Kitchen Lovin

After a momentary lapse in blogging focus (read: drinking beer in the bathtub will get you blasted in less than 2 beers. Efficient, yes. Smart, no), I'm back to share s'more of my most beloved Payroll Mommy tips for da kitchen.

AKA my favorite room ever.

#3) Do a lil' large batch/freezer cooking but ONLY if you can come up with several similar recipes. For instance, do chicken and dumplings, chicken pot pie, and minestrone all at once. All are based on inexpensive, freezer-friendly root vegetables. This means you can chop a shit ton of ingredients at once with minimal cost. Eat some, freeze some. With the recipes above, I can come up with SIX to EIGHT meals.

Das right, bitches.

#4) Whole chickens are your friend. Buy them on sale and have them on hand. Roast simply and shred for a zillion billion uses. My personal favorite is in Mexican dishes- enchilladas and casseroles freeze suuuuuper duper well. Don't turn up your nose at casseroles, I see you!! I do it too, but honest to God, our mothers and Grandmothers had the smarts to throw it all in a 9x13 and call it good. What the hell kind of Le Cordon Too Good for It nonsense is that!

#5) Marry your meats and marinades, THEN freeze. You can use basic marinades or even herb butters, pair 'em up with your animal of choice, and freeze. Not only does this make it easy to take from freezer to frig, but then it'll be saucy and fab once you're ready to cook. It ALSO comes in handy for those "what the fricken frack am I going to make tonight!!!!" moments. A favorite around here is gyro meat and whole turkey breasts loaded up with herb butter.

#6) Breakfast carbs can make a morning feel special. Cinnamon rolls and quick breads are unbelievably fast in spite of their lengthy bake times. They're also cheap (hello, flour and eggs?! Please!), can be done en mass and can make breakfast feel so much better than a lame bowl of Cheerios. Better than Frosted Flakes, even. Around here, I eat a lot of eggs and that means while the bakery treats warm in the oven, I can whip up some eggs and VOILA, a legitimate breakfast. As an aside: most quick breads now come with a Clean Eating version. This means no sugar or oil and I'm a fan.

And there you have it. Six easy ways to WOW your family without sending yourself straight to the asylum.

Are you dazzled or what!