Random Kitchen Tips

This is where the magic happens *

I love making fancy yet healthy gourmet meals. While they're lots of fun to make, they can get awfully time consuming and sometimes I just don't have time to spend the entire day in the kitchen. Apparently Alexander thinks I need to pay attention to him or something (totally sarcasm). Today I thought I'd list some of my favorite time-cutting methods.

Like I mentioned in another post, I always keep a container of my homemade seasoned salt in my spice cabinet. The main components are sea salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and sometimes red pepper flakes if I'm feeling spicy. It's a great way to add a lot of flavor to something without having to get out all the different bottles of spices.

If you have a deep freezer and are making something that holds well when you make it ahead of time, make double and freeze half of it. I don't have a deep freezer at the moment, but one day I dream of having a well-stocked freezer for days I don't feel like cooking. For now, I'll just be content with the freezer I have and just be thankful that I can at least fit a few bags of frozen veggies and some meat into it.

Speaking of a well-stocked freezer, I always try to make sure to have a few things in my freezer that I can pull out and whip up into a quick and healthy dinner. I like to stock up on frozen ravioli when they're on sale, along with uncooked chicken tenderloins and uncooked peeled frozen shrimp. Frozen vegetables are great to have on hand, too. I can make any of those into something edible in just a few minutes and it keeps me from resorting to takeout.

Invest in a few good sets of measuring cups and spoons. When I say I measure out everything I eat or drink, I'm serious about that. I have two sets of cups and spoons so that I can always have a clean set ready to go. The dollar store is not the place to invest in good kitchen equipment if you want stuff that will last you a lifetime.

So there are just a few tips on how I roll in the kitchen. There will be many more to come as soon as I think of them. Feel free to leave your favorite kitchen tip in the comments!

*Please excuse the mess, but I'm in the middle of making dinner and 150 wedding cookies, in addition to surfing the intertubez. Yeah, I multi-task like that.

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