No time to bake or cook from scratch?
If you've been following my blog so far, you'll notice that I do almost everything, from scratch. You'll find very few mixes in my pantry, and the ones you do find are ones that I have mixed up myself. Why do I do this to myself? One of the biggest reasons is that I have a limited food budget and I'm feeding 6 if not more people on any given day. Not easy in today's rough economy. Plus, I'm sure you know this already, but having to live a gluten-free lifestyle can be quite expensive.
None of that is said to scare you away from trying the ideas in my blog. I am living proof that living on a tight budget and living gluten-free can be done! Many of the recipes I use can be made up ahead of time and stored in your pantry, refrigerator and freezer. The breads all freeze well, as do the cookies. Part of the trick to eating gluten free on a budget is planning ahead.
One of the best tricks I have for saving time on breakfasts for my kids is to make more than I know we will eat on a given day. This past weekend we had waffles on Sunday morning. This is a common item on our menu each weekend. I will double the recipe, make up the entire doubled batch and store the leftovers in a zipper bag for later in the week. They keep well in the refrigerator for days, pull them out and warm them in the toaster. Quick and easy, best of all they cost pennies compared to the frozen gluten free waffles you can purchase, and they taste much better too!
Need another trick? If you make the flat bread, double the recipe. Once it's cooled, slice it into the size slices you need for your sandwiches, and place each "sandwich" into a zipper sandwich bag. You can then place all of the sandwich bags into a larger freezer bag or freezer container to keep them from getting freezer burned. Use them within a month, I know we have no problem doing that in my house. The flat bread rarely makes it to the freezer.
Cookies freeze very well! I find that they are best frozen in a freezer container and not a bag. In my house, the bags just get beat up in the freezer. Any time you make cookies or brownies, go ahead and double it. Freeze the extra batch for a day that you are not able to bake. The worst thing in my house is for someone to be packing their lunch and find the cookie jar empty! Oh the horror!
As you can see, a little planning makes a huge difference. If you are already baking, you can easily double most any recipe. You will have the same mess to clean up and not much more time than you would making only one batch. With some recipes you will have no extra time involved, other than the few minutes it takes to shape a loaf of bread or spread the batter in the second pan.
Another great tip is to make up mix bags for certain recipes you enjoy making. The flat bread or chocolate chip cookie recipes I've highlighted in two of my blog posts can easily be made up ahead. Take a zipper storage bag and mix all of the dry ingredients together into it. Label the bag so that you know what it's for and you have half of the prep work done for that recipe. All you'll have to do when you want to mix it up is add the liquid ingredients.
Taking a bit of time on a day that you have in the kitchen will help you in so many ways. Taking a day every week or two to bake a few of your families favorites will go a long way towards stretching your families food budget. Even if you don't have time to bake everything your family eats, just adding a few things to your freezer will help more than you may realize. Making up a few extra bags of the dry ingredients you need for your favorite recipes will save you time later. You already have the ingredients out, go ahead and make a few mix bags and label them for later.
You will be your families hero when they have homemade cookies for their lunches, bread for their sandwiches and rolls to go with dinner! You will save both time and money. Who doesn't like that idea? Do you have any time saving tips that also save us on our food budgets? Please feel free to share them, I'd love to hear them and you may just inspire someone else with your ideas! I'm always looking for great ideas to save me time in the kitchen.
