Have You Been Robbed, Or Are You Giving It Away?

 

We live in a day where saving money and pinching pennies is imperative, especially on mundane items like food - we need so much of it. So how do we justify buying and preparing foods that are healthy or even worse, organic?

 

Hold on to your seats friends, I've found the answer!!!!

 

You've heard the old adage, "Time is Money". It just occurred to me that we are being robbed! Of our money? In a sense, yes. What is it that we all spend our extra time doing? You guessed it - the wonderful world of Internet, Net Flix, Hulu, Cable, FaceBook, Email, iPhones. We hurry hurry and at the end of our exhausting day we plop for our nightly entertainment. While it is true that these expensive inventions can be time savers, they have also robbed us of something precious. Some old fashioned goodness. Namely, home cooking and face time. Think about it. What conjures in your head when you think of good 'ole home made cooking? - Homemade pies filling the kitchen with the aroma of apples and cinnamon, savory smells of beef stew cooking all day. Stuff your grandmother did, right? We don't have time to cook like that. We need something fast, quick, convenient and subsequently unhealthy.

 

What did our "grandmothers" do the first thing when they got up in the morning - turn on their computers, check email, FB, news? Of course not, sillies (Gollum LOTR). Their mind was on efficient and economical ways of keeping their families fed. Maybe they started a bread dough, a tomato sauce, or a stew; maybe they went out in the garden to pick what had ripened overnight. Their first hour was probably food prep - and without a microwave, mind you. Their time was their money.

 

Lots of our money is gobbled up in electronics - and I love my electronics as much as the next gal. But when people say "I don't have MONEY to buy organic" or "I don't have TIME to cook from scratch", I wonder if our priorities are just topsy turvy. A 24-hour day is still a 24-hour day.

 

Back in the day when women had the luxury of staying home they did a lot of, what we call, the mundane chores, together - baking, quilting, ironing. Well, we women still need "girl time" but the focus has shifted...we "do lunch" or catch a chick flick.

 

But lately, some of my friends who want to save time and money while eating with healthy ingredients have gotten together like women of old to cook together (older times mind you, not old in age). It has given us back something which we've been robbed of, home cooking with girl friends! Why not have fun learning and sharing together while saving time in the kitchen and subsequently saving money? It also takes away the drudgery of cooking - we're having fun with friends!

 

Our supper swap looks like this: each bff brings a healthy recipe and all the ingredients (you can change up the amount of people or the quantity of recipes depending on your needs). Together in one of our kitchens, we each cook our own recipe. We laugh, chat, eat and have fun together (all the components of girl time). Once we're done, we divide the finished meals into containers. If there are four of us, we've each made one big healthy meal and go home with four small ones. What a time saver!

 

Instead of spending money to "do lunch" or ordering out a quick pizza, our extra cash is spent on healthy organic ingredients and our robber of time and money has been vanquished.

 

I know we can't be asked to save money by canceling cable, or "doing lunch" less often - we need it, right? Of course we do. But what if we switched it up occassionally and got together like the ladies of 'ole and had some good "old fashioned" girl time - while keeping the time and money robbers at bay for awhile.