I absolutely love cooking and baking. Especially the baking. A warm chocolate chip cookie with a cold glass of creamy raw milk is one of my favorite things. Or peach crumble, or ice cream, or a good jambalaya… well, you get the idea.
What I don’t like is all the hours I end up spending making food. Add in doing the dishes, buying the groceries, figuring out what recipes to make with the groceries, and my meal making time is ridiculous. Especially since I’m all about eating real food, no boxes and storebought, premade items.
So how do you go from that, to real food with minimal time and effort and still have great results?
I’ve recently gained access to a few super helpful kitchen tools. Separately they’re useful, but by combining the tips and resources offered by all of them, I’m able to maximize my time in the kitchen exponentially.
Let’s do This E-course
The Heavenly Homemakers website offers this e-course for busy families. The lessons presented are
- Getting Ahead for Today
- Getting Ahead for the Week
- Getting Ahead with Snacks
- Getting Ahead During Spare Moments for Busy Moments
- Using Your Prepared Food
What I like about this format is that it’s broken down into bite size pieces. If you’re not ready to do a 2 day freezer cooking marathon, then just marinate some chicken and chop a few veggies for supper later.
It’s taken a step further however with tips to prepare for a whole week. This may sound like a lot of work, but when you think about it, if you bake biscuits 3x a week, why not triple the batch? With just a few extra minutes spent now, you’ve saved yourself an hour of time later.
She also gives some great tips for snagging those down times for meal prep. Make a double batch of muffin batter while the baby naps. Portion it out and freeze for a quick breakfast or snack later.
Snacks for Everyone
Her idea to make a bunch of snacks for the week ahead turned a light bulb on for me. If I had a quarter for every time my husband asked me what we had for snacks… then I’d have a lot of quarters. Usually I say something like “Umm.. we have food, I don’t know what, but go find something.” Making large batches of a few different items early in the week though ensures there’s always something quick to have when you’re running late or get the late night munchies.
Tradishen Meal Planning
The other super helpful resource I’ve found is the Tradishen Meal Planning service. I’ve tried several other meal plans before. And while some were better than others I had a hard time sticking it out with them.
One service I tried had a lot of recipes to plug into your mealplan, but the format made it tedious and confusing. Another one only used your own recipes, which you had to enter in by hand. Too much work!
What’s different about the Tradishen planning service though is it’s brain dead simple way to help you plan your meals. It will even create a diet specific weekly menu for you, complete with grocery shopping list. Mine literally took me 2 seconds to make. Yes, 2 seconds!
They have tons of recipes though if you want to plug these into a customized meal plan. You can even upload your own.
The other thing that really impressed me about Tradishen was the variety of meals. You can choose gluten free, grain free, kosher, vegetarian and even GAPS friendly recipes (among many others). This is the only meal plan I’ve seen that specifically includes GAPS recipes. Which is perfect for my family since we’re going on the GAPS diet.
They even have detailed tutorials for how to make nutrient dense broth and old fashioned sourdough!
Tradishen is free to use, but they also offer a premium membership for those who want to take advantage of some more perks.
Check it out here!
Grocery Savings Made Simple
Shannon from Growing Slower has put together an intensive grocery savings made simple course. I’m always looking for ways to save money, but I also don’t want to survive off of seasoned beans and rice.
And I’ve tried couponing. Let me tell you, they may make it look like an extreme sport on reality TV, but it’s a ton of work and running around. Did you know that extreme couponers spend about 30 HOURS a week planning their coupon strategy? That’s craziness I don’t have time for!
Not only does this course offer some great information, but Shannon offers live, one-on-one support. She promises to guide you through her tailored plan to make buying groceries and making meals as simple and efficient as possible without sacrificing health or taste. And no couponing or sales ads!
I’m really looking forward to learning from Shannon during her next live course this January. I could definitely use some streamlined grocery shopping.
Check it out here!
Blending it All Together
I’ve mentioned three different resources to help you in the kitchen, but the real magic happens when you implement all of them together.
- Quickly make a customized meal plan on Tradishen and print out the grocery list and recipes
- Use Shannon’s tips to save serious money when buying your groceries.
- Maximize your time in the kitchen and get it done FAST with the Let’s Do This e-course.
Want all This for Free?
Normally the premium membership to Tradishen would be $45 for 3 months. The Let’s do This e-course is $5, and the live Grocery Savings Made Simple course is $37, for a total of $87.
You can get all of these for FREE though when you buy this year’s Ultimate Healthy Living bundle! You’ll also get 73 eBooks, 7 audio & eCourses, PLUS over $200 worth of bonus products, for only $29.97. This deal will be GONE on September 16th at noon, so don’t be a procrastinator and miss out!
You’re literally paying only 2.5% of what this bundle is worth!
The bargain queen and health nut inside of me are both doing a happy dance together. Yes, as my freebies, like a genuine Baltic amber bracelet, custom made glass straws and sourdough starter culture have arrived in the mail I have literally done a happy dance over here.
This sale is now over, but be sure to check out future Ultimate Bundle sales!
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