How To Be Queen of the Kitchen at Mealtime.

FOOD MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONAL TIPS: (This avoids stress.)

Go over your favorite recipes and put them on 4 X 6 inch cards once you have taken out the bad stuff and substituted good ingredients.  All those low fat recipes can be modified to be not so sugary.  Specify olive oil as oil and organic butter, not margarine.  Add notes to serve this particular dish with such and so of a fruit or vegetable for the fiber and enzyme content.

Now you have a stack of recipes done over several nights, say, during the commercial breaks or one card every night for a month.  This doesn’t have to be hard, you know. Put them in a file box with an alphabet divider set.  File by alphabetical order, putting the recipe cards in front of the letter or divider. This works  best.   

You could also use different dividers and organize by main courses, salads, side dishes, desserts, holiday meals and whatever makes sense to you.  “Family Recipes” in my file box designates recipes that are specialities of various family members. Labels are so handy.

The neat thing about this is you have meal ideas right in front of you in a box you decorated yourself.  OK, maybe not, but the option is always there if you get bitten by the crafting bug.  Mine has a photocopy of my Daughter’s picture inside and mushrooms and spices on the front.  Crafts and gifts are both things good for your health and emotional satisfaction.

Recipe cards can even be bought with colorful designs on them to add cheer to your cooking tasks.  Find joy in many places and pretty soon you are surrounded by it. Use this set to plan meals by taking a recipe out and putting it in front of the rest of the cards as the menu stack for the time period between paydays or shopping dates.  

List what you still need from the store on a shopping list and record the planned menu on a menu list like a magnetized memo pad for the ‘fridge.  When you are done, you know what you can serve and that you have the ingredients on hand at the right time.  This is also a reminder to thaw out ingredients, marinate the day before and handy tricks like that.  This is so organized it sings.
Cross off what is eaten during the week on your memo pad and you will know what’s for dinner at a glance.  Return the recipe cards as you use them for next time.  Life is so much better organized. # # #