LIST with you, unlike me at Costco recently.  Or take a picture with your phone!)

5.  Shop for items based on NEED instead of a HABIT it.  My clients learn a lot about their shopping habits when we organize a kitchen.  For example, when we pull many similar items (let’s say canned green beans) from cabinets around the space.   They may say “every week, we eat lots of green beans, so I always pick some up when I’m at the store”.  Then we’ll realize the client’s meal planning has changed, and there were some busy times recently when they ate out a lot, or how the doctor recommended lower sodium veggie choices, or how the toddler decided to not eat green things for a few weeks, etc.  And how that “I buy 4 cans every week” has now wasted $$ and caused clutter.   Buy items because you need them, not because “that’s what I buy every week”.

So, shop a little differently, save some money and clear clutter – all at the same time!  Win, win, win!

Let’s Do Lunch This Week!

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I’ve been tackling a project or habit every week this year so far – for example, last week I tweaked my website.  This week I am re-committing to eating a better lunch.  And for me, that means rebooting my Lunch Packing habit.

I’ve fallen into a bad habit of not packing my lunch when I am out of my office all day.  When I am out, I have three options:

  1. buy fast food wherever I happen to be;
  2. skip lunch until I get home, which usually leaves me feeling crummy; or
  3. settling for a Clif bar or granola bar, which are better than nothing but still not a solid lunch.

Not packing a lunch costs me money, can make me late for client appointments, and is unhealthy in lots of way.

Why is a Packed Lunch better?

  • It’s cheaper:  home-cooked food is almost always cheaper per meal than food we buy out at a restaurant.  In addition, packing a lunch allows us to use our leftovers well.
  • It’s more convenient:  Packing a lunch when I am out and about saves me the time of running in or waiting in line somewhere to buy something.
  • It’s healthier: Planning ahead lets us make healthier meals, with less fat and sodium, and better nutritional content. When I work from home, planning a healthy lunch keeps me from making unhealthy choices in my own kitchen!
  • It tastes better.  I’m a good cook, so my lunches are tastier than what I might buy while I’m out.

How To Make Packing Lunch Work:  Plan ahead, of course!

  • Start small, packing a lunch just one or two days a week at first, if that helps.
  • Invest a little money in a lunch bag and re-usable containers.  You may already have such items in your home.
  • Dedicate a lunch-zone in your kitchen for lunch packing,  Stock it with plastic utensils, napkins, lunch and sandwich bags or re-usable containers, fruit bowl, etc., to make your assembly easy.
  • When you’re at the grocery this week, make sure to pick up healthy lunch items.
  • Make extra for dinner tonight.  I warmed up a delicious leftover cheeseburger last week, and soup and chili are always great the next day.
  • Busy mornings?  Pack lunches at night, after dinner.  We easily forget in the morning, so having the bags packed and in the fridge make success likely!

What’s for lunch?

  • Be creative!  You know what you like, there is no reason that all the things you love can’t be packed in a lunch!
  • A variety of small items is great for me, as I drive between clients or meetings during the day. String cheese, fresh fruit, granola or clif bars, hardboiled eggs (already peeled, of course), pretzels, carrots and other veggie sticks all satisfy my need to snack but are also easily stored and consumed in bits and pieces.
  • If I know I will be seated somewhere as I eat my lunch, I’ll pack the tuna salad, sandwich or leftovers (I just made a batch of this today, for lunches all week).

So join me in a packed lunch this week, and save time and money while eating better!

How To Get a Holiday Meal to the Table On Time!

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During a recent kitchen organizing and menu planning appointment, a client asked “How do you get Christmas Dinner on the table all at once?”  So we came up with some Time and Project Management strategies to help with this challenge!  Here they are, maybe they’ll help you, too!

Keep some parts of the menu simple.  When planning your holiday meal menu, choose a complicated dish or two, if you want.  But not every dish!  Keep at least some parts of the meal simple, to make up for the time-consuming and complicated ones!  For example, pair a simple salad or veggie side dish with a more complicated dessert or entrée.  Better yet, accept guests’ offers to bring a menu item to share.

Prep as much as you can in advance. Hours and even days before your big meal, you can

  • Grate cheese
  • Dice vegetables
  • Make dessert
  • Assemble salads
  • Clean your serving dishes
  • Pre-make entire side dishes, per recipes (like these potatoes.)

Lay out your serving and cooking dishes in advance.  If you plan to serve your dinner buffet-style, lay out the serving 016dishes on your serving table, to ensure there are enough dishes and room for everything.  Use a post-it note or index cards (a friend uses her old business cards) to denote what goes in each dish, so it will be easy to direct your helpers to set up the buffet at mealtime.

Remember that your guests are gathered together for festivities and fellowship.  A complicated menu can be fun and delicious, but folks are together to be together first, and for a great meal second.

Mix your heat sources, and have a plan to keep food warm.  For example, plan to make some of your menu items in the oven, some on the stove top and some in a crock put.  Spreading things out means more space on the stove top or in the oven to get menu items ready to eat on time.  Also, with many menu items cooking at once, some may be ready ahead of your meal time.  Have a plan for keeping food warm until it’s served.

Leave a little wiggle room in your schedule.  Choose your meal time, then aim to have everything ready 20 minutes before that (because something is likely to get delayed!).

Use Project Management Ideas To Make Dinner Happen On-Time!  Let’s use a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner as an example.

  • Pick your Dinner Time, say, 4 pm.
  • Starting with your longest cooking item, like the turkey, determine when you need to start your prep and cooking to get everything on the table at the same time.
  • The turkey takes 5 hours, so start it 6 hours ahead of meal time.  This allows the turkey time to “rest”, and with the turkey out of the oven for that last hour before meal time, you’ll have more oven space for rolls or casseroles (and you can start on the gravy!).
  • Using your meal time of 4 (3:45) pm, work back from your deadline to determine when you need to start a certain task. Mashed potatoes are my example, but you can do this with any menu item:
    • Mashing the potatoes takes 10 minutes or less; boiling the potatoes takes 10-15 minutes; and peeling and dicing potatoes and boiling the water takes 15 minutes.  Plan for at least 30 minutes, start to finish, but 35-40 minutes may be more realistic.
    • If you have more than one dish to get in the oven at the same time, obviously you need to start your prep a little earlier!

Keep some of these ideas in mind the next time you host a big meal, to minimize stress and get the food to the table on time!

Five (Really!) Simple Steps To Start Menu Planning!

Many of my clients have “Start Menu Planning” on their list of projects. And many never get around to it.  Meal planning is such an invaluable practice, for home management and peace of mind, nutrition and wellness.  People know Menu Planning is a good idea, but getting started proves too daunting.

Why Bother with Menu Planning?  Spending 30 minutes once a week to menu plan will:

  • Save money (shopping the sales, using coupons, using your food better)
  • Save time (plan ahead, cook once and eat twice)
  • Decrease stress. (Avoid the 4 pm emergency grocery run FOREVER!)
  • Allow more flexibility in your schedule.  (Be in command of Dinner Time, instead of a slave to it!
  • Provide better nutrition for you and your family.   (Home cooking is almost always the most nutritious, and family dinners are the foundation of family communications!)

But you probably know all that, just like my clients do.  So the hurdles are still “How do I start?  Where do I start?  What is the small first step that I need to take to start making this good idea a reality?”

Start Where You Are, with What You Have.  And Start Right Now. 

It takes little time and no tools. 

Just start.

  1. Start In Your Kitchen, not at the grocery.  Take an inventory, and base your Menu on what you have.  I was recently in a client’s kitchen, and she had made a list of what was in the freezer.  Brilliant!  Most kitchens I am in have too much food, which means most of us more challenged by “How to use what I have?” than by “Help, the cupboards are bare!”  So, now that you know what you have…..
  2. Make a list of your Family Favorites, and start with those (and not intimidating new recipes).  Start with meals you know your family will eat.  Have everyone list their favorites, and work those into your plan.
  3. Start with just today.  This morning, look in the kitchen and decide what is for dinner.  Decide on your dinner time, thenIMG_1520 check your recipes, if you use them, to determine when you need to get started.  Now pull out 2 baking dishes.  Load one on the counter with the non-perishables to make dinner tonight.  Put the other in the fridge with the perishables.  If you are feeling really ambitious, plan breakfast and lunch while you’re at it.
  4. Do this every day for a few days, until you get the feel for how it works.  Now go the next step, and plan a few days ahead.  Look at that!  You’re Menu Planning!
  5. Be open to changing your kitchen and your habits:
    1. A client suggested buying an extra set of measuring scoops to leave in your canisters.  The largest scoop can go in the flour, second largest in the sugar, third largest in the brown sugar, etc.  Or go to the dollar store, grab all 1 Cup scoops, and leave those in every canister. (thanks LG!)
    2. I am working on a chart for my kitchen cabinets.  The list contains all the items that I tend to use, and how many of IMG_1285each I need in a typical 2 week period (that’s how often I do my major grocery shopping).  For example, if I tend to use 4 cans of tomatoes every 2 weeks, I need 4 on hand, or I need to add some to my grocery list.  Your grocery stores have re-order points, consider this inventory control.
    3. I may not have mentioned it lately, but I love my crock pot.  At least once a week, I spend 20 minutes and assemble dinner at 8 am.  I love coming home those days to the smell of dinner cooking!
    4. A friend shared this link on Facebook, just as I was editing this article!  http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/2014/03/plan-prep-party-3-steps-to-a-cooking-at-home-habit/
    5. Also, go to www.cookingwithchefkate.wordpress.com, and sign up to receive Kate’s blogs.  She has a handy “search option”, and so many of my new favorite recipes come from Kate! (and she is a friend and just delightful!)  Check it out!
    6. Use your prep time for twice the impact.  Soup is on today’s menu, which is great because I can spend 10 extra minutes, clean and cut all the carrots and celery I bought the other day, and have carrot sticks for snacks and diced veggies for a meal later in the week.

So, I hope I have taken some of the “overwhelm” out of getting started with Menu Planning.  It really is a great practice, and saves so much time and money.   Start In Your Own Kitchen, Start Small – Just START!

Menu Planning as a Spring Survival Tool!

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(edited from April, 2011 post)dinner time

A friend called Spring “Hot Dog Season”.  I thought it was in deference to baseball, but it was because with all her family’s activities, that’s all she has time to make for dinner these days.   I recommended Menu Planning, and here’s why!

Menu planning is the strategic planning of your meals for the week.  It enables us to use our resources well, saving time and money, and making the most of our storage space. If we had special considerations like food allergies or a special diet, menu planning would be even more invaluable, helping us focus on what we can eat, not what we cannot.

So, how to do it?  On a piece of paper, spreadsheet or on this week’s calendar page:

  1. List the days of the week, and set some themes, if you’d like, to help you come up with ideas (my biggest personal challenge is just coming up with ideas).  For example, ours are:
  • Sunday: Family Dinner / New Recipes
  • Monday: Soup / Salad / Sandwiches
  • Tuesday: Italian
  • Wednesday: Mexican
  • Thursday: Grill-ables
  • Friday: Pizza / Lenten Friday
  • Saturday: Seafood / Grill-ables / New Recipes

2.  Come up with a list of 10-15 Favorites for your family, perhaps in keeping with the aforementioned themes. I try a new recipe every week or 2, and add it to our list of favorites if the family really likes it.

3.  Look at this week’s schedule, noting special events or arrangements.  Then put it all together:

  • Sunday (Sunday Dinner): Family Party in Michigan – No cooking for me!
  • Monday (Soup/Salad/Sandwiches) (CCD – early / easy dinner) – Chili / Mac and Cheese
  • Tuesday (Italian): Spaghetti and Meatballs
  • Wednesday (Mexican): Chicken tacos (make rice and chicken in the morning)
  • Thursday (Grill-ables) (Band After school, late dinner) – Pork Chops and sweet potatoes
  • Friday: (Meatless) – Pizza and salad
  • Saturday: (Grill-ables): (Birthday dinner) Corned Beef, Mashed Potatoes

Tips to make it work:

  1. Realize any good plan is a flexible plan. We use our menu plan as an inventory for what we have on hand. If my plan for today falls through, I can look at the menu for later in the week, and know what else I have on hand to cook.
  2. Enlist Aid: Get your family to help with planning and implementation of menu planning. When my sons help me plan, they are assured of having things they like to eat from every meal, so it is worth it to them to help me out.  In addition, they are more likely to eat  a meal they had a hand in preparing.  They are pretty good sous chefs, cleaning and peeling vegetables, shredding cheese, reading recipes or directions on boxes, setting and clearing the table.
  3. Cook dinner in the morning (or the day before).  Right now, our dinner hour is crazier than our mornings, so we get creative! Anything taking more than 30 minutes to make is relegated to the weekend, the Crock Pot, or a different time of day.  We love Spanish rice with our taco night, but it takes 35 minutes to make, so I make it in the morning and leave it in the fridge to warm up at dinner time. I have gone so far as to assemble 3 casseroles on Sunday for the next three days.
  4. Double up on your prep:
  • Clean and prep your veggies when you bring them home.  We shred a cup or two of carrots for recipes later in the week, dice extra onions or peppers, split up meat into appropriate serving sizes and add marinade while frozen.
  • We brown 3 pounds of ground meat at once, re-freezing it in 1 pound blocks, thawing as needed.
  • We also cook or grill extra meats to put in salads or soups later in the week. Which leads me to ….

5.  Get over your LeftOvers.

  •  You may have to sell the idea of Leftovers to your family, but they are a valuable component of menu planning. If it weren’t for leftovers, my hubby would eat out downtown for lunch every day. At $10 a meal. Yikes.  There are days we would starve if not for leftovers!
  • Call them something else, or Pair them with a positive experience. Instead of left-over night, call it Tater-Tot Night or Dessert night, or whatever will make your own family happy.
  • Pair a left over of one thing with a new side and a new veggie, or make it look different, like grilled chicken breasts from Monday sliced and layered on a Caesar salad on Wednesday.

Off to class and baseball practice and scouts, so glad I planned my dinner!  Try these ideas this week, and let me know what you think of menu planning!

Great Party Part 2: Food Planning and Prep

     I heard from many of you last week when I blogged last week about an upcoming event – thank you! One of you asked what I meant by Food Prep: “How can you possibly have a party without either cooking all day or catering the whole thing?”  Today I’ll shed some light on party planning and food prep.

     Not everyone wants to cook for big events.  It seems like a lot of work, and early food prep seems like extra work and mess, to dirty the kitchen twice.  Also, I have a client that insists on everything being “fresh”, so she has not embraced my make-ahead suggestions, though she struggles to host big events.  Indeed, some foods are best fresh.  But many foods can be assembled a day ahead of an event to make the event go smoother, and still be fresh.  Prep as much as possible a day or two ahead of your event, and leave the final assembly to right before serving. 

I like to cook for parties and events because:

  1. Making some items is cheaper than catering the whole event.  I would rather spend my money on other things.
  2. Home cooking usually tastes better than catered foods.
  3. My family has favorite foods, and I like making those favorites for special events.
  4. Prepping and cooking food a day ahead of an event frees up my time for the event itself, and after years of practice, it’s not really a hassle anymore. 
  5. I like to cook, and it’s enjoyable for me to put a big event together.

Here is next Saturday’s menu:

Appetizers:  These will be completely assembled, so the first person home from church (probably not me) can place them out for guests.

  • Vegetable and dip platter
  • Fruit and dip platter
  • Chip tray with tortilla chips, salsa and guacamole (from Costco, I like theirs better than my homemade ones)
  • A heated chili-cheese dip (3 minutes in the microwave)
  • Deviled eggs (a family favorite)
  • Relish tray
  • Pita chips and hummus (also Costco, I like theirs better)

Beverages:  These, too, will be ready for the first guests, except for the coffee, which will be ready to brew.

  • Iced Tea
  • Beer / Wine / Soda
  • Coffee

Main Course:

  • Fried chicken (catered)
  • Make-ahead mashed potatoes (warmed in the crock pot, click here for recipe)
  • Homemade Macaroni and Cheese (vegetarian, sauce made ahead, macaroni made the morning of the party, warmed in the crock pot)
  • Quinoa and Black Beans (vegetarian, made ahead, served warm or cold, here for the recipe,)
  • Cole slaw (slaw from a bag, assembled with dressing the morning of the event)
  • Bakery bread and butter

Dessert: Strawberry pretzel salad (my mother-in-law is bringing this), cookies (mine) and Ice Cream Cake (catered)

Start with clean counters for good work space, and a clean refrigerator to store your assembled trays and platters.  Also, use cookie sheets to keep each recipe’s ingredients organized (photo).

 Image

Thursday night, when making dinner:

  1. Assemble serving dishes:  egg tray, platters, lidded baking dish for chili-cheese dip
  2. Hard boil eggs, cool and peel
  3. Clean, peel (sons will help with this) and chop veggies
  4. Shred 2 pounds of cheddar cheese (sons and Cuisinart will help)

After Dinner (an hour):  Assemble and refrigerate

  1. Chili Cheese dip
  2. Deviled eggs (son #2 will pipe the filling)
  3. Dill veggie dip (son #2 will help).  The dip tastes better after a day of chilling

Friday night, when making dinner

  1. Brew iced tea
  2. Make cheese sauce for Macaroni, refrigerate
  3. Peel and boil potatoes, make mashed potatoes (special recipe made with sour cream and cream cheese, is really delicious a day or two later!)
  4. Chop Fruit
  5. Assemble Fruit, Vegetable and Relish trays, cover in plastic wrap, place in refrigerator.
  6. Puree Strawberries for fruit dip and refrigerate (Lauren’s Fruit Dip:  8 oz each of Fruit on the bottom strawberry yogurt, cool whip and pureed strawberries.  Mix all together, serve with cut fruit)
  7. Load big white cooler with beer and soda

     So, next time you have a big event coming up, or even a big meal for your family, look at your menu and determine what you can make a day or two before, to free up your time and attention for other things.

Christmas Dinner: Food and Guests Rule

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     When I blogged about menu planning a few weeks ago, my message was about saving time and money.   For special occasions, though, we want to make a meal to delight our guests.  For those events, we focus on the guests, the food and the presentation. 

     Menu planning is always a help, making impressive meals easier!  The process is similar, regardless of the focus of your meals. 

  1. Start with cleaning up your kitchen, cleaning out the fridge and clearing some work space!
  2. Consider your guests, family traditions and other logistics.  For example, I need to make sure there are ample veggie options for the vegetarians coming to Christmas dinner, and someone in the family does not onions.  We also have a Christmas Birthday in the house, so we always have birthday cake for dessert!  Logistically, count guests and plan your servings accordingly.   Remember it’s better to have leftovers than not enough.
  3. Make your menu.  Determine if and what anyone else is contributing to the meal.  Let those folks bringing items know what time dinner will be, so they know when to arrive and can determine if their dish needs to come hot or cold to your meal.
  4. Look at your recipes, check what you have on hand and make your grocery list.  Shop at least a few days ahead of time, so you can start your prep, though you may have to run out for forgotten items or last-minute purchases.  Our menu for Christmas, and my grocery items and notes in parentheses, are as follows:
    1. Ham with glaze (my MIL brings the ham, buy cranberry sauce and marmalade for the glaze, I have the rest)
    2. Baked sweet potatoes (MIL will bring)
    3. Baked or mashed potatoes (have)
    4. Biscuits (have)
    5. corn casserole (a family favorite, check sour cream, I have the rest of ingredients)
    6. green bean amandine or Christmas (petite) peas with lemon zest (buy veggie, and almonds or lemon)
    7. A pear, walnut and pomegranate spinach salad I am cobbling together from 2 recipes, choosing my favorite parts of each.  (here is one, Kraft special spinach salad, the other is from FamilyCircle.com) Should be very pretty and colorful on the table.
    8. Turtle brownies for the birthday boy (buy cake mix and caramel, have condensed milk)
    9. Cheese cake with raspberry sauce (have most ingredients, buy graham crackers and frozen raspberries)
  5. I really love cooking a big holiday meal for my family.  But it takes time in the kitchen on those special days, so I do as much as possible ahead so I can still enjoy my guests.  I can do the following a day or 2 before:
    1. Clean out fridge
    2. Make glaze
    3. Scrub potatoes
    4. Shred cheese for biscuits
    5. Sugar walnuts
    6. Bake desserts, make raspberry sauce
    7. Ice / chill wine and beer
    8. Check table linens
  6. One of my favorite tips:
    1. Wash serving dishes and roasting pan ahead of time, leave them on the counter.   
    2. Write item name on a card (or click here to see my porcelain cards) and leave card on corresponding serving dishes;
    3. Place serving dishes on server or table to make sure there is room for everything.
    4. Helpful guests can place the items in the correct dishes with the correct cards.  Let others help you!!
  7. Check the cook times on your items, then move back from your dinner time to determine when items go in the oven to have them all done at the same time.  For example: 
    1. (4 hours prior) Bake Ham
    2. (90 minutes prior) Bake sweet and regular potatoes (or mash them)
    3. (75 minutes prior) Assemble and bake corn casserole
    4. (half hour prior, take out ham to make room) Bake biscuits
    5. (Last half hour) Steam and assemble vegetable, assemble salad, set table

     What are you doing for Christmas Dinner?  And what can you do ahead of time to make things go more smoothly?  Use menu planning to make a great Christmas Dinner for your guests, while allowing you a chance to get out of the kitchen to enjoy them!  Merry Christmas!

How Can You NOT Menu Plan?

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A woman next to me at the grocery last week admired my organized list.  I mentioned how we always post a list on the refrigerator so we can note when we run out of something, and how the list is handy when it comes to menu planning.  Which naturally led to “Menu planning?  What is that?”  I’ve menu planned for so long, I honestly don’t recall how Not to menu plan.  It is so easy, essential and helpful, I don’t know folks survive without it, especially during this busy time of year!

So, make a calendar of this week and note any special events or scheduling issues.  Then think about what food you have on hand and what you want for dinner this week.   For example,

  • Sunday:  Dinner with friends, take a side dish
  • Monday: home day, Make Soup
  • Tuesday: volleyball game, left-overs
  • Wednesday: Taco!
  • Thursday: Home early, grill chicken
  • Friday: tournament / scouts, Pizza?
  • Saturday: Party

Why should you menu plan this time of year?

Save money and make space.  Menu planning helps you use what you have and make room in the cabinets or freezer for baking or party food.  Make space, buy less, waste less!  Once you make your plan, you may find you don’t need to go shopping!

    1. Plan your leftovers.  I’m home today and have time to make soup, so I am turning a frozen turkey carcass into turkey noodle soup by dinner (hmmmm, I think I can say I have never used the word “carcass” in a blog before!).
    2. Sunday I’ll make a ham, then dice the leftovers for chef salad and a carbonara pasta sauce next week.  I also made extra cheese sauce the other day, to be used on pasta one day next week when we are really busy!

Save time.

    1. Don’t go to the grocery unless you have to!
    2. I can put a roast, soup or stew in the crock pot at 7 am, ignore it all day, and still have dinner ready at 5 pm.  I typically have more food prep time in the morning than I do after school, so this works out well for us.  But making dinner at 7 am requires a plan!
    3. Plan your prep:  I have a great tray that makes it easy to bring veggies and dip to holiday parties.   I peel and cut lots of veggies all at once, then use them for 3 or 4 parties, plus in recipes at home.  And now my sons are old enough to help with the washing and peeling!

Provide good nutrition and peace of mind.

    1. When the weather turns colder and the schedules heat up, we all tend to catch colds.  Good nutrition helps us stay well and keep our energy up for holiday fun and activities.  We eat better and better-for-us food with menu planning.
    2. My oldest son thanked me recently for NOT relying on fast food to feed him and his brothers, even when we’re busy (I was floored, right?!).  He and I agree that fast food is convenient, but we are not used to the grease and carbs and don’t particularly like the taste.

So, as I finished this, I got up and put the diced-last-week carrots, celery and onions in my soup pot. Now I’ll edit it, send it for publication, and get cracking on cleaning out my fridge and freezer and putting together the rest of my menu plan.  Give yourself the gift of time and menu and a little sanity, and give menu planning a try this week!