Here's my 2nd in a series on Frugal Food Organization tips. Hope you all glean something you can use from it.
1-When I get home from the grocery store ( I may sometimes wait a few hours if I'm tired), I do some prep work with my meat. I will go ahead and marinate steaks, roasts, cut beef and marinate for shish-ka-bobs,and shape hamburger patties. Then I freeze them in freezer bags and label with contents and date, or plastic containers and label with a piece of tape on the container. If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I'll go ahead and cook up a pot of chicken and shred and freeze (save the broth) or fry up hamburger for spaghetti sauce, casseroles, etc. and freeze. This really cuts meal prep time on busy nights.
2-Even though I have an automatic ice maker, I keep ice cube trays on hand. I freeze leftover gravy, and broth in them and then place in a freezer bag and label and freeze. Then when you need some for a dish, just pop out what you need. I have even done this with leftover coffee to reheat on another day.
3-My crock pot is my most favorite kitchen appliance. I use it 3-4 times a week. It cuts down on the heat in your kitchen, allows me to prepare meals in the morning and have them ready in the busy late afternoon and is so easy to use. Very little mess with 1 pot, and everything tastes great cooked in it.
4-I am the child of older parents who grew up in the depression era. My dad had something yummy that he made about once a month that we called "Dad Soup". He would save leftover meat, gravy, veggies, pasta, rice, whatever, through out the month. He would put these in a large margarine container or two in the freezer. Then once a month, he would put it all in a big pot, add a little tomato or V-8 juice and cook all day. It was always so good and virtually a free meal. I do it today and although mine isn't as good as Dad's, it's still pretty yummy.
5-From the time my kids were little, I would get try to get my kids to help me fix dinner when they would. When they got to be around 10 or so, I instituted a kids meal night. They had to choose the meal & put the ingredients up on my grocery list. They had to cook and clean up. It taught them the art of how to plan and implement meal preparation and gave me a night off.
6-When I do make casseroles, stews, meatloaf, etc. I will often double the recipe and freeze the other meal. That way, I can just whip it out of the freezer on days I know I will be too busy or too tired to cook.
7-I try to have at least one night a week as a vegetarian meal. If it were up to me, I would eat vegetarian almost every night but my kids like meat. So we do the vegetarian thing one night a week. I have found some kid friendly veggie recipes over the years that they like. It's healthier for all of us, and cheaper too.
8-I live in a high humidity area and was tired of having my salt get all hard in the salt shaker. I took a tip from the restaurants around here & add about 1/2 teaspoon of uncooked rice grains into the salt shaker. Keeps the salt from hardening.
9-I don't hand wash my dishes too often since I have a dishwasher but when I do, I add 1 tablespoon of baking soda to the dish water. It cleans the dishes better and is great for your hands.
10-Since I do use my dishwasher, I have set it to the air dry setting instead of the heat dry setting. That alone, saves about $30 off my electricity bill.