AND HOW IT WILL SAVE YOUR HOMESTEAD
Hello Love,
Have you ever opened the refrigerator and scanned the deepest part of the middle shelf section to find cloudy ball jars with mystery ingredients lurking inside? It may have been something lovingly raised and prepared, but never used. You may also find yourself throwing together pb&j lunches in a frenzy moments before the kids get on the bus, wishing that mornings were easier.
Enter BATCH COOKING
Is this really going to save our homestead you may skeptically ask. Well, if the bulk of your problems can be solved with time management, then yes, maybe. Lots of issues we face come down to not having enough time and thoughtless planning,
You might have goals of eating healthier, creating homemade meals and spending less on take out. Batch cooking is here to solve all these problems.
Batching involves grouping similar tasks to get them done more efficiently. You may even batch some items on your to do list without even realizing it. Laundry is a great example. If you wait until the baskets in the household are overflowing then mark off hours on your calendar to wash, dry and fold and binge watch your favorite show, congrats! You, my friend are batching (and multitasking!).
Most homesteaders pride themselves on DIYing EVERYTHING and these tasks can add up quickly. Batching can free up time and mental space. Remember once of our manifesting tools is to “declutter”. If you haven’t read my post on “Manifesting the Dream Homestead”, read that here. By planning, prepping and preserving multiple meals at once, you will never have the thought “what am I making for dinner” EVER AGAIN.
I remember my first intro to batching when I brought my son on a playdate one beautiful Sunday. The mom casually chatted with me and another friend while the boys ran around outside. While I sat for a couple hours, she chopped, diced, scooped, contained and bagged several meals. What’s odd is that I didn’t ask what she was doing but watched in aww. This super woman prepped for a week while I just sat there.
It wasn’t until a couple years later that I rediscovered this skill while poking around pinterest for keto recipes. My husband and I were adopting this homesteader friendly lifestyle of eating, but being the newb that I was, I needed others’ ideas on what to cook. There are myriads of meal plans out there, but I was floored to discover that some websites will let you choose your meals, serving size, and then will create an automatic shopping list including the recipes and prepping directions!
Realize that, with a family of five, if you don’t plan a meal and your schedule takes you out of town, you will be dropping a minimum of $100 to eat in my area. We had done just that the previous day. The Algorithm gods introduced me to Myfreezeasy.com.
Now as a homesteader, you might think “thats great and all but I prefer to eat only my homegrown food. I can’t just go out and buy it all.”.
You are right! But you are not limited to only daily meal planning. Creating a meal plan of your favorite meals is simple.
1. Plan
First, either write down all your recipes on separate cards, or print interesting recipes you’d like to try. Find recipes that have mostly local and in season ingredients (or ingredients that you have preserved, like herbs). You can even swap out ingredients based on dietary needs or for something you already have ready to harvest or preserved.
Check your list of ingredients to make sure you have everything on hand. You may need to have a day of shopping or a day to prepare ingredients like bread, bone broth, etc. These items can also be “batched”.
2. Decide
Choose a number of meals to create. I suggest batching the same type of meal at the same time. Batch kids lunches at a different time that dinners for example. I like the number 8 because it gives me a full week and an emergency meal if I can’t get to batching for another day because a kid gets sick or I’m sore from putting in a fence line. You know, the usual.
Prep
Lay out all your ingredients and tools. Knives, spoons, foil, containers, plastic zip lock bags, ball jars, roasting pans, cutting boards, etc.
Now start with all the cutting. If more than one recipe needs onion, cut all the onion up at once and put it in a bowl to hold for later (or directly into the bag, container if it makes sense). Cut the veggies, fruit, meat. Make sauces next. Cook any meat that needs cooking before freezing like ground beef.
Store
Using any holding container that is safe for the freezer, combine the ingredients for each recipe. Label, date, and put in the freezer.
In the same way you can combine dried goods to make recipes like slow cooker stews and soups.
Every morning I open the freezer and choose one of my containers to thaw for dinner that night or put in the crock pot.
This completely eliminates any questions on what we are having for dinner each night. Preparing like this also keeps us from spending bundles at restaurants. Not to mention we choose clean ingredients and healthy recipes so we no longer have the urge to snack on processed food.
You can take this a step farther and prepare snacks and lunches in the same way. When cutting up bell peppers for my beef fajita lettuce wraps, I cut a few extra and divide them into individual tupperwares. These stay in the fridge as an easy snack for us or a go to for the kids with a little ranch dressing.
I usually make lunches in the morning for the school day. I now make two for each child at the same time and put the extra in the fridge for the following day. It takes hardly any time to make extra but saves all the time of taking out and putting away ingredients and cleaning up a second day.
For anyone that doesn’t think this can be done with young children, I’m here to tell you that it isn’t true!
Once you make batching meals a priority instead of making up excuses, you’ll automatically save energy and raise your positive vibration. Get creative! Use nap time or bedtime, phone a friend or relative to take them for a couple hours or involve them in the process of batch cooking if they are old enough.
If your toddler takes 1 hour naps every afternoon, plan for a shorter batching session of maybe 3 meals while they sleep. The next two days you have two whole hours to read a book, take a nap yourself, or get to an errand you’ve been neglecting (I suggest using this time to do a little self-care though. You earned it!)
Now that you know what batch cooking is and how to implement it, I want to know what you will do with all this free time you’re creating on your homestead! How is batching changing your life?
xoxo
