Sharing a bit of my heart...

I posted about something heavy on my heart over at My Quiet Place this morning. 

(One of the ) Best Decisions We Ever Made: Chucking Cable

We chucked cable TV and it has proven to be a wonderful decision. The choice was born out of budget cutting. Cable TV is a ridiculously large monthly expense and, let's face it, it is a want and not a need.

Throughout most of our married life, we lived with cable-less TV, watching whatever came over the air. At times, we felt like we were the ONLY people who did this and felt rather out of the loop in many conversations.

When we built our new house, hubby got the bug to have cable and found us a sweet deal. You know that's how they suck you in, right? We got a great price that included a DVR. We were soon fairly hooked on the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Food Network, Nickelodeon, and The Disney Channel. What we got REALLY addicted to is the DVR. It changed the entire way we watched TV. We became selective about what we watched, choosing to record our favorite shows. Then when we would decide to sit down in front of the television, they were there waiting for us. No longer were we ever tied to the TV schedule.

Of course, our introductory price went away and the cost went up considerably, but by then we were hooked. As we would review our budget, trying to find areas to cut, the cable TV would often come up. We wrestled long and hard about giving that up for nearly a year, but finally the finances (or lack of them) won out and we pulled the plug. It was not easy. Sadly, television had become a real part of our family time. What eased the blow was our Netflix subscription and the fact that so many shows are available online on sites like www.hulu.com.

So, as I write this, we have been without the cable TV for just over 6 months. There have been some significant changes in our household. We watch WAY less TV now. My husband used to come home from work and just flip it on to relax his brain after work. He no longer has his recorded shows to watch and we don't get reception for our local stations so his choices are pretty limited. So now, he has gotten in the habit of coming home and reading. What a bonus. His reading is a great example for the kids, too. My children also watch way less TV and it is mostly DVDs or Netflix streaming stuff which means they see virtually NO commercials. It is amazing how much this eliminates the “I wants” and the “gimmes.”

My hubby and I were just having a conversation about this and we both have to agree that ditching the cable has been one of the best decisions we have ever made. Even if our financial situation changed, I cannot see us going back to this. The TV is such a time robber and it doesn't really give much, if any, value back in return. As I get away from the habit of vegging in front of the television, my desire for it is less and less. I am discovering that I would much rather sit and read a book or do a project. I didn't consider myself a heavy TV watcher, but I have gained so many hours back into my day. Selfishly, I do not want to give them back up. I am not too far off from feeling like I could give up the boob tube entirely. I definitely could for myself. I do however use it as a bribe tool for my children. “If you get all your chores and schoolwork done promptly, there will be time for a movie later.”

If you have been considering chucking the cable, I would highly recommend it. Not only will it save you tons of money, but you will reap even greater benefits in your life.

My Favorite Dough

Focaccia bread with rosemary, thyme, olive oil & sea salt.

I really love the green kind of dough that you keep in your wallet, but that is kinda hard to keep around and when I run out of it, I can't just make more.  So, my most favorite dough is a bread dough. It is yummy, useful, and I can make as much as I want without getting arrested.

Yesterday in my post, I included a link to a recipe for bread using the "5 Minutes a Day" technique.  That is a basic dough for making a crusty European style bread like a French baguette.  It is wonderful!  When it is fresh, the loaves from this have an amazing crispy crust with a neat texture on the inside.  However, if you are planning on keeping this for a day, it definitely loses something.  Also, it is not as ideal to make sandwiches, especially for little ones.  They struggle with that tougher crust. 

After feeling confident with the basic dough technique, I began experimenting with various other dough in the book.  We discovered that everyone LOVES challah bread which is enriched with eggs, butter, and honey.  When we are feeling rather decadent, we will make up some brioche which is enriched with LOTS of eggs, butter and honey.  I was still however searching for a simple everyday dough that my family loved.  That's when I discovered olive oil dough.  It is categorized as a dough for making flatbread and focaccia bread or pizzas.  There are several recipes in the "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" book that it can be used in, but it is never discussed as a stand-alone bread.

For our first experiments with this dough, we made focaccia bread (like in the photo).  I rolled it out like a pizza crust, drizzled olive on it and added rosemary, thyme and a bit of French grey sea salt.  It was love at first bite!  We started making this more frequently because not only is it yummy, but it is super fast to make because it is thin and doesn't require much time to rise.

One day I decided to try to use the dough to make a regular loaf of bread.  It turned out beautifully.  It has a finer texture than the basic European style bread and a nice soft crust.  It works wonderfully for sandwiches.  Over time I have also used this dough for, pizza, calzones, rolls, dinner braids with various fillings, and breadsticks, along with countless numbers of basic loaves that got devoured right out of the oven by my family.  (It is hard to tell a group of hungry folks to wait until the bread cools after they have just been smelling it baking.)

Here's how I make it:

OLIVE OIL Bread Dough

3 cups warm water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 T. yeast
1 1/2 T. kosher (course) salt
1 T. sugar
6 1/2 cups bread flour

Mix all of the ingredients together in a large container.  My favorite type is a commercial cold food storage container like this one.  It is just the right size, fits nicely in my fridge and has a lid that just sits on top without snapping tight which is what you need to avoid a messy explosion of yeasty gasses.  Let this rise on the counter 2 or 3 hours.  Then it is ready to use, but will be less sticky if placed in the refrigerator for a while first.  This makes 4 pounds of dough and will keep 10-14 days this way.  Because we can go through a lot of bread, I usually will divide the dough in half and form 2 large loaves.  I let these rise 1 1/2 - 2 hours and then I bake them at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes. 

Another recipe for using this wonderful dough can be found here:  Sweet Provençal Flatbread with Anise Seeds.  I haven't tried this, but it looks delish.

Let me know if you give this a whirl and what you do with it.  Next, I will share with a favorite pizza that I use this dough to make.  It's a fun, fancy gourmet type, but simple to throw together.

Our Daily Bread

Various snapshots of bread that I have made over the past couple of years. 

I have a confession to make...I am one of those women.  I homeschool my kids and I bake my own bread.  I know.  You all want to roll your eyes in disgust.  But I wasn't always like this.  I have been married for over 22 years and it has only been the last two or three during which this strange bread-baking phenomenon has occurred.  Before that, through the years, I had made several attempts to bake bread which had resulted in doorstops.  I affectionately had called them "brick-bread."  Imagine a loaf no more than an inch and a half high and dense enough to break a toe if dropped.  I had decided that baking bread was an impossibility for me.  My parents thoughtfully gave me a bread machine one year.  That was wonderful!  For the first time ever, I was able to produce an edible loaf of bread in my kitchen.  Sheepishly, I have to admit, I had my share of failures even with the machine, but with practice, I prevailed and could consistently churn out yummy loaves.

A few years ago, I got the bug to start baking all of our bread.  It was healthier and saved money.  Every morning I would diligently measure ingredients into my bread maker and we would have fresh bread.  Then, just as we were totally hooked on this, tragedy struck. My bread maker quit working!  I didn't have money in my budget to replace it either.  Faced with the option of returning to store bought bread, I decided that this was the time to master the art of bread making from scratch.  With determination, I began to read about bread making techniques and actually figured it out. I made bread!  (Imagine me yelling this just like Tom Hanks yelled "I made fire!" in Castaway when he finally succeeded.)

So, I began a new ritual.  I would get up early, measure out my ingredients, mix them, and knead them (and knead them....and knead them....) and set the dough to rise.  A couple hours later I would punch the dough down, form loaves and let this rise again.  Then I could bake it.  It took at least half a day of babysitting the dough and working with it.  It took longer if I was busy and didn't get back to it right away.  But when you smell that bread baking to perfection in the oven, it is all worth it.  Oh that smell!  I was a lot of work, though, and my family can devour a 2 pound loaf of bread at one meal.

This process continued for quite some time.  Then I discovered the the best technique EVER for making bread.  Seriously, it is revolutionary.  I was reading a blog that referred to the book, "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day."  I was intrigued and decided to see if my local library had it.  It did so I checked it out.  The book spells out a process of mixing up ingredients for 4 pounds of bread dough all at once in a big container, letting it sit on the counter to rise, and placing it in the refrigerator.  When you want bread, you whack off a hunk, form a loaf, let it rise and bake it.  Do you notice what is missing from this process.  Think about it; I'll give you a minute...NO KNEADING.  None!  It also saves time because you make a lot of dough at once and then can use it to make a fresh loaf each day. And the bread is flipping fantastic.  I can tell you, once I tried this technique, I won't ever go back to the long, tiring process that I was doing before.

Are you intrigued?  The recipe and process for making the basic bread dough in the book is available online here:  Back to Basics ~ tips and techniques to create a great loaf in 5 minutes a day.  It may look a bit long and daunting at first, but I assure you, once you understand the process it is SO simple. 

I now own the book and the newest version, "Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day."  I bake 2 large 2 pound loaves of bread at least every other day, sometimes even daily.  I can manage this even when we are at our busiest.  My point is, that if baking bread is something you desire to do, you can, too.  I highly recommend giving this a try.


I will have to do a post on what has become my "go-to" bread dough from this book.  I try to keep some on hand at all times and use it in a variety of ways.  Stay tuned for that.

The Blessing of Unmet Needs

Wanting...
Lately I have been struggling with having many things that I feel like I need and want and not having the means to get them. The tight budget can be so exhausting at times. If I am honest, I have to admit that I get so tired of worrying about every dime that gets spent and feeling guilty for spending a few dollars to grab a cup of coffee with my hubby or going over my grocery budget. When I see a need, I want to be able to fill that need and the simplest way to do that is to purchase something to meet that need. I can't do that at this point in my life; my budget will not allow it. I cannot even tell you how many times I have questioned God about why He is bringing us through this financial valley. I know in my heart that it is for His good purpose and I cannot deny how much this process of struggle has grown me.

Lately one of my struggles has been in the area of curriculum for homeschooling my children. I basically have nothing in the budget for it right now. If I buy something, I will have to steal money from another area of my budget. Since most of my budget expenses are fixed bills, I don't really have many areas with any play. I doubt that I can convince my hubby to eat beans and rice for a week so that I can buy a couple of books for school. So, I have been seeking God in this. He is the one who has given me this high calling to educate my children and He is also the one in control of our finances (or lack of them). Every day I have been seeking His wisdom in this area. God is so good and gracious. He is teaching me about what is really important and about how we learn. He has reminded me of what He taught me many many years ago when I first started on this adventure of homeschooling. I was struggling then, too, with how to teach my child. She was having some difficulties and not picking up on things, reading in particular, very well. I tried several curriculums and techniques, beat my head against the wall, and cried out to God. His answer to me was to back off on trying to make her read. So for nearly two years, I rarely forced her to read anything. I read aloud to her, she listened to scads of audio books and learning continued in other areas. Oh, I encouraged reading, but I just didn't push it. This process forced me to constantly seek God and think a lot about my goals in homeschooling. I came to the conclusion that even if my children grew up illiterate, but they loved the Lord with all their heart, soul and mind, I would have to say that I had succeeded. God can accomplish anything with a yielded heart, even one with zero academic knowledge.

Now, just to clarify, my goals are not to have my children grow up illiterate, [wink] but having this idea in mind, puts things in perspective. It is important to remember what is the most important. It is so easy with homeschooling to get wrapped up in the curriculum and worrying about the body of knowledge that you are trying to cram into their little minds. But, because I can't just run out and purchase a curriculum, I am forced to stop and really think through what is important in the education of my children. Because I have to be more creative and thoughtful in finding resources to teach them, I am seeking God for His wisdom. If I had plenty of money right now, I would have picked out curriculum and we would be going along our merry way working on them. I would have looked at a some government educational standards list and said we need this subject and that, forced my children to do those subjects and checked it off my list. Yay, job done. But what if that is merely the education that society says they should have and not even remotely close to what the Lord deems important for their specific lives?

So, as painful as it is, I have to say that I am thankful for our financial strife. It has forced me to look at what is really important and see that God has a better way for us. This applies to all of our areas of life, not just homeschooling. These unmet needs and wants have driven me to my knees to seek God's Wisdom – what a blessing that is!

It's Fair Time! (Kettle Corn Recipe!)

I know that it has been fair time all summer, but Fall is when the really good fairs happen.  In my neck of the woods, Fall is the time for the country fairs.  They are full of real artisans and craftsmen selling their wares.  My all-time favorite is the Johnny Appleseed Festival.  They have strict requirements that don't allow anything modern in appearance.  There are wood carvers, blacksmiths, civil war era reenactors, along with every kind of traditional craft you can imagine.  Then there is the FOOD:  fresh apple cider, caramel apples, corn on the cob, ham & beans, apple dumplings, funnel cakes, sausage burgers, and one of my favorites, caramel/kettle corn.  Around here, there is a church that does caramel corn in a big copper kettle over an open fire at all the fairs.  It is not the heavily coated traditional caramel corn, but it more closely resembles the lighter coated kettle corn.  It is so yummy to get fresh while it is still hot!  If you have never tried kettle corn, you need to.  Put that on your bucket list.

Did you know that making your own kettle corn is a piece of cake and you can do it right on your stove-top at home?  Once you try this, you will wonder why you never did it before.  The other bonus, is that it is a Cheap Eat.  I mentioned it before when I was talking about Cheap Eats: Popcorn a while back.  Since then I have made it quite a few more times and tweaked the recipe a bit.  I make mine in a Whirley Popper.It has a stirrer inside that keeps the popcorn from burning or sticking.  I just throw 3 simple ingredients in the pot, turn the heat on high, and turn the crank.  Now, I have never tried it, but I don't see any reason why you could not just do this in a big pot.  I would probably keep a wooden spoon or spatula handy to stir it at least until the kernels start popping.  At the fairs, all they have is a big copper pot and a big wooden paddle to do just that.

Kettle Corn
1/4 cup oil (vegetable, corn, canola)
1/4 cup sugar
Scant 1/2 cup unpopped popcorn


Throw all of this in a stovetop popcorn popper or big pot.  Place over high heat and stir until popcorn pops.  As soon as the popping slows, remove from the heat.  Otherwise, the sugar will burn.  Dump it in a big bowl and lightly salt with regular table salt.  Don't forget this step; this is what makes it magical!  Salt it while it is still hot and sticky.  The combination of the sweet and salty together is pure bliss.  I will warn you, though, don't sit with a big bowl of this in your lap - you will regret it because before you know it, you will have consumed way more than you intended and will feel helpless to put the bowl down.  (Please, don't ask me how I know this.)
Go forth and enjoy this fun time of year at the fairs.  Then let the fair food live on in your kitchen making many, many bowls of yummy kettle corn. 

Time Management

It's that time of year again...back to school time.  So, you're like, "Don't you homeschool?  Don't you even homeschool year round?"  Yup, yes I do.  But there is nothing like sales for school supplies and hearing all my friends preparations to send their children back to school to make me feel the need for some planning and regrouping.

First, I always have to ask myself "why?"  Why in the world don't I send my children to school and take this enormous burden to educating them off of myself?  That's a whole other topic that I am not going to go into right now, but suffice to say, I know that this is God's calling for me and the right thing to do for my family.  It is good to think about that and remind myself why I go to this effort.

Next, I feel the need to plan things out and make sure we are on course.  Although we school year round, I find that I get a bit slack in the summer.  By the end of the summer the lessons are getting very relaxed.  This year I even feel like I have let our tried and true routines slide quite a bit, too.  It is time give our little homeschool a kick in the pants.

So, I am thinking a lot about our daily schedule and how to make it all fit.  There is so much that I need to squeeze into a day.  Without careful planning, it is just not all going to happen.  I realize that I can't figure this out on my own; I need help.  So, I have been seeking God's Wisdom during my morning quiet time.  I'll share a bit of what I have discovered:

"So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air." 1 Corinthians 9:26

"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6:33

"Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time." Colossians 4:5 (Emphasis mine)

"For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?"  Luke 14:28

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." Ephesians 5:15-16

"O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!"  Psalm 39:4-5

"Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." James 4:13-17

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:"  Ecclesiastes 3:1

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,"  Ephesians 5:15

"And Jesus said to her, 'Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.'"John 2:4

"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed." Mark 1:35

"So as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God." 1 Peter 4:2

There is much that God has to say about time management.  Lessons that I learn from this are:

• God desires us to use our time wisely.
• God wants us to plan ahead.
• When God causes circumstances to change, we need to roll with it.
• We are to put God first in our priorities.
• There are "seasons" for everything. Blocks of time for each purpose we have.
• Jesus had His time planned out.
• Jesus got up early to pray to God.

I am really trying to think this through and apply it to my life.  I am in the process of mapping out my days into blocks of time (seasons) so that it is possible to get all I need to do done.  But as I type this, I realize that I am out of time. (How ironic!) So, I will have to share that in more detail on another day.  Until then, God's speed to you!

Photo:  My Regulator Clock that hangs in my living room

Oh, the futility of it all...

I am having a down day. I look around my home and am overwhelmed with how many messes and how much work surrounds me.  It takes SO MUCH effort just to keep things with some slight semblance of order.  I feel like I have to be constantly picking up, cleaning, instructing the kids, cooking, doing laundry...did I say picking up?  I feel like I can just ignore the clutter that accumulates for a few hours and it is overwhelming.  Why are we all so messy?  Some days it all seems so futile.  I know that everything that I clean right now will probably be just as dirty again in a matter of hours (if not minutes!)  As soon as I am done with one meal, I am on to planning the next.  I can work diligently getting all the clothes in the laundry room washed and put away, but as soon as I turn around, there is a new pile of dirty clothes awaiting me.  It never ends; I can never get ahead.  I have things I would love to accomplish - great ambitions, but I feel like I am too busy doing the mundane over and over and over to even think about doing more.

I don't always feel this way.  There are days when I feel like I could take on the world.  I have been trying to figure out he secret to those days because feeling like I do now is no fun.  I think much of it has to do with how I am physically feeling.  I mentioned last week that I have been fighting a cold and allergies. I am tired and my head and body ache.  I feel like I don't have the luxury of just being sick and resting.  So, how does one get past this feeling and drive through it?  This truly forces me to rely on God's strength because I truly don't have much on my own.. 

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  Philippians 4:13

I pray for God to show me the eternal camouflaged in the mundane, the purpose in the redundant.  I know in my heart that it exists.  Sometimes it is just so hard to see it.

Stretching the Food Dollars: Simplify

My last and final word on stretching your grocery dollar is to train yourself to eat more simply. We don't have to eat elaborate restaurant type food in big portions for every meal. This is an easy trap to get in the habit of setting our food expectations high, especially if you are used to eat out often. There is nothing wrong with a simple meal of beans and rice with a piece of fruit. It is healthy and cheap. The other day I cooked up some rice and melted some cheddar cheese over it to serve to the kids for lunch. They loved it! It was a simple and healthy meal paired with carrot sticks and canned fruit. Think about what simple foods your family loves. Make a meal out of this. Yes, we have the big meals, too, but keeping it simple is a very good thing, too.

Other tips for stretching the food dollar:
Eat less food. Don't wait until you feel full to stop eating. Put your fork down when you no longer feel hungry. It takes time for that food to hit your stomach and give you the feeling of being full, but once your brain realizes it has some good food in your stomach, it will turn off the hunger signals. You will eat less food, thus saving money, and perhaps loose a couple pounds in the process.
Avoid processed foods. Although that convenience food made look delightful on the box, it is full of extra fat, flavorings, fillers and chemicals that you don't really want. You are paying for the convenience of the quick, no-brainer prep, but if you learn some basic cooking skills, you will realize that you can make something from scratch in about the same amount of time. It just takes a bit of planning ahead to have the right ingredients on hand.
Set daily food budget challenges for yourself. I do this often, especially when the finances are extra tight. I will set a goal to feed our family of 8 for only $10 per day. I have to tell you that this is a bit challenging and takes some creativity. I set a goal of $5 for dinner, $2 or less each for breakfast and lunch which leaves $1 for snacks. Unfortunately, my children can blow the snack budget with just a piece of fruit each.
If you want to try this, here are some blogs with budget conscious recipes:

• 30 Bucks a Week – a couple living in New York City living on $30 per week in groceries.
  
• $5 Dinners – Just like the name implies. Also includes, tips, meal planning, and online coupon links.
  
• Budget Bytes – Frugal recipes with costs listed.
  
• Broke and Healthy – Cheap, healthy recipes with costs listed.
  
• Homespun and Cheap – Economical homemade meals
  

This wraps up this series on stretching the food dollars. I hope you have enjoyed it and gleaned some ideas from it.
I would love to hear from you. What are some of your ways to stretch your food dollars? I'm certain that there are many great ideas that I haven't even begun to touch upon. Leave a comment and share your stories.

Stretching the Food Dollars: Menu Planning

What is menu planning? It is planning out your meals in advance to avoid standing in front of the open refrigerator at 5pm like a deer in headlights struggling to figure out what to cook for dinner. That is a terrible feeling and will often incite a budget-blowing fast food grab or restaurant expedition. At the very least, lack of menu planning will require a quick run to the grocery store for that one item that you need for the dinner you just figured out. I know for myself that there is no such thing as a quick run into a grocery store for just one thing. I always end up picking up several other items along the way. Next thing you know, I have wasted over half an hour in the store and have dumped over $40.  So, menu planning can save you a bit of money because it eliminates the temptation to eat out and it saves you money at the store by eliminating extra trips and helping you buy just what you really need.


I have to confess. Although I think meal planning is an awesome thing to do, I am not as disciplined in this area as I would like to be. In my mind, I would love to have several monthly meal plans that I could rotate through. Each would be filled with breakfasts, lunches and dinners that my family loves complete with grocery lists. I have really tried to accomplish this, but I end up not sticking to it. I think there is something rebellious in me that doesn't like to be boxed in by what a menu plan says that we should eat. I do better with a loose weekly menu plan to aid in the making of my grocery list. You have to figure out what works best for you. If you are a very disciplined person who requires organization, detailed monthly meal plans may be the perfect fit for you. If you are a person who craves a bit of spontaneity, you may enjoy a looser weekly plan like I use. The key is finding a what you are comfortable because you will stick with it.

Let's discuss some different ways to go about menu planning:

Just plan dinner meals. In our house, we try to keep breakfast and lunch on auto-pilot. We have a list of basic breakfasts that we rotate through. (oatmeal, cereal/granola, eggs, toast, breakfast burritos, and Saturday is usually pancake day) Lunch is typically leftovers from last night's dinner. If we don't have any, or there is not enough, we will eat usually sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, or ramen noodles.

Make a meal list. I have made and regularly update a list of tried and true meals that I know how to make with ease and my family enjoys. I like to group them by main ingredients, usually type of meat used, so if I get a great deal on chicken breasts, I can go to my list of chicken meals for inspiration. I also group them by type of food (i.e. Italian, oriental, etc.) I posted a list a couple of years ago that seems pitifully meager compared to the variety of foods that I make. One of these days I am going to make a great master meal list that I can keep updating, but at this time I usually just start from scratch listing meals that are fairly current for us.

Fill in the calendar. The simplest way to create a meal plan is to take a calendar and start filling in the blanks. You can do a month at a time, 2 weeks or even just one. That depends on how much variety you need. The Simple Mom has a great idea of using Google Calendar for this purpose. She creates a separate calendar just for menu planning and adds her meals for each day. She sets them up to repeat every two weeks (which is a fairly simple thing to do with most calendar programs). If you can come up with two weeks worth of meals, you are instantly done for the month this way. Sometimes it is nice to menu plan right on your regular calendar so you can see what you have going on. That way if you have something going on right up until the dinner hour, you will know that this is a good day for a crockpot meal that will be ready for you as soon as you arrive home.

Use a premade menu plan. There are cookbooks or even subscriptions to menu plans that have already been set up for you with grocery lists you can take to the store. I discovered this several years ago and subscribed to a weekly menu plan service. Most are fairly inexpensive and the cost is readily made up by visiting the grocery store with a shopping list and avoiding eating out because you know what you are cooking each night and have all of the supplies already. This is an easy way to jump into the meal planning arena.
Here are just a few of the menu plans available online:

• Dinner Planner – I subscribed to this several years ago and loved it.

• Menus for Moms – They have several different menu plans that will suit the needs of a variety of families. They even have a menu plan based on the items in the Angel Food Ministries monthly box that I mentioned last week.

• Saving Dinner – I have also used this menu plan and have enjoyed it. Then I discovered that you can buy their cookbooks that each have a year's worth of their meal plans and I did that.

Do some once-a-month or mega cooking. The original book, Once-a-Month Cooking discusses this concept which is basically shopping and preparing a month's dinner entrees in one day and having them in the freezer to use all month. It is economical because you can buy things is bulk quantities, you save time because you do all of your chopping, etc., at one time. The book maps out how to shop and prepare 30 meals all in one day.  I find this to a bit overwhelming and exhausting with small children underfoot.  I remember that the very first time I tried this, I had a restless 18 month old and no other adult support.  It was a very LONG day. 


I have decided that I prefer mega-cooking.  That is doubling, tripling or quadrupling a meal as I am cooking it for dinner and freezing the excess.  I like to do this with meatloaf, lasagna, casseroles, and homemade enchiladas.  I doesn't take much more time and is an easy way to stock up the freezer.  Another good resource for freezing meals ahead is Dinner's in the Freezer.


Plan by the week.  Even if you don't feel like you can pull off a monthly meal plan, working out a weekly one will help considerably.  It can help you stick to a weekly grocery trip and save you money if you have the discipline to stick to your list.


Meal plan according to the sales.  Often I go to the store for my staple and basic items and fill in with meats that I can find for a good deal.  This is when your list of meals (above) can come in handy.  If I got a great deal on chicken breasts, I will pick out various chicken meals.  If you can scour your local grocery store adds before you shop, you can make a meal plan so you know exactly what else you will need to complete your meals.
 
At the very least, meal plan by the day.  Often I am not organized enough to have a meal plan.  I usually have a good supply of basic foods that I use often and some sort of meat that I have found for a good price in the freezer.  So, during my morning quiet time, I will decide what I will make and pull anything that I will need out of the freezer.  Anything that I can prep early, I will do while I am in the kitchen at breakfast or lunch.  Often I will put something together after lunch and place it right in the oven and set the delay start.  Then I can blissfully go about my afternoon without having to stop and think about dinner.  

Whether you plan out meals a month at a time, a week at a time or even a day at a time, planning can save you a lot of time and money.