Getting Organized in the Kitchen
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Menu Planner -
Do you plan your meals or decide what is for dinner at the last minute? Ever
gotten halfway into meal preparation and discovered that you are missing an
ingredient? Meal planning can help cut down on eating out because you are too
tired or don't know what to fix, and it can also help you get organized for
a week at a time. Download our Menu Planner
(requires Adobe Acrobat) and plan your meals for the whole week. With room
for all three meals plus snacks as well as a grocery list, the Menu
Planner will help you to stay organized in the kitchen throughout the
week.
Menus 4 Moms
If you have ever wished that someone would plan your meals for you, then Menus 4 Moms is for you! Each week a menu for 5 nights is planned for you including recipes and a grocery list. No more last minute trips through the drive-thru or ordering pizza because you didn't plan ahead for dinner. Menus 4 Moms is completely free!
Each menu is based on the Busy Cooks Pyramid, a wonderful time and money saving plan. Every menu contains notes explaining the meal and recipes to walk you through the preparation. Not only does Menus 4 Moms make meal planning a snap, but you will even end up stocking your freezer with extra meals on a regular basis.
Breakfast and Lunch Menus
There are several ideas for breakfast and lunch on Menus4Moms.com. If you are looking for planned menus, there are thirteen kid-approved breakfast and lunch menus are also available from Christine Steendahl.
Busy Cooks' Pyramid
Learn the secrets of successful busy cooks in the Busy Cooks' Pyramid, adapted from Lynn
Nelson's former website, About Busy Cooks.
Kitchen and cooking articles
Websites for busy cooks
Natalie's Recipes - Natalie tests all of her recipes before publishing them so you can rest assured that these are TNT (tried 'n true) dishes. She has a great collection of crockpot recipes for the busy mom.
Allrecipes.com - This is my new favorite cooking site! Since joining a CSA, we get weekly baskets of vegetables that include some produce new to me. At Allrecipes.com I can just put in the ingredient in question and come up with several recipes formated for a 3x5 or 4x6 recipe card!
Recipezaar.com - This site is similar to allrecipes.com but it has an additional feature - in the advanced search, you can search by nutritional info. For example, if you want to find recipes that have more than 2 grams of dietary fiber and less than 15 grams of total carbs, you could put that into the form and it will search the nutritional info for recipes fitting that criteria.
Homeschooler's Curriuculum Swap Cookbook - The participants in the swap boards at the Homeschooler's Curriculum Swap have contributed loads of recipes that have been organized by The Swap's owners into an online cookbook. This is a great resource for crockpot recipes, international recipes (think unit studies!), and lots more.
Organize Your Freezer - A site especially for those of you with chest style deep freezers with mystery products buried under more recent purchases.
A Beginner's Guide to Once A Month Cooking - Many women have found the answer to the late afternoon rush in once a month cooking. You can find the basic idea of OAMC in this article from Frugal Moms. Kim Tilley explains five different strategies for cooking ahead, as well as tips for other ways to fill in the gaps with easy to fix meals.
Shopping
List Free Software - This is a free download for the full version
of the software and it is simple to install and start using. If you
customize it to include the accurate prices for items in your area,
you will know how much your grocery bill will be before you ever leave
home. It is as simple as drag and drop from the category item list
to the grocery list. The best part is that when the list is printed,
it arranges everything by category/aisle on the printout. This software
has helped me to organize my shopping and make the most of my time
while at the grocery store. For software support, please visit Home Plan Software as I cannot provide support for Shopping List software.