on avoiding procrastionation 1: cooking style

i'm currently putting off lesson planning in order to write a post about planning ahead when cooking. kinda ironic, eh?

this year i think i'm much more proficient at meal planning than i was last year. i start my shopping list/weekly meal list on thursday night when the store fliers come. by monday, when i go shopping, i have a complete plan & list. i'm trying to figure out how to decrease the amount i spend each week, but that's another post in itself. this post is about planning my meals ahead of time. here are a few examples from my kitchen lately:

1. last saturday we had our third annual oktoberfest. i signed up to bring chili, corn muffins, and caramel corn. since i had plans in the early afternoon, i did all my cooking when i woke up. i got all the chili ingredients ready in the crock pot & put it in the fridge for joel to turn on later. the corn muffins went in a bag to stay fresh & the caramel corn got wrapped up tightly. (all the food i made was demolished quickly, so i'd say that effort was a grand success!)

2. tonight's another good example of prepping/cooking ahead. friday nights are a bit more rushed so i planned what to make on friday (recipe via "the good neighbor cookbook") and started part of it while cooking tonight's dinner. speaking of that... joel comes home late from grad school so i try to have dinner ready by 7:45pm. tonight is also lesson-planning night so i started my chicken broccoli casserole (recipe via my mom) as soon as i got home. while the chicken/broccoli cooked, i started my plans. then i took a break to mix up the other ingredients and get it ready to put in the oven, which i'll do about 30 minutes before joel's due home.

 (accidentally ripped my recipe!)

*on a related note, for the recipe i made for friday, i tried this garlic peeling trick for the first time. worked like a dream!

**on another related note, all this prep-ahead causes my sink to look like this. my darling husband's been doing the dishes basically all week, but i'm going to clean these bad boys up tonight before he comes home from class.