Friday, August 13, 2010

Dinner Strategy

Lately, with our tighten-the-belt don't-spend-any-money program we have going on while we wait for our property, I realized that getting dinner on the table every night, without fail, and NOT wasting food, is high priority. Now, I realize it SHOULD be EVERY day, but with 3 little ones and a sometimes-busy lifestyle, that didn't always happen. So my strategy lately has been - I HAVE to make dinner a priority, and get it done first thing in the day - enter the crockpot! Now I've definitely used the crockpot a lot, but not every night like I have lately. With little ones, sometimes things would happen to make dinner difficult - an unexpected errand (for us or a friend), cranky children, cranky mom (LOL!), something didn't thaw, or something burned (while I changed a diaper or whatever). So, I decided, thanks to Renee Ellison at homeschoolhowtos.com, to make dinner my highest priority, after my time with the Lord, and get it done in the morning - so that I have 8 hrs. to get it figured out if necessary. Also, sometimes food would spoil before we could eat it - I overbought, or I cooked a new recipe that was a miserable failure, or everyone but me hated it. All these things added up to money in the garbage! So, I'm planning my menus/grocery lists carefully, using up things that will spoil soon FIRST, and just not experimenting for the time being. So far, so good! I noticed it's been a few days since the chickens have even had any scraps (peelings or anything!), and when I dumped a little bit of food off the boys plates into the trash tonight, I realized it had been a while since I'd done that, too. And for the most part, if the kids don't finish it, it goes into the fridge, and the next time they ask for a snack (or even a meal), I give them their leftovers first. Jeremy has been very faithful to take his lunch to work (or eat what's at the office), so no eating out for him!

No comments:

Post a Comment