Back to school. Back to routine. Back to planning.

Maybe you have kids or are maybe you are heading back to school yourself or have some type of new fall plans.

I always find September is more of a “restart” than January.  The big shift from the freedom of summer and back to planning and organizing for fall.  As always, it seems like such an abrupt end of summer when September comes, where winter to spring/summer feels like it takes so long to get here.

My love of delicious food is a constant all year round, but I find myself planning and organizing so much more in the fall for regular meals and batch cooking. 

How did I spend the very last day of summer freedom?  Part of the evening was spent making big batches of amazing stew and chilli that are overflowing with vegetables.  It just came naturally and didn’t feel like a chore.  I love when that happens as sometimes food planning and prep can feel exhausting and difficult when other areas of life are hectic.  Having my daughter right in there with me made it so much fun and rewarding in ways more than just the feeling you get from having incredible meals ready to go.

Having food ready or even an idea of what meals to plan for as well as having ingredients in your kitchen can save us in so many ways.  It saves us money, time, and possibly even our health.  Eating out or pre-made meals can be healthy of course, but often if in a rush we grab quick and easy, which may not always have the best ingredients.

If you haven’t tried batch cooking, do a search and see what looks tempting.  There are so many great recipes and instructions and motivation online to help get you excited to be in the kitchen.  Store your creations in glass containers in the freezer.  I often use mason jars to store large and small servings of meals by using the various sizes of jars.  Make sure to have the containers labeled well.  Having chilli, spaghetti sauce, and various soups, can make it hard to know what is what in the freezer when you go searching.  We have eaten chilli on noodles due to missing that step and now we label everything.

With the huge selection of fresh produce at Quality Greens, finding amazing ingredients for meals is so easy.  That is step 1.  Once you have those items at home, the rest is pretty simple having it all right there in your kitchen. 

Step 2 is having a handy binder where you store all recipes that you have personally made and love.  Not just ones that are ok.  Only fantastic recipes should be kept.  You know, the ones you would eat every single day as they are that good.  My binder is called “The Great Ones”.  It grows on a weekly basis.  I can pull any recipe from there and know that it will amazing.  It’s taken years and lots of flops to get to that point.  I do have a number of food websites and blogs that I 100% trust after making a number of meals that have always been winners.  Find your recipe winners and use that to keep you motivated and excited to make amazing meals. 

Enjoy your week!

Lisa.