Get Organized Now! Weblog

Organizing a Breakfast Plan

My husband can eat the same exact breakfast every single morning and be perfectly happy. For me, however, I need more variety.

I try to avoid high-carb breakfast foods that pack on the calories, such as pancakes and french toast--on most days.

Instead, I have a healthy 7-day breakfast plan, that I change up a bit for variety.

Here's how a typical week's worth of breakfasts looks for me:

Monday: Oatmeal or cereal, and fruit

Tuesday: Peanut butter or sliced avocado with whole wheat Wheat Thins

Wednesday: Eggs (scrambled, poached or hard boiled), usually with ham or Canadian bacon and/or a fruit cup

Thursday: Plain Greek yogurt with fruit

Friday: Fruit, cheese and nuts

Saturday: Homemade waffles, pancakes, french toast or egg casserole and fruit

Sunday: We usually go out to Perkins after Mass and have a late breakfast/lunch combination there

In having a weekly plan drawn up, I don't have to think too hard about what to make for breakfast, and I can plan ahead to ensure I always have the ingredients I need readily available.

I'm a proponent of 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day.' It's that meal that helps me get going, and gives me enough energy to last me until lunchtime.

'Not So' Hard-Boiled Eggs

I recently made a dozen hard-boiled eggs, or so I thought. Despite timing the eggs exactly (I've done this so many times), and checking online on several sites to be sure the timing notations were correct, to my dismay when I went to peel them the next day, the yolks of the eggs were not quite cooked all the way through, and the whites were slightly runny. That resulted in one dozen eggs we could not use.

But I still needed the hard-boiled eggs. So, I had to do them over. Luckily, I had a spare dozen in the fridge. This time, I cooked them once again according to directions, adding another minute since they were the same size eggs as the first batch, but this time, I decided I would sacrifice one egg at the end of the cooking time--just to be sure the egg was cooked all the way through.

When the timer went off, I removed one egg from the boiling water, immersed it in cold water for a minute, and then peeled it. It was perfect! Then I immersed the other eggs and ended up with a good batch of hard-boiled eggs. I'll use this 'sacrifice one egg' system from now on so there's never a problem again in the future. You live and you learn.

Keeping Track of Cookbook Recipes

I have dozens of beautiful cookbooks and I use them all the time. Some of them have provided recipes that are now 'regulars' that we eat fairly often. I've found others that make great potluck dishes or holiday treats.

Since many of these books are so lovely, I can't make written notes in them. I just can't bear the thought of 'writing' in my cookbooks.

BUT, it is important to a) remember those dishes that I've already attempted to make, b) remember anything I did to deviate from the ingredients or steps and c) whether or not we enjoyed that recipe enough to make again.

Using my computer, I make a 'Cheat Sheet' for each of my cookbooks AND an additional running index.

The cheat sheet is one piece of paper (printed from an Excel spreadsheet I created) that lists each recipe I've made in that book, the page it's on, notes, and a rating...10 equals LOVED it and 1 equals hated it. That page is folded to fit and is inserted in between the front cover and the first page of each cookbook.

In addition, I created a 5 column spreadsheet called 'Recipes to Make Again' that lists recipes, recipe categories, quick descriptions, cookbook titles and page numbers. This is a running list that I store on my computer and can open any time. If I'm searching for chicken, I just use my 'Find' feature and I can easily find what I'm looking for. I also like the fact that I can sort by category, cookbook, etc. as needed.

My 'cookbook system' has made it so easy for me to find exactly what I'm looking for and to ensure I don't make a recipe we didn't like...twice.

Sometimes it's OK to take a Shortcut

The other night, Joe and I got together with three other couples to celebrate the holidays. We stopped at each of our homes to enjoy appetizers, holiday decorations and the company of good friends.

Normally, I use my best dishes and glassware, pretty linen napkins, along with all my festive serving dishes and so on.

But this year, things have been especially hectic with work projects, school programs and the holidays.

So in the name of sanity, for this celebration, we ended up using disposable dishes, cups and napkins. Clean up was a breeze and it was a sigh of relief not to have to end our evening with cleaning tasks.

This serves as a reminder that while it's lovely to go all out (which we do tend to do most of the time), once in awhile we all need a shortcut.

Besides, the evening was about being with our friends, which we thoroughly enjoyed!

Give yourself some breaks this holiday season and take some shortcuts when the opportunity arises.

Too Many Cookbooks...What To Do?

I like to cook, and I own lots of cookbooks. I know I can get many recipes online, and I often do, but I also love sitting down with a good 'physical' cookbook, flipping through the pages and enjoying the photos. So, even though I can access recipes online, my cookbooks are here to stay, never mind those that I'll surely accumulate in the future.

I currently am storing these cookbooks in my home office in my bookcase, but the volume is beginning to exceed the space--cookbooks are not the only genre I'm storing in my present bookcase.

So, I had an epiphany today. Why not get an additional bookcase--and put it in my kitchen? I mentioned the idea to my husband, Joe, and he grabbed his nifty tape measure and told me it was completely feasible.

So, I stopped at Keck Furniture, our local furniture store, and found an excellent bookcase, 24 inches wide, by 13 inches deep, by 84 inches tall--available to order. The wood grain is medium maple, which is nearly an exact match of my kitchen cabinets. I placed my deposit, and will have my new bookcase in 8 weeks flat. I can't wait!

I'll have plenty of space for my cookbooks, and best yet, they'll be stored right in the kitchen where I cook!

I know having a bookcase in the kitchen is not necessarily conventional, but sometimes you have to jump out of the box and do something that you know will work for you, your family, your space and your needs!

A Quick Way to Hull and Freeze Strawberries

A week ago, I went to Jelli's Market in Helenville with my friend, Sue, and my 6-year old daughter to pick strawberries. Jelli's supplied us with large cardboard boxes for holding the fruit and gave us a ride out to the rows of fresh strawberries. We spent an hour filling our box, taking tasty bites in between. By the time we got home, we had two boxes overflowing with ripe, red strawberries.

I immediately made strawberry muffins with some of my batch, put a supply aside for eating, and then froze the rest.

I like hulling my berries before freezing them. First, I pulled off the green leafy part. Then, using a sturdy plastic drinking straw, I held the strawberry in my hand stem-side up, poked the berry right where the stem was and pushed down all the way through. I flicked the hull out of the straw each time very easily. No need to run out and buy a special tool for this purpose.

Once the strawberries were all hulled, I placed them in single layers on cookie sheets, and froze the strawberries for 24 hours. The next day, I transferred the frozen berries to freezer bags and labeled the bags with the date.

Now we'll have delicious strawberries to use on pancakes, in recipes or over ice cream any time we desire.

By the way, while we were visiting Jelli's, I picked up a few fun facts about strawberries:

1) Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside!

2) Eight medium sized strawberries have more Vitamin C than an orange.

3) The strawberry is a member of the rose family.

4) Strawberry is the second most popular natural flavor. It is second only to chocolate.

Keep Your Pantry Stocked

You had tons of things to do today, and now you're exhausted. But, you still have to make dinner, and your pantry is bare. Sound like a familiar story?

In the future, always keep your pantry stocked with basics, such as tomato sauce, pasta, tuna, beans, canned veggies and rice. This will greatly reduce those last-minute treks to the store.

One New Recipe Each Week

I love to cook and try out new recipes. But with my family's busy pace, I often revert back to my tried and true recipes that I know work--and I know I could get cooked and on the table in a few minutes.

But I satisfy my desire to make new recipes by only trying out ONE new recipe each week. I then look at my calendar, and schedule making the new recipe on a day when I know I could finish work a bit earlier, or on a weekend day.

Yesterday, I was watching Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger on the Food Network--since we try to eat as healthy as possible, her recipes almost always sound enticing to me.

She made a recipe for Shrimp Salad with Cucumber and Mint that was very intriguing. So, I went to the Food Network web site when the show ended, found the archived recipe, printed it out and hung it on my fridge, purchased the ingredients at my supermarket this morning, and plan to make this recipe this week.

If all works out well, I'll transfer the printed recipe to my permanent recipe binder. I've built up some excellent recipes over the years, using this simple 'one new recipe each week' system.

Ever Hear of a Progressive Dinner?

Ever Hear of a Progressive Dinner? Recently, my friend Tammy approached me and asked if I would be interested in being part of a Progressive Dinner. I didn't even know what this was, but when she told me about it, I was all for it.

In a nutshell, a group of friends plan a meal together where each course is served at a different participant's home. The entire party moves from home to home throughout the evening.

We had 4 couples involved--8 people in total. We chose an Italian theme for the evening.

The progressive dinner started at my house, where Joe and I served three appetizers: bruchetta, caponata and stuffed mushrooms, as well as beverages and one specialty drink.

We then moved on to Poppy and Kurt's house, where we enjoyed minestrone soup, followed by arugula salad and beverages.

Afterwards, everyone walked over to Tammy and Jesse's home, where we were treated to lasagna and beverages.

Finally, we proceeded to Christel and Ryan's home, where we ended the evening with an assortment of wonderful desserts, including tapioca parfait, banana pudding, pumpkin cheesecake and chocolate boston creme pie--along with cold beverages and/or coffee.

We spent about an hour at each home, give or take. The evening began at 6:00P and ended at approximately 10:30PM.

I can't even begin to tell you what a fantastic night this was. We shared wonderful stories with each other, discussed topics of interest, and enjoyed so many delicious dishes.

If you're never tried this before, I highly recommend it. You can choose your theme for the evening, or go with a more eclectic mix and just let people choose what they wish to make. We opted for 4 couples and a more formal setting-- served at the dining room table. However, you and the others involved can make your own rules for your own Progressive Dinner.

What a great way to share the workload and catch up with good friends!

Putting Together a Cookbook

For the past few months, a few of us from the social club I belong to have been compiling a club cookbook. The book has grown to about 100 pages of recipes from many of our members, and we're in the final stages of categorizing, editing and printing. When it's done, we'll definitely have a wonderful compilation of some tasty, tried-and-true dishes.

This is the type of project that can be done whether it's for your social club, your church or even simply among your family members.

It's all a matter of breaking the project down into small chunks, and delegating pieces of it to others if possible.

The first thing we did was solicit recipes from our members. We did this via email. All the recipes were sent to one member who copied and pasted into a Word document.

Another member then formatted the recipes and yet a few others are now involved in editing.

Someone else did the cover design, and another member handled getting the weights and measures pages and other special pages into the book.

Probably the most difficult part of this project was getting our members to submit their recipes. Everyone is really busy with their lives, so there was quite a bit of procrastination. But with a bit of reminding and firm deadlines, we finally managed to get almost everyone to submit at least one of her favorites to this effort.

We'll sell the finished cookbooks as a fundraiser for our club. However, if you decide to create a cookbook as a simple family project, these can be given as gifts.

What a great way to get a bunch of treasured treats into one book that everyone can use and enjoy!