Mmmm....dinner!!

I get alot of emails and questions during the season that go something like this, “How and WHEN do you cook meals during your maze season?”  — I LOVE to cook, but I really don’t always have the time I wish I had to prepare meals each day, let alone maze season.  Maze season gets pretty crazy; it’s amazing that we eat at all, really.  When we first started the maze, our son thought he’d hit the lotto to have a fully stocked Farm Cafe in his backyard: hotdogs, corn dogs, nachos, sodas, candy — all sorts of items we don’t eat on a regular basis at home!  Needless to say, after a few days he (we!) were not all that excited anymore about all the stuff we had access to.

It takes a lot of planning ahead and organization, something I thought I was pretty good at; however there were nights I had no idea what we even had in the refrigerator or pantry to eat.  Most nights, I had a casserole or something in the slow cooker to rely on — but sometimes, we fell into different versions of the late dinner night:  The “Whatever” night — whatever you can put between two slices of bread or pour milk over…..and the “Breakfast for Supper” night: scrambled eggs, ham, and toast.  Personally, I don’t mind this at all being a straight up Southern gal (and yes, milk gravy!) — but even this gets old.

Last year,  I vowed to do better.  I purchased lots of books for easy, prepare-ahead, bulk cooking, etc., aspiring to be the Super Mom within.  I fell short.  The “Whatever” night grew only to include grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  Still, not bad.  At least I had expanded into the fruit/vegetable food group!

The “Once a Month Cooking” concept intrigues me and makes perfect sense, except that I couldn’t seem to stick with it for an extended period of time.  There are only so many hours in a day, and I couldn’t always devote the time or energy needed to calculate the amounts of food needed for multiple recipes, compile the massive shopping list, then cook and store everything.  

Oh, but now I’m almost giddy while writing this!  THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT — we will eat real food, at the table EVERY day all year long!  Even during maze season (yep, I’m bouncing gleefully in my desk chair at this thought!)   I found something that I think anyone who loves to cook will absolutely love.  I’ve been using it for awhile now (had to try it out before I shared it with ya’ll to make sure it’s a “good thing.”  You think maybe Martha would approve?)

It’s available on Amazon.com and is great as a stand alone program (it contains all the recipes from each of the books, so you don’t have to have the books to accompany the software.  When I received it, in less than 15 minutes I had installed the software,  created a menu for a week, printed the menu, recipes, cooking directions (for refrigerator labels), and a complete shopping list!  It’s super easy to use, is very flexible and customizable.  I was able to enter several of our favorite recipes, and the program did the rest!  It even told me how many zip loc bags I needed to store the food!  That’s amazing!

Check it out sometime, let me know what you think.  Now, if it would just DO all the shopping, cooking and clean the kitchen for me also……<sigh>  but for now; I am perfectly content just knowing that a whole week’s worth of meals are safely tucked away, waiting to be heated, the table set and my scrubbed clean family assembled.  Move over, Martha — now THAT IS a “good thing!”

“Dinner is Ready, Lunch is Ready, On the Side: 30 Meals in One Day; Software to Support all 3 Books (CD-ROM)”
by Deanna Buxton (Author)