Yesterday I made Fishmama’s Turkey Pot Pie for supper.
I don’t know how often you make pie crust, but I don’t do it often enough to just “whip it out.” It takes some effort. Time. After making the crust, and stirring the roux and chopping the veggies and assembling the meal, I thought two things:
- This better taste good! (it did)
- I am so glad I made two.
- Yay! We have enough left for pie crust pleasers.
Ok. make that three things.
Even though cooking is one of my favorite activities, there are other things that need to be done around here. In order to save time and money while cooking, I try to maximize my efforts when making a meal.
Simply said, I make more.
If I’m making one pie crust, why not make two? Browning one pound of hamburger, why not brown five? It doesn’t take much more time, and I end up saving money because there are “meals ready to eat” in my freezer on tough days. For our family of 5 (with three small children) it’s often not even necessary to double a recipe. For no extra effort, I split the meal into two pans. As an added bonus, we’re not eating leftovers all week!
In the last two weeks I’ve frozen three extra meals during my regular supper preparation time. All my family will have to do while I’m away at Blissdom is warm up whichever meal sounds good to them. They’ll be thankful for the food, and I’m super glad to have those meals prepared without taking a separate day to do it!
Sometimes saving our time is just as important as saving our money.
How do you save time in the kitchen?
This post is linked to Frugal Friday.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
This is something I’d like to be better about, because you’re also saving time on CLEAN UP, which is the part that I really dislike!
Now why didn’t I think of that?! You’re absolutely right. The less clean up, the better!
What a great idea to make more and freeze it! The only thing I do is make dinner after breakfast if I can, stick it in the fridge then pull it out to cook it that night. My daughter plays softball so on those nights I make a casserole and then put it in to cook when we get home.
I try to get my dinner made before noon, but that doesn’t always happen. I despise the 4-5:30 “there’s so much going on and dinner’s not ready yet” rush. Yuck!
I’ve recently started to do this, since we now have an extra freezer. It’s a great way to save time, and it saves money by allowing me to stock up on what’s on sale.
I don’t know what I would do without my extra freezers!
I couldn’t agree with you more. I do most of the same things.
Definitely something I need to get back to when dh comes home….
I completely agree. I do this when I make lasagna…always made two pans at a time.
my favorite dish to multiply is Enchiladas… because as Hannah (above) said… I hate the clean up!
thanks for the reminder… i have been slacking lately!
That’s a good one! I don’t make enchiladas enough. Need to put those on the menu.
Great, yet so simple! I linked it back to my blog.
Do you have a good recipe for pie crust? How do you make it?
I’m working on that one, because it’s something I’ve never measured. I use butter, flour and ice water, but it’s the ice water measurement that is tricky. I’ll try to get it up sometime soon!