FEATURED Food and Health

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I look at it this way. When I’m working, I’m adding to the budget and I can afford more conveniences. When I’m not employed, my job becomes saving. Both ways, I’m helping the quality of life for my family. But in the real world, how do we manage the time drain while we try to save?

Here are seven ways:

Think of your family as a team. Every member of the team should participate in the process of providing food for the family, whether it’s hauling in groceries from the car, helping with meal preparation, or stacking the dishwasher.

Consider co-op cooking with another family of similar size. Once or twice a week, one family will cook a larger meal and share half of it with the co-op family. This will give one or two kitchen-free days to each participant. Sharing can work well when people live in close proximity and are very good friends.  I would not try this with strangers or with people whose taste in food is quite different from yours. Planning the shared meals together would be a big help.

Assign breakfast prep to various members of the family on a rotating basis so that Mom is not always the one rushing around in the morning.

Choose breakfast meals that allow for advanced preparation the night before. Recipes that can be prepared after dinner, placed in the refrigerator, and then popped into the oven the next morning are perfect for this.  Also, crock pot breakfasts can be prepared before bedtime, and they will be hot and delicious in the morning for a tiny fraction of the cost of cold cereal or breakfast bars.

Make double or triple amounts of breakfast baking and supper casseroles that do not contain pasta or potatoes and freeze the extras for quick warm up after a busy day.

Cook several pounds of hamburger and freeze the browned hamburger in portion-sized containers to dramatically reduce the time for supper preparation.

Plan meals for several days, a week, or even a month.  This saves decision-making time each day and will also make your shopping trips more efficient.

Most of these tips not only save time, but they also save resources. Cooking larger amounts and planning for the leftovers reduces cooking energy, and more efficient shopping trips save gas and time.

The best method of cooking rice is by steaming it. If boiled in much water, it loses a portion of its already small percentage of nitrogenous elements. It requires much less time for cooking than any of the other grains. Like all the dried grains and seeds, rice swells in cooking to several times its original bulk. When cooked, each grain of rice should be separate and distinct, yet perfectly tender.

Steamed rice

Soak a cup of rice in one and a fourth cups of water for an hour, then add a cup of milk, turn into a dish suitable for serving it from at table, and place in a steam-cooker or a covered steamer over a kettle of boiling water, and steam for an hour. It should be stirred with a fork occasionally, for the first ten or fifteen minutes.

Boiled rice (japanese method)
Thoroughly cleanse the rice by washing in several waters, and soak it overnight.  In the morning, drain it, and put to cook in an equal quantity of boiling water, that is, a pint of water for a pint of rice. For cooking, a stewpan with tightly fitting cover should be used. Heat the water to boiling, then add the rice, and after stirring, put on the cover, which is not again to be removed during the boiling. At first, as the water boils, steam will puff out freely from under the cover, but when the water has nearly evaporated, which will be in eight to ten minutes, according to the age and quality of the rice, only a faint suggestion of steam will be observed, and the stewpan must then be removed from over the fire to some place on the range, where it will not burn, to swell and dry for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Rice to be boiled in the ordinary manner requires two quarts of boiling water to one cupful of rice. It should be boiled rapidly until tender, then drained at once, and set in a moderate oven to become dry. Picking and lifting lightly occasionally with a fork will make it more flaky and dry. Care must be taken, however, not to mash the rice grains.

Rice with fig sauce
Steam a cupful of best rice as directed above, and when done, serve with a fig sauce. Dish a spoonful of  the fig sauce with each saucer of rice, and serve with plenty of cream. Rice served in this way requires no sugar for dressing, and is a most wholesome breakfast dish.

Orange rice
Wash and steam the rice. Prepare some oranges by separating into sections and cutting each section in halves, removing the seeds and all the white portion. Sprinkle the oranges lightly with sugar, and let them stand while the rice is cooking. Serve a portion of the orange on each saucerful of rice.

Rice with raisins
Carefully wash a cupful of rice, soak it, and cook as directed for Steamed Rice. After the rice has began to swell, but before it has softened, stir into it lightly, using a fork for the purpose, a cupful of raisins. Serve with cream.

Rice with peaches
Steam the rice and when done, serve with cream and a nicely ripened peach pared and sliced on each individual dish.

Browned rice
Spread a cupful of rice on a shallow baking tin, and put into a moderately hot oven to brown. It will need to be stirred frequently to prevent burning and to secure a uniformity of color. Each rice kernel, when sufficiently browned, should be of a yellowish brown, about the color of ripened wheat. Steam the same as directed for ordinary rice, using only two cups of water for each cup of browned rice, and omitting the preliminary soaking. When properly cooked, each kernel will be separated, dry, and mealy. Rice prepared in this manner is undoubtedly more digestible than when cooked without browning.