How to Find Time to Cook

The most common question I get asked as a food blogger isn’t do you have a recipe for this? The most common question I get is how do you find time to do all that cooking and baking? Sometimes it isn’t easy to find kitchen time. Life can get crazy and put a lot of demands on your precious time and energy. Here are some ways I found that help me find time to cook even on my busiest days.

1. I make cooking a priority. We will always find time to the things that are important to us, whether it is binge watching a season of Supernatural, playing 12 hours of World of Warcraft a day, or spending more time with your kids.

2. I menu plan. I can hear you all groaning from here. How can I add one more thing to my schedule? I will do a more in depth article on menu planning in the future. All I will say for now is menu planning doesn’t help find time to be in the kitchen so much as help you use your time in the kitchen efficiently. By menu planning I know what I am going to have so I don’t waste time trying to decide. I just get cooking. I also know I have all the ingredients for what I want to make when I menu plan. So those last minute, time consuming trips to the grocery store are eliminated, for the most part.

3. I cook when I have the most energy.  I generally have the most energy when I get up in the morning so I often cook first thing in the morning rather then when I get home at night when I am totally wiped from work.  I usually can handle reheating something where as I tend to do things like forget the baking powder in my pancakes when I try to cook at night.

4.  I have a group of really quick recipes. When I started blogging, I had a feature called what to cook when you don’t feel like cooking. While none of the recipes I post are particularly time consuming, these particular recipes come together very fast. I call these recipes my fast five.  I always have the ingredients on hand and the recipe are taped to the inside of cupboard door so I never have to take time to find them. Develop your own fast five and you will be able to always have a non processed food meal even when you don’t want to cook. I am adding quick recipes to this list all the time.  It’s probably more like the fast fifty by know. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Italian Tomato Sauce
2. Sloppy Joes
3. 30 Minute Chicken Soup
4. Bean and Cheese Burritos
5. Arroz Con Pollo

5.  NCO -Neat, Clean, Organized Nothing wastes more time in the kitchen then having to search for ingredients and equipment or having to do dishes before you can cook something. I’ll be totally honest this is where I fail more often then I succeed but I keep on trying.

Most days I cook at least one meal. However,  I have a confession to make,  there are times when I go through the drive thru or grab a package of Hot Pockets and some chips for dinner.  I love to cook but there are days when I would rather come home from work, plop my butt on the couch and watch 3 hours of Supernatural before I go to bed and that is okay.  I always get up the next day and start cooking again.