image by KitAy

Ever since I moved out on my own in my late teens my life has been busy, but recently it’s gotten to be even more so. I’m working two part-time jobs, I’m home with the kids part-time, running the oldest to and from school, volunteering, writing for The Sunny Way and trying to keep the house running smoothly. I love it, but it is definitely presenting some new challenges.

This is the kind of schedule that frequently throws people off and sends them running for fast food and convenience foods and I admit there have been some stumbles. Twice this week I have used my 30th birthday as a lame excuse to order take-out because I was tired. I’m realizing that it is once again time to reevaluate my food shopping and cooking routines.

I have a love-hate relationship with grocery shopping and food sourcing. When I have the time for it I love perusing the aisles of the grocery store, or better yet the farmer’s market, taking my own sweet time dreaming up recipes as I go. I love visiting farms and picking and freezing fruits and veggies. I’m lucky because in the summer my schedule allows for that kind of thing and it’s kind of a nice distraction for the kids and me.

Now that fall has come I am dreading every trip to the store and it’s only going to get worse as winter, snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures set in.  It’s one more thing I have to do.

I’ve decided for the winter to take some cues from the restaurants I have worked in. Restaurants keep larger quantities of staples and prepare a lot of things before hand to keep food prep fast and easy.

First of all, I am stocking my pantry with staples. Thanks to a busy summer putting up fruits and veggies I have a lot of local foods easily at hand in my freezer and pantry. I am giving cold storage a shot storing apples and squash in insulated coolers in my garage to protect them from extreme cold. If that works well I’ll probably try storing some root veggies next year, but I thought it would be prudent to test my method on one or two things before I invest a lot of money in stuff that could possibly go bad.

I noted this year what I did and didn’t use of last year’s frozen produce and I have tried to keep only the stuff I’ll actually use. We did use spinach, leeks, tomatoes, berries, peppers, shredded zucchini, rhubarb, freezer jam, frozen fruit sauces and frozen apple slices. We didn’t have as much success with green beans and many of the stronger greens. The green beans were mushy and I am really the only one in the family who likes most of the greens.

After that I sat down and thought about things I use on a regular basis like flour, peanut butter, honey, butter, maple syrup, dried beans, rice, oats, dried fruit, nuts, pasta, Parmesan, and mayonnaise and took a trip to Costco to stock up. I added a few other things, like cans of tomato sauce, black olives and a big container of organic animal crackers for an easy snack item.

Now when I go to the store I buy for a couple of weeks. I get a couple of gallons of milk instead of one, a few dozen eggs, some ripe bananas and some green ones and all the cheese I need for a month.

As I have for a long time, each week I come up with a list of meals I am going to make. In the summer the list is based on what is in season and in the winter it’s based on what I have easily on hand and what needs to be used up. I hesitate to call it a menu since I never make the meals in the order I plan to.

Tonight as I planned my menu I noted that I had half a jar of pasta sauce, half a family size package of chicken (local, family farm raised, antibiotic free), two heads of romaine lettuce and some potatoes to use up so tonight’s dinner was baked chicken and rice and salad with apples, dried cranberries and blue cheese dressing. Wednesday is potato leek soup and popovers, Thursday is my actual birthday so we are having dinner with my dad and Friday will be homemade pizza and salad.

Since I had some time and energy tonight I prepared as much as possible ahead of time. I made the pizza dough and shredded the cheese so that all I have to do on Friday is assemble the pizza and bake it. I chopped up the lettuce for salads and made the potato leek soup so all I have to do Wednesday is make popovers and heat up the soup. By doing those things now, when I have time and energy I will make it easy for me to make dinner on nights when I will probably be tired or strapped for time.

What kinds of methods do you employ to keep meal prep simple, frugal and environmentally friendly? Share your ideas with us in the comments.