Cooking Shortcuts by Risa Attrell

Below you will find some cooking shortcuts. No, this is not a list of easy recipes. Rather, it is a list of ideas and suggestions that will make whatever you’re cooking for dinner a little easier, and will hopefully inspire you to think of your own ideas.

Forget The Eggs
Eggs have cholesterol and they cost money. People use eggs where they don’t really have to, because they believe it serves as a glue to make things stick. They therefore add eggs to ground beef when making meatballs, or dip the chicken in eggs before breading it, to make the breadcrumbs stick to the chicken. But this is not necessary.

Ground beef has a sticky quality on it’s own. While your meatballs may hold together better if you add eggs, (and flour) if you make your meatballs small, and compress each meatball in your hand into a tight ball before dropping it in boiling water, they should stick together. Furthermore, if you work directly from the package of meat when forming your meatballs, you will save yourself a bowl to wash. If you add eggs and flour to your meat, you will need to use a bowl, and thus will end up with a dirty bowl to wash. You can still spice up the meatballs to give it flavor, and if you pour tomato sauce over the whole spaghetti and meatball dish, it will taste pretty good.

A word of caution though. Don’t try this when making meatloaf. If you try to serve your family meatloaf without eggs and flour, they will think that you just spiced up some ground beef and stuck it in the oven; and they would be right.

You can also make breaded chicken without the eggs. Though this time, you don’t get to save yourself a bowl to wash. True, the breadcrumbs will stick better with the eggs, but if you just rinse each piece of chicken in water and then dip the wet chicken in the breadcrumbs, it will stick. You’ll save your family from the unnecessary cholesterol, and you will save yourself time.

2. Don’t Boil the Lasagna

You might think you need to boil the lasagna noodles before making the lasagna. But actually you can get ‘No Boil Lasagna’ in your supermarket. And here’s a secret: Even if the package isn’t labeled No Boil, you still don’t have to boil it. Instead, create the lasagna as you usually would, but with raw lasagna noodles. The trick is to add a generous amount of sauce between each layer. The lasagna will cook and become soft in the oven if there is enough sauce between the layers. And make sure you add sauce on top as well.

3. Use Frozen Vegetables

I’m all for fresh vegetables. And I love salad! But this is about making dinner preparation easier. We all have times when we are busy, tired, or both, and just not up to spending too much time in the kitchen. Here is where frozen vegetables come in to the picture. Your freezer should be stocked with frozen broccoli, frozen cauliflower, and whatever other vegetable your family enjoys. When you need to make an easy meal, you just take the frozen vegetables out of the freezer, put some in a baking pan, and pop it in the oven shortly before dinner. I have even heard that frozen vegetables have more vitamins than fresh vegetables, because it is frozen fresh with all the vitamins in it, while vegetables left unfrozen lose their vitamins over time. Whether this claim is accurate or not, I’m not sure, but I’m sure frozen vegetables have nutritional value. So use them when you need an easy side dish.

4. Use Canned Soup

I bet you didn’t need me to tell you this one. And it needs no explanation.

5. Use Disposables

Obviously, this one will save you time, not money. If you want to save yourself time from washing dishes, pots and pans, then use disposable everything. Disposable plates forks, spoons and knives. And disposable baking pans. (Sadly we still don’t have disposable pots.) If this is too expensive, at least use disposable baking pans. There is nothing harder and more annoying than having to stand and scrub a baking pan. I won’t comment about the theory that cooking with aluminum increases the risk of Alzheimer’s. I don’t know much about that subject. You can make your own decision about that. I am merely pointing out that baking in a disposable baking pan will save you the time of rubbing and scrubbing a baking pan.

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Making Kitchen Cleaning Easy by Risa Attrell

If there is one thing that we homemakers know it's that the hardest room in the house to keep clean and orderly is the kitchen. That's because the kitchen is where meals are constantly being made, which continuously makes the pots and pans dirty. Likewise it is the place where the family eats and takes snacks, which constantly creates dirty dishes, and crumbs of food. Even when we make the kitchen sparkling clean, it doesn't take long for the work to get undone. What can we do to make this job easier?

Keep It Brainless
You may not believe this, but to a large extent the difficulty in keeping the kitchen clean and orderly is not in the work itself, but in the thinking about it.

"What??" you think. "What is there to think about cleaning the kitchen? It's not rocket science!" Well that's true- it's not rocket science. But I bet you think about it more than you realize. Imagine your kitchen needs cleaning. There are dirty dishes in the sink and on the table, the floor needs sweeping, the counters need clearing and washing. What is the first thing you do when you walk in? Chances are the first thing you do is sigh and think to yourself "Okay, what should I do first? Should I clear the table, or should I wash the dishes?..." And after you do the first task, whatever that is, you look around again and think "Now what should I do next?..."
Does this sound like you? If you don't think so, pay attention next time you clean your kitchen. Pay attention to your thoughts. You may be surprised to discover that you think about it more than you realize. Believe it or not, it is this thinking that makes the job difficult, not the actual cleaning.

Think about it. How hard is it to wash the dishes? You may find the work boring and tedious, but is it really that hard? Well, I guess it is if you left the dirty dishes sitting there for a while without soaking it, which is a dumb thing to do in my opinion. But otherwise washing dishes is not that hard. Neither is clearing a table, or clearing the counter, or any of the other jobs that you do to keep your kitchen looking nice and pleasant. So what's so hard about it? What's hard is that when you start the job, you feel overwhelmed by all the different things you have to do.

The answer to this is to 'Keep It Brainless.' That means you should have an order to which you clean the kitchen, and you stick to that order every day. You can make whatever order works best for you. In a short time you will learn this order by heart and will not need to consult a written list. As soon as you enter the kitchen, instead of thinking about it, you will head straight to job #1. Then when you're finished with that, you will begin job #2, and so forth. No more thinking about it. Your kitchen will be done before you know it. If you keep up with this routine every day, I bet you will find that your kitchen is neater over-all, and that you find it much easier to clean.

So Which Order Is Best?
I'm not sure there's a best order for everyone. You may have to experiment to find what order is best for you. But I can offer a suggestion.

I would recommend that you always put away the groceries first whenever there are groceries to put away.

Then clear the table if it needs to be cleared.

Right after that, wash the dishes. The dishes are very important to put at the top of your list. Sometimes you may be too tired to take care of everything, so at least take care of the groceries and the dishes, so the food doesn't spoil, and you don’t have to start washing the pots just before you make dinner.

Next, sweep the floor, followed by washing the stovetop, and then clear and wash the counters. Lastly is the sink. Then mop if necessary.

That's my suggestion, but you may find that a different order works for you. The important thing is that you get into a routine so that you don't have to think about it.

All this of course doesn't apply to the 'deep cleaning.' Having a routine that you don't have to think about won't make the jobs of scrubbing the oven and the fridge easier. But at least when it comes to overall appearances, working without thinking is the easiest way.




This article may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author. If you would like to buy reprint right to this article, please email risaattrell@ymail.com