Comments on: How Do YOU Do it?

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:15:26 +0000

Wow, these are some great tips! I am really really bad at this so I am looking forward to tomorrows posts too! Having older children seems to be a popular tip…where can I find some of these? Mine are 5, 4, 3, and 8months so we are a few years out on me assigning an entire task to the oldest but…my motto for this year is no excuses and no guilt! So I make all that homemade goodness frequently but when I run out due to poor planning on my part, I let myself off the hook and go buy it in the store until I can catch up with the wagon that has quickly moved on without me!

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:47:13 +0000

Two things help: 1. Older children and 2. an assigned cooking day. For some of the staples I like to keep on hand, I assign a child to be responsible for. My 14 year old son is in charge of bread (he also sells it, so it’s easy for him to bake for us as well). My 12 year old daughter is in charge of making granola, though I’m thinking I need to assign that job to the next youngest daughter and give the 12 yo a new food. But since I haven’t decided what that will be I still haven’t done it.

I also designate one day a week to special cooking. Sometimes I make a bunch or instant oatmeal, or rolls, or other breakfast foods. I will often cook a bunch of dried beans to freeze as well. It changes from week to week, depending on what I’m going to need or what I’m out of. It’s easier to get to it and not put it off if I have scheduled it into my week.

By: Meagan

Meagan — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:32:42 +0000

Well, we don’t have a big family, and most of the kids are still young enough that I have to still serve a lot of the food, helping me keep an eye on what is being eaten… or not eaten. Mostly we still just make as we need, or as we run out, because we don’t have the room to store a whole lot. When I do make the yogurt, I make a whole gallon in the crockpot, and then divide into smaller containers…. we don’t make our own breads, or granola….

The easiest way I can think of for monitoring the stock- either always plan to make it at a certain interval, like weekly such as we do…. or have a checklist/chart that kids can mark easily as the finish something up.

As far as delegating, again my kids are too young…. I end up still doing it even if they do help.

By: Nicki

Nicki — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:20:09 +0000

For the easy homemade stuff, I let my oldest daughter help. The rest, I’m afraid, is a jumbled-up mess of a non-schedule. We make it when we need it, and sometimes we run out. Oops!

By: abba12

abba12 — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:48:11 +0000

I’m not really organised at the moment, nor do I except that I will be for awhile to come (lack of storage being a major factor here) And I don’t even have kids yet! So maybe I’m not one to talk, but a couple of things that have worked for me so far are…

- Every time I made a dinner that I would generally freeze, I make double, and refridgerate/freeze the leftover. I’ve been doing this right from the begining, and I don’t even think about it now, it’s default and honestly not a whole lot harder than making the single batch, once the habit is started, but for me it’s a lot easier than making a quadruple batch in the middle of the day. I don’t think I personally could manage once a month cooking at this stage, but I know I have taco meat, chilli meat, and after tomorow night will have a batch of spaghetti meat in my freezer. I think I also have a soup in there, somewhere… hmmm….

- I shop once a fortnight (once every two weeks), and I try to set aside a full day once a fortnight, a couple of days after shopping day, specifically for cooking. I know some people consider this an interuption to the homeschool schedule, but personally, once I have kids I would like to consider this ‘home ec’ day If, for example, if I incoporated into this actual teaching of chores, small sections of decluttering, garden work, whatever, then I think this could be seen not as an interuption to homeschool but as an enhancment, life skills, whatever. If the perspective is right, then it isn’t a problem to homeschooling.

- I don’t know if this nececarily comes under the topic but during these fortnightly cooking days, I chop up and freeze vegetables that I get a. in bulk in season, b. fresh and organic. It’s hard to beat frozen vegetables in price or in quality, as the vegies have usually been picked when ripe and frozen very quickly unlike the stuff we buy in store, which was picked early and artificially ripened (oh for my own veggie garden…), but sometimes there can be some amazing prices on perfectly good stock that is, perhaps, deformed or too small or just overstocked. (AUD$1.50/kg on particular red capsicums (peppers?) which were in season, in demand, and at the time AUD$6/kg, just because they were a fair bit smaller and not the prefered shape. I don’t know about America but you can’t buy frozen capsicum easily here so it’s ‘fresh’ or nothing. Freezing those were a real bargain) And last week I had the opportunity to get a bunch of straight off the tree chilli’s, which I cut up and now have stock of in the freezer (and found out afterwards that I should have worn gloves while chopping and should have washed my hands with more than water… I never imagined such pain for so long from a vegetable!). Earlier in the year I got an ice cream container full of mulberrys which I froze, and just used the last of last week making muffins. Also managed to score a bucket full of passionfruit last year.

I mightn’t be the best organised right now, but right now I don’t NEED to be either. Perhaps that’s why the things I use are good, because I have kept up with them even when I don’t need to, so hopefully they will last when I do.

By: Annie Harbert

Annie Harbert — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:15:17 +0000

I get things done by starting early. In the morning or early afternoon I will start prepping for dinner. I will brown meat, chop veggies, get noodles cooked, whatever it takes to make the transition from late afternoon/early evening easier for my family.
After I have completed the prep work I usually pop it in the fridge (if the meal is fully assembled) so that I can throw it in the oven when its time.
Other things that help are my slow cooker for meals and broths and my bread machine for sandwich bread, pizza dough, and roll dough.
My kids assist me by setting the table before dinner time. Both my 8 year old and 2.5 year old get out the place mats, utensils, knapkins, etc and prepare the table for dinner time. They like doing this to music. I usually place kids praise and worship music or our local Christian music station and they dance around get the table set. It might not look like the best tablescape when they are finished but it gets them prepared to take on other responsibilities!

By: Anita Chamblee

Anita Chamblee — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:06:02 +0000

I have to give a big “YES!” to the Bosch Universal Mixer!! That one machine is used daily in our home for so much. I can mix up dough for four loaves of bread at one time, four pans of cinnamon rolls, 4 pizza crusts, doubles of cookie and muffin recipes!! It is a true time saver!!! I also do lots of batch cooking and we are able to have quick homemade meals in a hurry by using this method.

By: Mandy

Mandy — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:11:03 +0000

I have just recently started experimenting with alot of the homemade stuff. I actually do it with my “freezer cooking” days at the first of each month, following along with Money Saving Mom and Life as Mom. It seems to work best to do all the bulk cooking at once, at least for me. But then again, I only have 3 kiddos, not 10!! Lol

By: Dawna

Dawna — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:48:33 +0000

Like the other ladies above, I have specific days for baking. My kids are still young and they love to help but they are too young to solely take over the baking. I bake 6 loaves of bread at a time, we keep one out to use, a second loaf to swap for fresh eggs with a lady at church and freeze the rest. I usually bake bread every other week. We make a huge batch of granola once a week (fridays) and I love the idea of freezing it (thanks Anita). Yogurt is made weekly (Wednesdays) because we eat so much of it. It definitely helps our home run smoother if I commit to baking these items regularly and in large batches. I love to cook so I do not find it a chore to commit my time to such things… now cleaning behind the fridge, that’s another story.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:46:44 +0000

I’m afraid I don’t have any helpful suggestions. This is my biggest question about making a lot from scratch. Right now I have all little ones (3 1/2, 1 1/2, and 6 wks)so no older helpers. It seems to me I would have to set aside a whole day every weeks just for cooking if I was going to make a lot of things from scratch the way I’d like!

By: Tristan from the Crew

Tristan from the Crew — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:53:09 +0000

My best investment were my kitchen servants:
crock pot
wheat grinder
Bosch mixer for making bread dough

Even my 8yo can make bread from scratch with the mixer to do the kneading! Love love love it! We try to make several dough based things at once:
several loves of bread
cinnamon rolls
pizza dough
pigs in a blanket (hot dog wrapped in dough and baked)

Before the mixer and electric wheat grinder we ground wheat by hand which took hours – literally. I also used the dough cycle on bread machines people no longer wanted to do my kneading (and killed 4 bread machine motors that way before investing in the Bosch…LOL). There is always someone who has a bread machine they don’t use who is happy to pass it along.

By: Anita Chamblee

Anita Chamblee — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:37:54 +0000

One thing that helps greatly at our house is having older children. ; ) My almost 22 yo daughter makes a huge batch of biscuits on Saturdays….enough for breakfast that morning and at least one other day. When we make granola we quadruple the recipe and keep half in a gallon jar and half in another container for the freezer. She generally mixes muffins up on Sundays (a huge recipe) and bakes them fresh on Monday morning. My 10 and 13 yo children make the pancakes and homemade syrup generally on Fridays. We have cinnamon rolls on Sundays and I just have to pull them out of the freezer. I make a huge batch once every 3-4 weeks and freeze them in baking pans ready to pull out on Sat night and heat up on Sun morning. We make icing on Sun morning. Some mornings we add breakfast meats, eggs, grits, baked oatmeal, and/or fruit. We have never made yogurt. When I make bread I make three large loaves and four small loaves. We eat one that evening and the rest go in the freezer, ready to pull out as needed. We also do the same for cornbread. I keep store bought tortillas in the freezer to use as needed for wraps and Mexican dishes, but my 13 and 10 yo children love to mix up our pizza crust recipe and use our tortilla press to make flat bread. So you see, the combination of doing the work in large batches and having the children do the rest pretty much makes sure we have a good supply.