Heart of the Home Part 2
Hopefully you have taken the time to organize your cooking and baking centers and are ready to move on to the pantry, fridge and meal planning. If you missed the first part of the article on organizing your kitchen, email me at carydf8@aol.com and I will send it to you.
The Pantry – The pantry functions best when it has some loose organization similar to the categories you find in the grocery store. No matter what the size of your pantry, grouping like items together will help you find and use what you have. If you are a mega shopper then you might have to create a mini store in the garage or out of the way cabinet or closet to house the extras. No one needs 5 boxes of oatmeal in the pantry at once unless you are feeding a mini army. J
Group items together such as:
Breakfast foods
Canned fruits
Canned meats
Canned veggies
Starches (pasta or boxed items)
Baking items
Condiments
Your categories will be determined by the foods you buy. Keeping your groceries grouped together will help to insure that you use what you have before buying more and having to throw out unused, out of date foods. As you group your foods together check for out of date foods and pitch them.
Find a generic grocery list on your grocery store’s web site, make one up or use one from a Word document on your computer. Checking your pantry before you shop will keep you from missing items you need or over buying what you already have. I take 5 minutes to straighten my pantry each week as I am making my grocery list to purge anything old and to check for needed items. You can keep the list on the fridge or inside the pantry to write down items as you empty or use them up.
The Refrigerator - Using these same principles you can tackle the refrigerator. Group like items together and check for out of date products. Keep leftovers in clear containers in the front of the fridge to be sure they don’t get lost in the back and become science projects. J I do a quick straighten and wipe in the fridge/freezer as I am making my grocery list as well and if all your items are grouped together it is easy to see which ones are out. Taking just a few minutes to do this before you shop will make putting up the new groceries easy.
Meal Planning – Now that you have your pantry and fridge cleaned out let’s talk meal plan. Your meal plan can be as simple or as detailed as you like. Here are some options:
- Look at your weekly schedule and determine how many meals you will need to prepare at home and choose meals for those nights. You can change the day you decide to fix the meal but having the ingredients will make it possible to fix a meal on the night you need to. Remember to defrost any freezer items beforehand to make meal prep quicker.
- If you cook most nights of the week and have kids at home, choosing theme nights can help make meal planning easy and fun. For example: Monday- Italian, Tuesday- Mexican, Wednesday – American, Thursday- soup and salad, Friday- Fish, Etc. Once you have chosen your theme nights, let each family member give their favorite theme dish which should give you plenty of options for each night. You can easily rotate everyone’s favorite dish throughout the month and not have to work hard to plan a month of meals.
- If you are up for some cooking fun you can try Mega cooking. There are several books on the market to explain this concept. Basically you cook a months worth of meals in a couple of days and just have to bake or reheat to have dinner ready.
- If you are not quite up for a mega cooking but want to be efficient with your time you can do what I call double or triple recipe. If you are taking the time to make a pot of chili or other family favorite that freezes well, go ahead and double or triple the batch and put the extra in zip lock bags in the freezer ( label well!) Then when you need a quick meal, defrost and heat.
- Some people prefer to be creative every night so making sure your pantry and fridge are stocked with basic meat, starch and veggies you can whip up a meal when needed.
- Some people prefer to shop weekly sales and coupons to plan their weekly menu.
- My favorite mode of cooking is the crock pot. I love to come home to the meal smelling up the house. Most foods cook beautifully in a crock pot and I can prepare the meal the night before or early in the morning so that it is ready by dinner. Pick up a crock pot magazine or check for recipes on-line.
Once you have created your weekly menu, checked your pantry and fridge then write or circle what you need to buy at the store. This can save you time and money and keep the “what’s for dinner?” question from sending you into a panic as well as keeping you from running the grocery store all week. J
Written by Cary Farrell
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