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This is the first installment of the series Someone Else’s Shoes. This experience is Working Full Time and Real Foods. Each month my family will be “living a week in Someone Else’s Shoes” specifically to see how real/whole/traditional foods can be adapted to different scenarios. Be sure to read the series information post for more on this.
Working Full Time and Real Foods
Post 1 of this experience– the rules and introduction
Post 2 of this experience– Day 1 a Prep Day
Post 3 of this experience– Days 1 & 2
As mentioned in previous post, this experience is to mimic working outside the home. From 8:50 AM to 7PM my kitchen is CLOSED and I’m avoiding the housework. Be sure to read more in Post 1 to find out the rules. I feel this is an important piece to the series Someone Else’s Shoes due to the fact that limited time is something we all face. Whether working away from home, from home, being a homeschooler, etc. we all have time constraints of some sort. I hope that this experience can help someone by providing ideas. So far, it has really helped me! I mentioned a few days ago, my husband said that this was going very well and I should maybe plan my week in the same manner each week. We’ll see…
Wednesday
Pretty much the same in the morning as Monday and Tuesday. I did a bit of tidying up, rinsed the radish sprouts, put a chicken in the crock pot and quinoa on to soak. These things took very little time. Breakfast was Baked Oatmeal.
Roast beef and cheese for lunch again.
At 7:00, I went to work on the dinner. I turned the crock pot off. Cutting up the broccoli and cauliflower came next, I could have done this the night before to save a bit of time but it went pretty fast. I put it on the stove to cook. The quinoa had been soaking all day and was moved to the stove and brought it to a boil. Then turned down and covered. It cooked super fast after the soaking (in about 10 minutes). To finish the quinoa, I put in a good amount of butter (like 4 Tablespoons), salt, pepper and powdered garlic. It was wonderful.
After the quinoa and the broccoli were on the stove, I deboned the chicken putting half of it aside for tomorrow night. I kept the ‘prettiest’ pieces for Wednesday’s dinner and the smaller pieces for Thursday since that will be a casserole type dish. Not that my family cares too much but it is nice to have attractive pieces of roasted chicken to serve. The bones went back in the crock pot with water to start a batch of broth. I’ll strain that tomorrow night and start a second batch.
Dinner was ready when Joe got home at 7:35. In fact, it was ready about 5 minutes before that. Lulu had dishes this night. I didn’t really have much to do in the kitchen other than rinse the sprouts. I had thought I might make up a batch of No-Knead bread (from the GNOWFGLINS Sourdough eCourse) but we still had plenty of the loaf bread that was made on Sunday.
Thursday
My cat woke me up at 3AM. After trying to get back to sleep I finally decided at 4 to go ahead and get up. By the time everyone else got up I was ready to go back to bed. I didn’t.
Thursday’s are a bit different for me each week. On this day I work in town for a few hours in the morning for my business. I usually leave the house between 6:30 and 7:30 but this week I had a lighter load in town so planned to leave at 8. Thursday is also my milk pick up day, so I would have had a longer day if I was working away from home also. When I did temp work I either got the milk at lunch time or after work. If I had a later shift (like in this scenario) I could pick it up before work and in a cooler.
Baked Oatmeal
For housework, all I did was make the bed and swish the bathroom. Joe did the dishes and tidied up the kitchen. Breakfast was Yogurt Parfait and Baked Oatmeal eaten as a ‘bar’. Joe made his and Christopher’s lunches. Peanut butter on sourdough. My lunch was roast and cheese. I put Breakfast Cake batter on to soak (for tomorrow) and a flour mixture for ‘gravy’ for the dinner.
I was a little worried about dinner. I knew what I wanted to make but was worried that the cooking time would exceed my limit. A few weeks ago, Teryl did a guest post on this blog and shared a delicious Chicken Divan. I wanted to mimic these flavors in a casserole. I had leftover rice made on Monday, Chicken and Broccoli/Cauliflower from last night. I knew it would need a gravy which is why I had soaked the flour in the AM.
I shouldn’t have worried. This casserole went together super quick and was a huge hit with my family. I’ll share the details of it in the final post of this series on Monday. Believe me, you will love this casserole not only for the great taste but to add to your quick meal repertoire.
While my casserole was in the oven, I mixed up the Breakfast Cake and stuck it in the oven too. It took a bit longer to cook than the casserole but that was no problem. I also rinsed the radish sprouts and wondered why they were not yet done sprouting…
I was so tired that I did nothing else. I should have taken meat out of the freezer for tomorrow night’s dinner and pre-cut the veggies. My morning will not be fun.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you do to help your busy day go smoother?
