We are two weeks into my grocery fast (see the intro post here), and I already have unique situations and “special” circumstances to navigate. But like I always told my kids as I was raising them to do what they had to do every single day: “Every day is special, but every day can’t be a special day!” In other words, when we look at everything that comes up as an occasion to skip our school plan, not do our cleaning, or eat sweet treats, we will not be successful.

The same is true with my grocery fast. I could easily say a week or so in that I can’t keep it because we’re having movie night with the kids; I need to spend more because some of the kids are coming for Sunday dinner; I need to take some food to my step-mom; I need to make something for our ballroom dance; and on and on….

Or I could come up with some creative options that work for my grocery fast and for the “special” circumstances.

Below are a couple of links to products I use and love. I am an affiliate for Amazon.com. If you click on the links below I will earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of this blog!

So here were my special circumstances and solutions for the first two weeks:

1) Family Movie Night: Stone Soup!

I sent the kids a text through the family thread telling them about the grocery fast (they had been telling me for years to empty my freezers!) and that we would be having “stone soup” for the movie night. They asked what they could bring and I told them we pretty much had it covered except for regular bread (they don’t like sprouted), peanut butter, and dessert.

The older kids knew what “stone soup” meant as when they were little, in honor of the story by the same name in which villagers brought foods one at a time to add to a pot of water with a stone in it—and it “magically” became a soup, we had a tub in the freezer marked Stone Soup in which leftover meats, sauces, and veggies went into after a meal (if there wasn’t enough of these things to have as leftovers or I didn’t have another plan for them). When this tub was full, we defrosted it and made “stone soup.” They knew we were having soup made out of whatever I had in the house!

The party was a great success. Actually, for some reason, everyone said it was the best chili I had ever made. I know that this is unrelated to the grocery fast, but I was happy about that! Oh, and my daughter left her half-filled peanut butter jar, so that is one less thing to add to the list this month!

2) Food to Give Away/Take to Dance

Once a week we go eat lunch or dinner on the weekends with my step-mom. My dad died in the spring, and she has no family but us. It has been hard to continue the weekly visits after my dad’s death (many, many Saturday tears upon leaving her apartment), but I am happy to invest in her as she invested in my dad for nearly forty years. We either eat in her Independent Living cafeteria, take her out, or take food in. She has extra food credit right now in the cafe, so that part was easy. When we go, we take her things she needs, take her out to shop, stay and play games, and sometimes take her food or goodies that she doesn’t make for herself or get in the cafeteria. This was easy enough as we had lots of leftover soup, cornbread, fruit salad, and dessert from our movie party! (And she said it was the best chili she had, had in a while too!)

The next day was a ballroom dance, and I am known for bringing homemade treats or appetizers, so I didn’t want to disappoint! I had a zip-lock bag of frozen peanut butter cookie dough, the aforementioned leftover peanut butter my daughter left here, some chocolate chips from when I made Christmas fudge, and leftover holiday M and M’s. Enter “Cookie Candy Bars”! These are seriously the easiest thing to make and everybody LOVES them. You just press the dough into a 9×13 baking pan and bake it. Then melt chocolate chips with peanut butter and spread over cooled bars. Then crush and sprinkle M and M’s (or other candy). (See my low carb/healthy recipe for this here or the quick, sugary version here!)

3) Leftovers, Leftovers, Leftovers!

After our Christmas on December 30th, we had sooo many leftovers. I sent a bunch home with the kids, but I still had too much food left. I knew I was doing the Grocery Fast, so I was even more conscientious than I normally am with leftovers.

To start with, we didn’t make anything new for the first week. This was tough—we were getting tired of Christmas food! But we held strong (except for making new green beans every couple days!).

I added a couple of pieces of fresh fruit to the sad-looking fruit salad and brought it back to life. Ray enjoyed this as did my step-mom. (I sometimes do this when I’m near the end of a fruit salad but the dressing is still good—though I never do this with a fruit salad containing bananas. It’s just not kind to the eaters!)

By the end of the first week, we cut into shreds (with scissors) the leftover ham, turkey, and roast beef. We bagged these and labeled them “Shredded Beef With Gravy—1 Pound Fully Cooked,” “Shredded Turkey With Broth–1/2 Pound Fully Cooked,” etc. (It’s important to note the state your freezer foods are in if you freeze them in different states all the time like I do.) Looks like we’ll have more Stone Soup soon! 🙂

I usually throw out whatever sugary foods we have after a get together (that the kids don’t take home). Thinking of my grocery fast, I actually threw out all the pies except for a piece or two for me that I had saved for my eating window and several pieces I took to my step-mom for her freezer. However, I didn’t throw the cookies and candy out, I tubbed them up, labeled them, and froze them for the future. I feel like I have enough self-control with Plexus and Daily Intermittent Fasting (IF) that they will be safe there until we have an occasion to use them. (Hopefully!)

4) We Used Some Foods Up!

We used up 3 pounds of ground beef and 3 pounds of chicken breast when we cooked them for the soup on family movie night. I was more careful than usual with the meats—only used ¾ of them in the soups and tried not to make more soup than we could use that night, give to my step-mom, send some with our soup fiend son, and eat a meal or two of it the next week. (As a matter of fact, when Ray came home from work and saw the beef chili, he said, “Is that going to be enough?” He has NEVER said that before!! And we did use it all after we sent some home with the aforementioned son and step-mom.)

But I rationed the meat and kept out ¼ of the ground beef and ¼ of the chicken for us to make another meal out of it for ourselves. I normally would have used it all and just made the soups meatier. That was a win on rationing AND using foods up!

I had eight boxes of various types of crackers! I had bought them when our son came home from his internship, a little at a time, and Ray and I don’t really eat crackers much at all and our son moved in with his brother—so there they were. I’m happy to report that we used two of them on soup night with the fam! (I put out leftover cheese spread from Christmas as well.)

For Sunday afternoon football, I was still in my fasted state, so Ray gathered up all the leftover frozen appetizers from our family Christmas Eve party and baked them all in the oven. This was a win because we often have little zipper bags of different frozen appetizers after family parties—so purposely using these rather than making nacho bar, etc., like we often would, was great! (I don’t watch football anyway, so I went to my room and read while they ate!)

And….we used some frozen veggies! Since starting Daily IF, I have become a bit of a food snob. I really like to make Ray fresh stir fried veggies or roasted veggies, and I really love my fresh green beans. I want to get to the bottom of all of these bags of frozen vegetables, so this was a start!

5) I Only Spent $35 the First Two Weeks!

I made it two weeks without much expense! Yay me! I went to Sam’s and bought apples, oranges, fresh green beans, and Romaine lettuce. I was super excited about that!

However, I had another problem to face in cutting my groceries down to an average of $25 a week—I was addicted to an expensive brand of dry shampoo! I had tried the $4 bottles (several); I had tried some of the $8 bottles, but the only brand that worked with my hair color (and that I could stand the smell of!) was Matrix Biolage Waterless Clean and Recharge Dry Shampoo ($18 a bottle!). And I used at least two bottles a month. I couldn’t use 1/3 of my grocery budget during the grocery fast on dry shampoo! (I have seriously tried so many cheaper ones—and I don’t HAVE to have a certain regular shampoo, honest!) But then I saw a thread on a FB friend’s timeline about dry shampoo and someone said she had tried many of the same ones I had tried and finally found one that didn’t leave white residue and didn’t choke you with the smell—and it was half the price of my normal one. I ordered it on Amazon and loved it! I was able to cut my dry shampoo expense in half the first month of the grocery fast! (The new, less expensive, but still wonderful one is Eva NYC Freshen Up Dry Shampoo.)

So that was my $35 for two weeks of groceries—apples, oranges, green beans, lettuce, and dry shampoo! Oh, and ice…have to have my ice every day for my water since I pretty much only drink water and Plexus Slim—and I drink a lot of water!

It’s been a great two weeks! I can’t say that I feel like my freezers, fridges, and cabinets are going down quickly—but I know they will as I stick to the plan!

P.S. How do you stop buying so many groceries and use up what you have? Any good leftover tricks?

The post My Eight Week Grocery “Fast” – Weeks 1 and 2 appeared first on Character Ink.

Pin this chore list on Pinterest!

Click here to buy colorful, printable chore lists for toddlers through tweens.

If you want more chores, efficiency, and organization help, check out the podcast episodes listed here.

The post Age Appropriate Chores for Toddlers appeared first on Character Ink.

In a previous podcast episode called Simplified Menu Planning, I encouraged listeners to not overthink meal planning. (You may listen to that episode here.)

In this audio, I described how my original freezer cooking, in which I plugged all of my entrees into categories (based on meat types), led me to look at meal planning in a more simplified way. I made my master list of most of the entrees that I fix under each category, and then I can see what meats are on sale, scan my master entrée list, and choose meals to make.

I know there is a lot more to meal planning and preparing than simply choosing a category and “fixing” it. However, one of the things that people say over and over concerning the whole idea of meal planning includes “I can’t think of anything to make when it is time” or “I feel like I always make the same things over and over again.”

This idea of having all or most of your entrees listed under the meat that it is made of gives you a ready list at your finger tips. I found myself saying, “Oh, yeah, I forgot that everybody loves that taco soup. I’ve got taco meat in the freezer. Think I’ll pull it out and make that.”

One of the key concepts that Organizing Wizard teaches in her courses (and one that I have been trying to teach long before I heard of her great products in my workshops for moms) is that we often spend too much time thinking about what we want to do. We can spend a great deal of time on decisions and things that should really be decided quickly and decisively. This will free up our brains for the headier decisions—and make those things we do over and over again (prepare dinner, for example) happen more quickly.

When we learn to think quickly about those activities and tasks that are repeating in our lives, we make them smaller. That is, they do not remain so large and daunting. I have found this to be true over and over again as I have put systems in place, made quick decisions, etc., on things like Daily Tasks, menu planning, and more.

So, once again, I am going to give you those lists and encourage you to spend an hour or so making your own. You can even write them on large sticky notes (one sticky per meat) and place them on the inside of your kitchen cupboards and add to it as you think of more dishes that you make (or used to make).

Note:

Here are some other podcast episodes about kitchen efficiency that you might enjoy:

Podcast: Tips For Efficiency in The Kitchen

Podcast: Simplified Meal Planning

Podcast: Tips for Efficiency

Podcast: How to Implement Cycle Cooking for Freezer Entrees and Starters

Podcast: Ten Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Start Freezer Cooking

THINK IN TERMS OF MEATS/CYCLE COOKING AND MAKE MASTER LIST

1. What meats (and in what form of the meats) do you regularly use in your meals?

2. How can these be “grouped” (either for thinking purposes or for preparing bulk entrees for the freezer)?

3. Make a master list of things that you EVER make from various meats, print it, and tape it to the inside of a kitchen cabinet or on the fridge in a sheet protector. You want this handy!

Shredded Chicken

• Chicken enchiladas
• Chicken tetrazinni
• Chicken broccoli casserole
• Hot chicken salad
• BBQ shredded chicken
• Chicken taco meat
• Chicken alfredo (or starter for freezer)
• Cream of chicken soup (or starter for freezer)
• Chicken rice soup (or starter for freezer)
• Chicken gnocchi soup (or starter for freezer)
• Chicken noodle soup (or starter for freezer)
• White bean chicken chili (or starter for freezer)
• Chicken tortilla soup (or starter for freezer)

Crumbled Ground Beef or Turkey

• Enchiladas
• Cheeseburger pie
• Shepherd’s pie
• Lasagna
• Spaghetti pie
• Beef noodle stroganoff (or starter for freezer)
• Beef-broccoli Alfredo (or starter for freezer)
• Taco meat
• Goulash (or starter for freezer)
• Chili (or starter for freezer)
• Hamburger Stew (or starter for freezer)
• Vegetable soup (or starter for freezer)
• Homemade hamburger helper (or starter for freezer)
• Taco soup (or starter for freezer)
• Pasta e fagioli soup (or starter for freezer)
• Cheeseburger potato soup (or starter for freezer)
• Mexican pizzas (or starter for freezer)
• Layered Mexican dip (or starter for freezer)
• Beef nacho supreme (or starter for freezer)
• Beef taco soup (or starter for freezer)
• Maid rite sandwiches
• Ravioli
• Hamburger gravy
• Mexican pizza

Shredded Roast Beef (or Pork)

• Enchiladas
• Beef stew (or starter for freezer)
• Vegetable soup (or starter for freezer)
• Beefy potato rivel soup (or starter for freezer)
• BBQ beef
• Pot roast w/ veggies
• Beef carnitas/shredded meat taco (or starter for freezer)
• Shredded beef nachos (or starter for freezer)

Chicken Breasts or Thighs (Not Shredded)

• Chick filet knock off
• Parmesan chicken breasts/thighs/tenders
• Cheddar coated breasts
• Monterey chicken breasts
• Chicken cordon bleu
• Smothered chicken (or starter for freezer)
• Yogurt/parmesan chicken
• Garlic chicken bites (for Alfredo, chicken spaghetti, stir fries, subs, chicken alfredo pizza etc.)
• Monterey chicken bites (for fajitas, appetizers, chicken quesadillas, stir fries, subs, etc.)

Shaped Ground Meat/Steak

• Meat loaves
• Ham loaves
• Meatballs
• Salisbury steak
• Florida steak
• Smothered steak (or starter for freezer)
• Steak salad (or starter for freezer)
• Philly cheesesteak casserole (or starter for freezer)
• Steak breakfast burrito (or starter for freezer)
• Steak fajita
• Steak stir fry
• Dried beef gravy

Ham/Sausage/Bacon/Cheese/Pepperoni

• Hamarama (sandwiches)
• Cheesy potatoes with ham
• Broccoli cheese soup
• Cheesy potato sausage soup
• Soup beans with ham
• Ham steak
• BBQ ham steak
• Grilled ham and cheese sandwiches
• Grilled cheese sandwiches
• Cheddar soup
• Pizza (or starter for freezer)
• Pizza subs (or starter for freezer)
• Pizza casserole
• Pizza soup (or starter for freezer)
• Chicken pork creamy soup (or starter for freezer)
• Goulash (or starter for freezer)
• Sausage breakfast sandwiches (or starter for freezer)
• Sausage gravy and biscuits
• Pizza dip
• Sausage cups ((or starter for freezer)
• Pizza cups (or starter for freezer)
• Sausage biscuit balls
• Egg roll skillet (or starter for freezer)
• Kielbasa stir fry (or starter for freezer)
• Egg skillet (or starter for freezer)
• Omelets (or starter for freezer)
• Egg casserole (or starter for freezer)
• Pancakes and sausage
• Sausage sandwiches
• Loaded baked potatoes
• Breakfast pizzas

Seafood

• Tuna casserole
• Tuna balls
• Salmon patties
• Salmon loaves
• Baked salmon
• Baked cod
• Skillet white fish
• Shrimp scampi
• Shrimp Alfredo
• Clam chowder

The post Don’t Overthink Meal Planning appeared first on Character Ink.

I talk often about setting a timer for a designated amount of time and getting as much done as a family as you can get done. I also talk a lot on the blog (and in podcast episodes) about various types of lists. A lot of times we use one or the other.
For example, I have always been a task list maker. I have my weekly list, my school schedule lists, my daily list, my project list, and my daily duties.
I also have always used the timer extensively.

However, once I began combining the two, I found my work level increasing greatly and the work level of our children getting better as well.

 (Don’t forget that every single time you work with your children—whether it is with a task list you make at the beginning of the day or a blitz or a cleaning routine or whatever—you are teaching them adult skills! Skills that they can carry with them throughout their lives. My children all do the things that we did at home together all the time—they had it modeled for them; they worked with Mom and Dad via those methods; and now they are able to implement them themselves to keep their own homes in order, their college work done, their volunteer outreaches in place, etc.)

While I don’t do this all the time, when my task list alone or my timer alone does not seem to be yielding the results I want, I combine the two.
For example, when you set the timer for a work session, but you find yourself not really getting any particular thing done but rather doing a little bit of a lot of things that aren’t necessarily high priority, you might want to have a short list, or work order, to guide the blitz/timer session.

Or, when you have your task list, and you are going down it, but you find yourself getting sidetracked with emails, Facebook, or non-immediate tasks, a timer added to that task list can really help.

The scenario might look like this: I need to get certain things done in the kitchen, but I only have thirty minutes. Because I know of my tendency to start organizing cupboards or to make something that is not on my list, I might make a short list in the order that I want to get things done in the kitchen and then start my time. My timer keeps me working fast, and my list keeps me from doing things that are not immediate.
 

Timers work. Task lists work. The key is always doing what works for you!

I like to think that timer plus task list equals productivity. I know it has for me, and I hope it will help you too.

  P.S. I have sooo many podcast episodes and blog posts on getting things done! Here are some links to help you find them:

Podcast Episode: Foundations for Becoming an Efficiency Expert in Your Home and Work
Podcast Episode: Tips for Efficiency
Blog Post: ABC Efficiency (prioritizing non daily work)
Podcast Episode: Five Tips to Be More Efficient in the Kitchen
Blog Post: Delighting in the Dailies
Blog Post: Terrible Task List

Save

The post Timer + Task List = Productivity appeared first on Character Ink.

The first day was a bust. The first week was less glamorous, productive, and family-unifying than you envisioned it. So what is the natural reaction to that?

The natural reaction is to doubt. Doubt that God called you to this. Doubt that you can do it—regardless of the calling. Doubt that you are the best teacher for your children. Wowsie, even doubt that you are a good parent at all!

But how does God want us to react to less than perfect beginnings? Knowing the character of God—merciful, wisdom, loving, kind, instructive—we can know that there are probably two reactions that God would have us ponder:

1) “Not doubt in the darkness what God told us in the light.”

2) Fix problems and move on!

First of all, God didn’t lead you to homeschool just to leave you hanging. Just to leave you unequipped. Just to leave you feeling defeated.

He called you to this because this is the best thing for your family. Right now. With you as the homeschooling parent. With your kids at home with you. Period.

It is similar to marriage. When we have bad days, weeks, or even months, we don’t automatically say that we are not called to be married to this person. We don’t automatically doubt that we can do this.

We look at it for what it is: a stumbling block. Areas to work on. But we don’t throw in the towel. And we don’t even usually doubt that we are supposed to stay married.

A bad day or a bad week does not mean that you are a failure. It does not mean that you cannot do this. When the first day or week of school is a disappointment, it is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that we need God’s strength and wisdom more than ever to do this daunting lifestyle known as homeschooling.

Second of all, we need to look at some of the causes of the bad day. Sometimes it is just a “series of unfortunate events” that we have no control over. However, in order to not repeat this bad day or bad week too many times, if there are things that can be fixed, we need to fix them.

Here are some things that I have learned in thirty-one years of homeschooling that can cause a bad start:

1) Trying to do it all immediately. Start slowly. Don’t try to do everything the first week. It is easier to go from full free-time summer to fall school in bits and pieces. Get that first hour down the way you like it. Then move on. Only have morning school. Only have afternoon school. Do whatever it takes to get going on the right foot.

2) Trying to keep doing too many other things. When we talk with new homeschoolers, we ask them what they are dropping from their life from the previous year in order to homeschool. They often look at us like that is crazy. What needs to be dropped? Then we tell them the hours of instruction. The long days with kids who were previously at school and now with you 24/7. Then we ask them if they had a few hours a day last year to watch soap operas and eat bon bons. And they seldom do.

The same is true of starting the school year. Many moms go into the fall school year still canning green beans and freezing corn. Still doing all of the same church and volunteer activities. Still trying to squeeze in that exercise hour that seemed so easy to get to in the summer.

Time is like money. Once it is used, it is used. You can’t snap your finger and make more of it appear. Don’t “double spend” your time or you will be deep into “time debt,” and that can only lead to frustration.

3) Not delegating enough to the kids. I know, we all want to be super mom. And other housewives whose kids are in school do their own work. (Did I really just say “their own work”? We all live in the house, so housework is everybody’s—unless that is your ONLY job, full time!)

However, we can’t do it all. It is not possible. And no matter how good it looks on paper, it will not flesh out in real life if we overbook ourselves with school and house. Check out my podcast episodes about efficiency and about children and chores. Don’t try to do it all. Plus, working at home is a big part of homeschooling—learning responsibility, habits, and skills that he or she would miss if in school all day.

4) Not building in enough flex time. Many years ago when I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t seem to get to everything I had planned every day for each child, my husband helped me go through my schedule and insert fifteen to thirty minute flex times throughout my day.

This was especially helpful since we moms can often be unrealistic about how long things will take, how few interruptions we will likely have, etc. Give yourself (and your kids!) some flex time!

5) Not being prepared. Maybe those chore charts just haven’t gotten made yet. Or maybe those independent lists are still on the computer waiting to be printed. Or maybe you are just opening some of the boxes of books. In any of these cases, maybe you need to call an Educational Video-on-Neftlix school day or two while you get things together. You can still count it towards your days while you are getting things ready to run a little more smoothly.

Whatever your reason, don’t doubt your ability. Don’t doubt God’s leading. You will be so glad some day that you persevered. So glad that you made this lifestyle choice. And you will someday get to the thirty-two year mark, and breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that you spent your life on something as valuable as homeschooling your children.

The post “Mama and the Horrible, Terrible, Not-So-Great First Day” appeared first on Character Ink.

We have a saying in our family that goes something like this: Don’t clean anything. Don’t scrub anything. Don’t mop anything. Just focus on horizontal surfaces.

My husband is not a stickler when it comes to cleaning. As a matter of fact, he would seldom notice if something is dusted, vacuumed, or scrubbed. However, he is very sensitive to clutter (which was very unfortunate for him when we had nine people living in fourteen hundred square feet for twelve years!).

It is for this reason that during any cleaning blitz or cleaning time at all, he is often found shouting out the command to focus on horizontal surfaces.

As women, we have a tendency to want to “clean” everything! We want things to sparkle. We want things to shine. However, what really sticks out to most people if they come to our home is stuff lying around – clutter.

It is for this reason that my second tip to help your family get things done fast is to focus on horizontal surfaces. That is, what is out on the floor, the desk, the dining room table, the bar, end tables, coffee tables, dresser tops, and yes, even treadmills.

While this tip is not necessarily one just for speed, it does make things look better fast, which will in turn make us more efficient.

Here are some ways we use the focus on horizontal services method:

1) When calling a blitz, call out a five-minute surface blitz. That is, tell everybody to not do anything except pick up and put away objects that are lying around. This keeps people from vacuuming or trying to wipe something down when things are still lying around.

2)  Call for a horizontal surface session for a cleaning time. This can either be for everybody to get their own things up around the house before somebody cleans or just to pick up in general. When our older kids were little, before each chore session, we had what we called our “room-to-room time.” This was a version of horizontal surface time. We called for this two, three, or five-minute room-to-room blitz in order to give everybody a chance to pick up all of their clutter before chore time. That way, during chore time, the cleaner didn’t have to clean around everybody’s things. It was also a break in the day in which things got picked up rather than left out for the whole day. Since we had chore time three times a day, before each meal for twenty minutes, this room to room/horizontal surface time helped keep things picked up.

3) If you feel like your house is in great disarray, tell everybody that you are not going to clean as far as shining and scrubbing (except for daily kitchen work, etc.) until you have some horizontal surface times in which junk is taken care of. This can work for the whole house or just for individual rooms. Sometimes this is a good idea for children’s rooms. They have a tendency to get overwhelmed when there is too much junk lying around and if you tell them to clean the room, they might go in with a vacuum and a dust rag when they really just need to focus on the horizontal surfaces. (And going in with them and telling them that you are going to help them for a five minute blitz—or that the whole family is going to help them for five minutes really fast can go a long way in helping them dig in to big messes.)

As I mentioned earlier, focusing on horizontal surfaces won’t necessarily make you faster, but it will make you feel better about your house. Implementing it on an ongoing basis will help keep clutter at bay. It will help your children learn to prioritize household tasks. And it might even make your husband happy.

The post Ten Ways to Help Your Family Get Things Done FAST: Focus on Horizontal Surfaces appeared first on Character Ink.

I have been doing some podcast episodes about efficiency in the kitchen and freezer cooking. I wanted to have this as part of our back-to-school 2015 series, but I knew that auditory presentations would work better.

There are many things in the summer that you can do to set your kitchen up so that you can work more efficiently during the school year thus giving you more time for homeschooling, school activities, and heart training.

In this post I would like to share some links to those things to help you be able to go back and listen to podcast episodes and find the new posts (and old!) containing this information.

1) Podcast Episode: Five Tips to Be More Efficient in Your Kitchen

In this podcast episode, I get my five tops tips for efficiency in the kitchen including using the crockpot (even for all kinds of meats, such as ground beef and shredded chicken), having ten meals that you always have ingredients on hand for, making combination meals whenever possible, and putting something – even if it is just a casserole or two – in the freezer each week.

2) Podcast Episode: Ten Questions to Ask Yourself Before Beginning Freezer Cooking

In this podcast episode, I present you with ten questions to ask yourself before you begin freezer cooking. These questions will help you determine what kind freezer cook you are and which methods, types of dishes, containers, and more will help you the most. If you have questions about state in which to freeze something, freezing entire casseroles versus just parts of meals, and what to put your freezer entrées in, this episode will help you.

3) Podcast Episode: Learning About Cycle Cooking for the Freezer 

In this podcast episode, I explain how I do cycle cooking with various types of meat. If you truly want to be efficient in putting things in your freezer, this episode is for you. I describe the four types of cycles that I have: shredded chicken, crumbled brown beef, chicken breast and fish fillet, and shaped (roasts, swiss and smothered steaks, meatloaves, etc.). Then I give ideas under each cycle type so that you can see what you are already cooking and how you can start putting those in to freezer meals.

4) Blog Post: Ten Freezer Meals That I Don’t Like to Be Without 

This old blog post will at least get you thinking about some freezer meals that are important to growing families. These are some of my very favorites both for serving my family as well as for giving to others in need, using potlucks, and serving at parties, etc.

5) Blog Posts: Using Mixes

I have been a mix user for twenty-four years – ever since I got the book Make a Mix Cookery. We all know how convenient store-bought cake mixes, Bisquick, bread mixes, brownie mixes, and seasoning blend are. Making homemade mixes allows the efficient cook to enjoy the ease of using mixes while controlling the ingredients. I have a few mixes and seasoning blends at the blog now, but please check back often as I’m adding my healthy cake mix, Healthy BakeQuick mix, and more.

6) Blog Posts: Ten Ways to Help Your Family Work Fast 

I have been working on a series of posts about helping your family learn to work fast. Check back with that series frequently because many of the tips that are there, such as kitchen blitzes, horizontal surface cleaning, and more will help you become more efficient in the kitchen as well.

I hope these links will help you in your quest to become more efficient in the kitchen this summer. For me personally, in my thirty-one years of homeschooling, each time I added an efficient method or tip, it improved another area of our family, homeschool, and life.

The post Getting Ready For School 2015: Become More Efficient in Your Kitchen appeared first on Character Ink.

1. Using a crock pot

2. Having 10 meals that you always have ingredients on hand for

3. Cooking meat in the crock pot and freezing it

4. Making combination meals whenever possible, and

5. Putting something in the freezer each week.

Join Donna and she gives you inspiration and ideas for becoming more efficient in your kitchen.

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The post Wondering Wednesday Podcast: Five Tips To Be More Efficient in the Kitchen appeared first on Character Ink.

Donna Reish, of Character Ink Publishing and Raising Kids With Character parenting seminar, continues her answers to questions about “getting it all done” in this follow up to last week’s “Foundations for Becoming an Efficiency Expert.” In this episode, Donna answers questions about to do lists (which ones are the most valuable and which ones are just lists that we easily forget or give up on), procrastination, overwhelming situations, and more.

Click here to download the printable handout.

Subscribe to our Wondering Wednesday podcasts in iTunes.

The post Wondering Wednesday: Tips for Efficiency appeared first on Character Ink.

In this episode, Donna Reish (author, editing, and teacher at Character Ink Publishing Company and Raising Kids With Character Parenting Seminar) answers foundational questions about becoming more efficient at home, work, and school. Donna lays the groundwork for next week’s episode (“Efficiency Tips”) by introducing three major aspects that are foundational to becoming efficient: narrowing your focus/not trying to do too many things (i.e. NOT becoming a “Jane of all trades”!), giving up perfectionism, and truly working hard (with two benchmarks to measure your work output). She includes interesting research by Malcom Gladwell (author of “Outliers” and many other books about people, research, and success) about how one becomes an “expert”—and applies this research to parenting as well as becoming outstanding in your areas.

Click here to download the printable handout.

Subscribe to our Wondering Wednesday podcasts in iTunes.

The post Wondering Wednesday: Foundations for Becoming an Efficiency Expert in Your Home appeared first on Character Ink.