How To Get Ahead In The Kitchen

Back a couple of weeks ago, I stressed the importance of taking back control over our lives, and I said we could have a realistic discussion of how to do that.

I talked about eating at home more, but what if you have a busy life or you don’t want to spend hours over the stove every week?
One way to get the best of both home-cooked meals and frozen dinners is to do both!
Instead of settling for frozen cardboard meals, plan ahead, make one or two extra meals while you have the groceries and the time, and freeze them!
Label carefully and think ahead. Either write on the package what’s inside and how to cook it, or include written instructions on paper or cardstock, or whatever you have. If you have teenagers, lazy people or people that just don’t know how to cook in your home, think of them and make it as easy as possible. Or perhaps you live alone, perhaps you foresee a lifestyle change coming, just a new baby that’s due soon.
Either way, take into account what you, or the rest of your family, likes to eat. Make that.
Don’t make something no one will want to eat, because then it’ll just sit in the freezer getting old, becoming unrecognizable and in time, someone is just going to throw it out.
Nothing gained that way.

So step one is to honestly go over what you and/or your family like to eat. If it’s spaghetti, then brainstorm ways that the sauce can be made ahead and frozen or canned, or whatever preservation method works for you. If the family has a meatball lover, like we do, make some ahead of time and freeze them.
We can get up in the morning with the intent to make a dozen meatballs, but if we have no energy by 3 pm, then we’re having a meatball-less dinner.
Solution?
Plan ahead. Make the meatballs some evening when there’s nothing on television and you’re bored. (Told you this would be a realistic discussion)
You found ground beef on sale. You can afford to get twice the amount you normally do, so make those meatballs because the price of beef may go up again by the time you have the energy!

Spaghetti and meatballs with sauce is just one example. Feel free to substitute whatever dish strikes your fancy.

The point is to think ahead, plan and execute the plan.

Be realistic. Plan for laziness or power failures or heaven-forbid the illness of your family’s cook.

Survey your situation.
Plan.
Execute that plan, one step at a time.
Rinse. Repeat.

Oh look, you’re one step ahead of where you were last friday.
Good for you!

Next time, de-mystifying the art of the homemade bread loaf.

SPRING! IT HAS SPRUNG!!!

I love spring. It holds so much promise, so much potential. We can shed winter layers, dig out our running shoes and light weight jackets and finally get out into the warm sun again. Having said all that, I acknowledge, we've not had a "normal" winter round these parts. There's not been the 8 feet of snow I got to play in as a child. No day after day of bone numbing blizzards that hid your hand at the end of your arm. We even got lucky with no major round of flu or colds. (Knock on wood)

Yay for spring! I've been trying to grow little things all winter. Some have grown, some not.  A couple of green things surprised me this week, but more on that in a little bit. Last night I was following agricultural links and I found myself at a new-to-me site, the National Agriculture Library.  Following link after link, I eventually found a large collection of images that the American government used during World Wars 1 and 2 to inspire it's citizenry to grow gardens and preserve their bounty. I also found a collection of seed catalogue covers  dating from the early 1800's to  the Great Depression. I was pretty excited about this, and I'll be showing some of those posters and seed catalogue covers off here  over the next little bit. The one I shared today is from the Farmer Seed Co.  in 1907. Some of these seed companies featured some amazing artwork! Of farming importance in 1907, from The History of Canada Online,
"In the early 1900s, Charles Saunders, a plant breeder apppointed "Dominion Cerealist", worked rigorously to strain crosses of rust resistant Red Fife and Hard Red Calcutta wheat. In 1907 he tested a new frost-resistant strain he called Marquis at Indian Head, Saskatchewan. It matured much faster than Red Fife, and the shorter growing season meant farmers could grow the more valuable grain farther north. By 1910, over 2000 local farmers in were growing wheat where it not had been grown before. Marquis proved to be a sensation, and the Canadian wheat harvest soon tripled. By 1920, 90% of the entire Prairie wheat crop was Marquis. Farmers opened up thousands more hectares of land, and new mechanical tractors and threshers boosted production further."

The Cyclopedia of American Agriculture in 1907 lists pumpkins as stock feed, and advises,
"The best farmer is not the one who knows the most "science," but the one who is best able to organize the facts and the business into a harmonious system or plan.  The principles that underlie such organization are now beginning to be apprehended, and we think we see the possibilities of a sound farm philosophy, with wise generalizations from the mass of rapidly accumulating facts and practices.  Farm management will be a fertile subject for writers in the years to come. The basis of farm organization is the cropping plan or the crop management.  On this project or scheme rests the maintenance of fertility and consequently of productiveness, the subsistence of livestock, the economy of labor, the type of business."

They knew even then that the farm was a collection of systems. Smart.

The Cyclopedia continues on about crop rotation,
"A rotation of crops can be so planned as to maintain the supply of humus in the soil.  This humus, coming from the decay of organic matter, adds to the plant-food content of the soil and, what is usually more important, exerts a great influence in securing a proper physical texture of the land.  The Bureau of Soils recently asserts that the chief value of humus is to cleanse the soil of toxic excreta.  The humus is chiefly supplied by the grass crops and clover crops in rotation.  The practice of "green-manuring" rests chiefly on the need of supplying humus.  Green-manure crops are those that are grown for the special purpose of being turned under, root and top, and are not usually a difinite part of the rotation; but, so far as it goes, the root-and-stubble part of similar crops employed in the rotation answers the same purpose." (Spelling mistakes theirs, not mine)

There's a lot to learn about agriculture from the old manuals.

This week, I germinated sunflower seeds, and they're actually growing! Yipee! Of the six peas I started, I thought I was going to lose them all, but three of them decided not to give up the ghost. On The Apartment Prepper, Bernie talked about re-growing celery, so I'll be trying that in the coming week.
Are you starting anything green in the upcoming week?