Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Tasty Tuesday - Developing A System For Your Kitchen, Part 3

Plan ahead and save!

Planning and preparing meals for the week saves you time, energy, and money. This week, I want to share something with you that has helped me tremendously. I don't always do this, but it sure does help when I do...

Since my husband's schedule requires him to eat both breakfast and lunch at work, I have quite a bit of food packing to do for each day he is working. I could choose to pack his food each night OR I could prepare everything at the beginning of the week and have it ready for him to grab on his way out the door. I really prefer the second method. It takes me between 5 and 10 minutes if I pack his lunch each night. If I do it once a week, it takes 15-20 minutes. So I save anywhere from 10-30 minutes each week by doing everything all at once. Perhaps that isn't worth it to you, but to me it is!

Here is what I made this week:



You can see that he has the option each day to take any combination of the following for lunch: a salad, sandwich, baked potato w/ sour cream, sugar snap peas, apple, yogurt, or pretzel sticks. I typically like to have sausage biscuits, ham and cheese on an English muffin, or some other healthier option for breakfasts. But this week, to make it easier on me, I sent him with a box of cereal and a half gallon of milk for breakfasts. (The decision was pretty easy for me since I got the cereal FREE and the half gallon of milk was only $1).

If you find yourself thinking that your lunch takes too long to prepare each night or morning, give this method a try and let me know if you like it!

2 comments:

vicvic said...

I was just tagged by LOV-ie too and came over to say hello!

That's a great system you've got there! While my husband doesn't eat breakfast at work, he does get up earlier than the rest of us, so this might work for me. Keeping the other 5 people out of his food might be a challenge though!

Heidi Stone said...

Suz: Is there an area of the fridge that you could designate for JUST his lunches? I imagine that, with 7 people in your house, fridge space is probably sparce! :)