Time Savers

Have you ever wondered what foods you can throw together and have it turn out tasty? I was wondering that last night. Usually I'm pretty good about planning out dinner early in the day and either putting it in the crockpot or doing the prep work of cutting things up, etc so its all ready when Denver gets home.

The last couple days I have not been so prepared. All weekend I asked Denver what he was hungry for and tried to throw something together quickly.
Here are some tips I have come up with for helping me "throw meals together" quickly.

Onions: Who likes cutting up onions and getting "crying" eyes just before dinner. I have omitted onions from my recipe simply because I didn't want to deal with the assault to my eyes. A while back my (two!) bags of onions got wet. I feared all the onions were going to all go bad if I didn't use them quickly and not wanting to eat JUST onions for the next week I tried to think of how to preserve them. I cut them ALL up and sauteed them slightly in olive oil and put them in the fridge. I put them in canning jars - one jar of diced (I just my food chopper and saved myself many tears) and the other jar is rings. I have had them in the fridge for over two weeks now and I can safely use onions without tears!

Salad Veggies: If you are like me, you have pulled out just salad greens before and called it "salad" without any toppings. It takes a while to peel and cut up all those veggies that make a salad so pretty. What I did this morning is when I was making a salad for Denver's lunch I just finished cutting up all the vegetables (carrots, cucumber, green pepper, banana pepper) and put them into a second tupperware for a quick grab. Instead of cutting up only the amount that I needed I did a little extra. All my prep for salad is done now. I don't have to wash the utensils again and I don't have to pull out my cutting board.  I'm always for health being easy!

Pesto: We made pesto earlier this fall and it is a wonderful addition to almost every savory dish. Last night we had (a thrown together meal) zucchini, banana pepper and broccoli sauteed/steamed in olive oil/water. It seemed a bit lacking in flavor, I smothered it in cracked black pepper and then remembered we have pesto in the fridge and so I added two small teaspoons of basil pesto = full warm flavor. We topped the dish off with feta and parmesan cheese; it was tasty!
Pesto recipe to follow in another posting. It's so easy!

Dehydrated fruits and fruit leather: quick "grab and go" treats around the Hayward Brown's are fruit leathers. They aren't the prettiest, but they are the tastiest.  Tia just told me about pineapple banana combo and we loved it. Currently I need to make another batch (they are all gone)

That's all I can think of for now. I'm off to make a batch of fruit leather and put some venison in the crock pot (tonight I'll be ready for supper. venison in the crock pot and my salad veggies cut up already!)