Our family meal plan comes together when I write it down on purpose, on paper. With that being said, there are so many times where crazy, busy life schedules get in the way and that is when my Power Cooking strategy comes into play.
This weekend at my Becoming Conference, I shared ideas for saving money on food, without using coupons. Of course, one of the largest ways I slash our grocery budget it by pairing coupons with all my grocery guru strategies, but for many consumers, strategically using coupons on a regular basis is not a reality.
Isn’t it great to know there are so many other options for saving money on food?
My one hour power cooking concept came from a one hour cooking experiment that I did years ago. The results of how much I can get done in one hour is astounding. Again, it’s about just having some fun and focusing on cooking as much as you can in that intentional amount of time. Now, I often stretch that time to two hours to get even more done. I have found the key to ten minute meals is having those time consuming proteins cooked up ahead of time. (Head over to 10minutedinners.com – it’s getting started.)
Another tip I shared at the conference was how to save time when buying meats in bulk.  When buying in bulk, our tendency is to stick four pounds of chicken breast in the  freezer right away, but that just leads to dinner dilemmas later on.  Read here to see how I prepped 30 pounds of chicken in a short amount of time. Yes, chicken meals in minutes.
Create your own freezer meal packets.  I ran out of time to share the detailed demonstration of how I go about doing this, so I thought I would show the vlog I did two years ago. It’s helped many readers save huge amounts of time (and sanity), especially myself. I am always amazed at how easy it is to get meals on the table when you just think ahead….a bit. (And yes, I plan on slowly rolling out many of these recipes for all of us to use. They are great C.O.S.T. Cooking recipes….cook once, serve twice and three times.)
So let’s get inspired and enjoy having our families around the dinner table again.
(Subscribers will need to click over to the blog to view the video. Trust me, if you struggle with Balancing Meal Time Mountain, it’s worth the watch.)