Today’s post is sponsored by the new Windows Phone 7.
It comes as a surprise to many of my friends that I cook as often as I do. Even more than before I had my second baby. Anyone with little folks at home can tell you that you’re not allowed more than about 20 minutes to prepare anything in the kitchen…and that’s with continuous distribution of Cheerios and puffs. Out of necessity, I have learned how to get a lot more done with a lot less time.
In conjunction with the launch of the Windows Phone 7, the folks at Microsoft are coordinating with me and 57 other food and lifestyle bloggers (see the official rules for a list of all the participating bloggers) to give away their new smartphones to our readers and challenged us to write a post on the theme of “doing more with less”. Before I get to how I used this classic Cornbread recipe to “do more with less”, let me give you the details on how to enter the giveaway.
To enter the Windows Phone 7 giveaway:
- Leave a comment on this post, sharing one way you make your life easier in the kitchen (e.g., chopping up vegetables ahead of time, organizing your pantry, enlisting your spouse or kids to help out)
- You can enter once per day until the contest ends on Monday, November 29, 2010. (For even more chances to win, I’m giving away another phone on Panini Happy)
- One entry on this blog will be selected at random to win a brand-new Windows Phone 7. Please note that the phone will ship within 8-10 weeks.
- The official rules can be found here.
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Multitasking and synergizing – I don’t even consciously do it anymore, it’s just how I operate. I’ve always been pretty efficient with my time but these days I’ve become a bit of a maximizing machine out of necessity. Sometimes you’ll see this manifest itself on my blogs, when I prepare one recipe here on Cooking On the Side and then parlay the leftovers into a tasty sandwich over on Panini Happy. You may recall these examples:
- Classic Meat Loaf became Meat Loaf Patty Melt Panini
- Braised Short Ribs became Braised Short Rib Panini
- White Whole Wheat Walnut Bread became Brie & Dried Apricot Panini
If you go to Panini Happy today you’ll see how I turned leftovers from cornbread I made for Cooking On the Side into Pulled Pork Cornbread Panini with Caramelized Onions and Pepper Jack.
I actually make cornbread quite often, and I always use the recipe from the back of a box of corn meal (the recipe has been on the box for years). It’s the quickest bread I know how to make, start to finish in under 30 minutes. Plus, I always have all the ingredients on hand. This one is moist and mildly sweet with a crumbly corn texture. I was inspired by a recent post on Healthy Food for Living to try grilling some panini with the leftovers. Read on for the Cornbread recipe for the cornbread and then hop over to Panini Happy for my panini (and a chance to win another Windows Phone 7!).
Corn Bread
From the back of the Albers Yellow Corn Meal package
Makes 12 servings
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup corn meal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease 8-inch square baking pan.
Combine corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Combine milk, oil and egg in small bowl; mix well. Add milk mixture to flour mixture; stir just until blended. Pour into prepared pan.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Serve warm.
NOTE: Recipe may be doubled. Use greased 13 x 9-inch baking pan; bake as above.
FOR MUFFINS: Spoon batter into 10 to 12 greased or paper-lined muffin cups filling 2/3 full. Bake in preheated 400°F oven for 15 minutes.
This giveaway is brought to you by the new Windows Phone 7. Less tech tired. More tech trendy: Learn about Windows Phone online and see it in person at local T-Mobile stores today.
When fruit is on the verge of getting over ripe, I slice it up, flash freeze it for 30 minutes, then stick it in a ziploc bag for future smoothie use.
I pre-make a bunch of mixes: home made hamburger helper spices, home made cake mix, etc. They’re pre-measured, pre-mixed, so I just dump the baggy into the bowl and I’m 1/2 way done.
Frozen vegetables! So easy to add something healthy to quick dishes without having to peel and chop.
I like to prep all the chopping and cutting the night before so that when I get home from work I can just start cooking.
Using a staple food all week, a roast chicken in sandwiches then a roast chicken soup, then roast chicken stir fry
I get my husband to wash the dishes for me–especially if I cooked dinner!
I have my boyfriend do the dishes 🙂
I like to buy up fresh vegetables when they’re on sale and freeze them for future use. Cheaper than buying frozen vegetables.
I kick everyone out of the kitchen while I cook – much more efficient that way 🙂
I love reading everyone’s tips. It gives me some great ideas.
We make things easier by making a weekly menu. We’re not good on the fly. Dinner takes us too long to make and when we leave it to the last minute we bail for take-out. By deciding the week ahead of time we have had so much success cooking and saving. We decide before the grocery store as well because impromptu ideas in the butcher line to make that slow roast pulled pork recipe I read about always leaves us with extra food we end up wasting!
Using sharp knives really speeds up the time spent cutting up vfruits. I don’t like struggling cutting up an apple, or lemon.
I do all my chopping of veggies and divide them up in containers for different meals when I bring them home from shopping. It saves SO much time when making dinner during the week.
tshaw6580@yahoo.com
I make a big batch of a starch at the beginning of the week, then extend it through several days. A big pot of rice works with Thai curry Monday, fried rice Tuesday (it’s better with second-day rice anyway), rice-and-beans Wednesday, etc.
Right now it is just my husband and I so sometimes when I cook ground beef, I’ll freeze half of it for later. That way the hard part/what I dread the most is done.
When I get home from the grocery story each week, I chop up all the onions, celery etc that I know I will be using later in the week anyway before I put them away. Makes weeknights so much nicer 🙂
So cool you’re giving away a phone! It’s important to me to make healthy/organic baby food so whenever I get a half hour or hour, I steam away and do the ice cube trick. (Puree or mash the food and spoon into an ice cube tray. Then dump the cubes into a labeled freezer bag and you’re good for a month or two.) I’ve never had to go to the jarred food and it’s only been about an hour of work every two weeks. Getting myself fed is another story – I go to Trader Joe’s for that… 🙂
in the kitchen it can be pretty hectic, preparing and cooking food takes alot of time. one way to make it easier on myself is to plan out my recipes and leaving out and preparing ingredients that are required for more than one dish, saves the time to prepare the same ingredients twice like chopping garlic or scallions, just chop a batch and set aside for later.
I’ve started making very large batches of things like chili or whole boxes of spaghetti and measuring them all out in ziploc containers. Then I freeze them and have lunch (or a quick dinner) for my whole family. I typically get 8 servings per item I make.
I love kaffir limes. I use them to clean my stove, deep clean my hair, in curries… amazing
i kick my husband out of the kitchen, it’s easier and faster when he’s NOT helping, lol
Spend all day making different recipes from the same base (ground beef, chicken, stew meat, etc) then bag and freeze them for later use.
I simplify my life by not asking my boyfriend what he’d like for dinner. If it were up to him, we’d eat four-course meals every night at a new restaurant. I just cook whatever the fridge/pantry will allow, and he eats it happily. Voila!
If I have leftover sauerkraut after cooking with it, I call up my pal Saul, and we make ruben sandwiches. Great way to do more with less with Sauerkraut Saul!
If the dish allows for it, I like to prepare it in the morning before I leave for work, then when I come home, all I have to do is pop it in the oven.
Another way I’ve made my life easier in the kitchen: Keeping my spice rack actually organized. I started organizing my spices before I cook so that I dont need to look for things while cooking and overcook items.
I use Microsoft OneNote on my kitchen computer which makes storing recipes easy.
I do a big day of cooking to stock the freezer. On that day, I use the food processor to cut veggies. Saves a TON of time.
We eat a lot of chili in the winter here…the next day, we put it over pasta with sharp cheddar cheese. Tastes completely different!
I could do more with less if I had a smartphone. I’m all about downsizing whats in my pockets. I love using leftovers to make meals go faster!
I hope this isn’t too obvious, but I always prepare and cook large amounts (~8 lbs) turkey/chicken breast, divide it into many batches, and throw them all in the freezer. That way I can make a stir fry or curry with minimal preparation even at the end of a long day.
Read, read, read the recipes (and ingredients) before you start. Have everything out (no last minute runs to the store). Figure out what needs to be done ahead of time and what you can prep while cooking.
i love using wax paper for everything, lining dishes, easily move sifted flour, so useful
Sharp knives are a MUST have. It drives me crazy to waste time hacking away at anything I’m trying to chop up for dinner. I love new sharp knives!
By using Quick Steps in Microsoft Outlook, I do more and do it quicker.
I try to prep everything before work that way all I have to do is pop it in the oven when I get home
Here’s another way. (This isn’t intended to be sexist, so apologies if people feel it is). I have my wife be my Sous-Chef de Cuisine. She hates to cook, but doesn’t mind chopping, prepping, etc. Her weakness is multitasking, mine is being prepared!
Washing the dishes while my wife cooks always helps us do more with less time.
When my husband does the laundry it give me more time to do things in the kitchen. Delegation helps to do more with less.
I try and keep it simple most days recipe wise. Things that are good but with a short ingredient list. Also the Steamfresh frozen vegetables are great. They have a fresh taste but can be ready in minutes without even breaking out a bowl and my grocery store runs insanely cheap sales on them. Leaves more time to concentrate on the main dish. and I don’t have a smart phone, sadly, so this would really make my life easier( I think ).
Anytime a recipe calls for ground beef, I substitute at least half with canned beans. It’s cheaper and more filling, and canned beans can stay in the pantry forever.
I read recipes all the way through before I start cooking. If I’m doing a blog post about it, I’ll rewrite the procedure before. It’s what I do with my biology labs and it really helps to get you familiar with it.
One way to help my life in the kitchen is getting my family to all work on making food together, and seeing as I love my mother’s homecooked meals, I think we do it pretty well.
I love using chicken broth to take shortcuts during the holidays and food. Its inexpensive and adds tons of flavor to any dish
I like to divide out half of my big bag of spinach into separate little ziploc bags, suck all the air out with a straw and freeze so that if it takes me a long time to finish the other half at least the rest is in the freezer and not gone bad!
Pre-made bagged salads are a lot better than I expected, and a big time-saver for meal preparation. I’m probably the last person to figure that out, but…
Calendars are a huge help. And the Outlook Quickstep is a great shortcut tool that helps me quickly create some of my common tasks, appointments, and emails while on the go. The win phone 7 will be a great mobile tool to aid in this.
Another way I save time in the kitchen: remove anything that causes other people to come through. Put the plates to set the table in the dining room, put a bucket of ice out so that everyone isn’t getting into the freezer while I’m working.
DRAWER ORGANIZERS – each of mine has wooden trays with divisions – baking drawer has my scoops, measuring cups and spoons, offset spatulas … spice drawer has the jars laying flat and according to spice or herb … storage drawer ziplock bags, parchment paper, foil … flatware drawer, etc. All within easy reach and no more wasting time hunting!
Do it in stages. mix dry ingredients before work, make the dish after.
I always use my timer on my ipod touch or phone. My boyfriend never sets timers, but I wander off, hop on my google reader and don’t really pay attention to the time. I need that alarm going off or I’d probably let a few things burn!