Revisiting My Pantry-frugal baking and cooking

This weekend I really got in a groove! The warm, sunny weather surely helped lift my mood. My new dishwasher didn't hurt either! Actually, it was new a year ago when we bought it (a friend had it for about 6 months and offered to sell it to us when they remodeled their kitchen). Between 2 hospital stays for my husband, 1 hospital stay, move to nursing home, then to assisted living facility of my mother-in-law, there was really no time to do home repairs or maintenance.

So, we are really enjoying our new, quiet, efficient, pretty dishwasher. That has probably also contributed to my desire to cook and bake more--and more often as well!

This weekend after I made a loaf of pumpkin nut bread, I also made 3 individual sized mozzarella meat loaves (used the French's onions and Cheeze-it cracker crumbs in the meat loaf). I also made a small "family sized" meatloaf that will probably serve as lunches for a couple of days (I love a meatloaf sandwich!)

Then I whipped up a batch of pumpkin muffins (24), a sausage/egg casserole that will serve as dinner tonight (and probably breakfast tomorrow). I had 2 lbs. of sausage so I sliced up the other pound and cooked up patties. I hard boiled some eggs and used up the rest of the dozen in the muffins, meatloaf(s) and finally, in a batch of brownies.

I'm not sharing all this to brag about what a great home-maker I am! For over a year my son as gone at trade school and my husband worked evenings so I really got out of the habit of cooking and baking. Then when my son came home, I was back at work full-time and my husband continued to work (different job) evenings, so we just grabbed whatever we felt like for dinner.

Now that we're all three on a similar work schedule, it's fun to cook and bake again! It's also much more frugal. Over the past couple of years we did a lot of "grab and go" at fast food and even quick, but not necessarily healthy foods at home. Now we're back on track for a more frugal food budget and eating more healthfully again.

I'm sharing all this to show that even those who don't have a lot of time to cook and bake from scratch, you can fit it in with a little planning. Start slowly - one or two items a week, making double batches of whatever you fix and ad more and more each week. Before long, you'll have 1/2 a week planned, cooked and baked in a couple of hours.

I'll be sharing a list of my favorite cookbooks and bulk cooking/baking recipes in the weeks to come, so stay tuned!