Finding The Time

The question I hear a lot is, "How do you find the time?".

I get a little giggle every time I hear that, because really, how do we NOT find the time?

Here's how to squeeze out a few minutes.

After dinner, during clean up is the time to grab a kid and mix up tomorrows dough. This does mean you need to have an idea about what you'll be making. Pasta? Pizza dough? Biscuits? Bread?

It takes about 5 minutes in the evening to mix up the dough, then I simply let it rest at room temperature overnight. With minimal directions, my 9 yo's or 17 yo can mix the dough up.

In the late afternoon, we roll the dough out. I ask one of the kids to play with the little ones (remember, I do daycare and have a house full of under 5 yo's). Then either myself and a child, or the 17yo get to rolling and cutting the dough. Then we let it sit until time to cook/bake.

We don't do a lot of crock pot cooking because Hubs isn't a fan... so, most of my meals are put together in the hour before dinner. On days like today, I have had a chicken working on stock most of the day... other days, I forget to pull anything out of the freezer until its time to start cooking.

On bread baking days (usually 2x a week), I spend about 20 minutes mixing the dough and setting it to rise... then I pop it in the oven after a couple hours of rising and bake for an hour. Not a huge active time investment.

Making goodies can take longer, mostly because I'm always on the search for new recipes or I'm modifying a recipe to make it a bit healthier.

We will be starting kefir soda by end of the month... I'm not anticipating this to be a time consuming process either. We are trying to wean off the soda addiction around here... it's my one remaining naughty naughty. I don't know that I'll ever get Hubs to give up his Mt. Dew and Rockstar obsession (although I will be trying!). I do want my kids to feel like they are getting a treat and not feel deprived by lack of soda (they don't get soda because I don't want to help them form bad habits!). I'm really excited to try sugar water kefir with pomegranate blueberry juice... yum!