I am making Sunday my official "busy kitchen" day. I have been meaning to start using Sunday afternoons to prep for the meals I'll be making Monday-Friday the coming week. Having at least some of the work done ahead of time makes it much easier to prepare meals at the end of a long day and makes it much more likely that I will keep my family at home for dinner instead of deciding "I don't feel like cooking" and going out to eat.

Here's what our first "busy kitchen" Sunday looked like this year.


I made a batch of restaurant style salsa to snack on throughout this coming week. It's pure joy knowing that I have salsa just waiting for me in the fridge. And now when the girls come plodding into the kitchen only an hour after having their lunch and say they are "just starving," I have something yummy and fairly healthy to offer them. They love salsa and corn chips. And so do I. I'm supposed to be eating small meals and snacks throughout the day, so having salsa on hand helps me do this and I feel the results of keeping my blood sugar up.


I also baked some chicken breasts with a simple coating of olive oil and salt and pepper to use for a dinner later this week. I have learned that if I wait to bake my raw chicken breasts on the same day I need them in a recipe that calls for "cooked chicken," I often avoid cooking them, make some other recipe instead, avoid them the next day, too, cook something else instead and then end up letting the chicken breasts expire and go to waste. So, I've learned that I need to just go ahead and cook the chicken breasts I need on the same day I get home from the store with them, let the chicken cool, cut it up and keep it in the fridge ready. Cooked chicken, obviously, doesn't expire as fast as raw chicken does and this is partly because having cooked chicken ready to use makes it much easier for me to make the recipe sooner.


We also made a batch of Rolo candies. We plan to let Norah run some over to our neighbors later tonight as a thank you for the way they blessed the girls this Christmas. There will be some left over after we fill a bag for our neighbors, so we can snack on them this week.


We made a batch of white chili and a big batch of white rice. We're going to have a little for dinner tonight, but we are saving the rest for Dwayne's and my lunches throughout the week.


We also sliced up some strawberries and we're letting them sit in sugar. We'll use them on ice cream sundaes and banana splits tonight and put them in the fridge to use through the rest of the week till they are gone.


Dwayne made peanut butter balls. Somehow after the holidays, I had four jars of opened peanut butter all in various stages, less or more full, so they needed to be used up or consolidated.


I mixed up two batches of pancake batter that I used to make the girls some waffles (with cinnamon chips) and some pancakes that I will freeze for breakfasts this week.

I love getting a head start on the week like this. Life may not allow me to have a "busy kitchen" every Sunday, but in general, this will be what I plan to do on Sundays when I am home. Every little bit that I do will make a huge difference for me during those moments throughout the week when I am less determined than I am right now to stay home and eat in order to save money.