When you have three children, you cook when you can. That is why, although it is early Sunday morning, I am about to do some cooking in the kitchen to feed our bellies, and to feed our freezer.
While I understand that some people don’t understand getting up early, for a natural morning person, this is the time that I get the most accomplished. It is a nice peaceful time for serving my family and soaking in all of our blessings. The house is quiet with few interruptions, and my energy level is high.
It is good to take advantage of your natural rhythms and do some meal planning when you can.
I’m still trying to get our grocery bill down, and having food that it easy to prepare during the busy week really helps. So does taking advantage of the grocery sales to stock up on food when it is available. This combination of taking advantage of grocery sales, and then optimizing the food that we get by creating a variety of meals that uses each ingredient to its best advantage, are two strategies that seem to work well for me in this war against high food prices.
It isn’t as complicated as it sounds. While I have a general idea of what meals I will be cooking, I don’t actually do a full meal plan for the week. I know a couple of dishes I want to make, and then fill that in with whatever we feel like having. It is sort of meal planning, the “lite” version. If we don’t feel like chicken again, I’ll just open the freezer and pull out some ham slices, for example.
So, this morning, I’ll be filling the crockpot with ingredients for “Taco Bake” (if it turns out well, I’ll share the recipe), filling the bread machine with ingredients for pizza dough (to be frozen), and making up some egg muffin sandwiches for both breakfast and the freezer.