5 kitchen hacks

five easy kitchen hacks to make your kitchen time easier and cheaper.  

1. Make your own taco 🌮 and other seasoning,   I am hearing about sausage seasoning and complete seasoning as well as ranch dressing mix,    Saves time measuring when you have a mix firmthings you make often.    I use taco seasoning in many dishes,    
2. Enchalada sauce is 3/1 at the dollar store for old El Paso.   My go to recipe for sloppy joes called for catsup as a base.    Catsup has HFCS.    You can use enchalada sauce, taco seasoning instead.    You can add cooked beans if you want to stretch your hamburger.   
3. Portion scoops are at  restrauant   supply or Costco wholesale.   I got a new cookie sheet this year at target that had the portion scoop and a cookie mix for 14.00 less 15 percent.   Portion smcoops are great formcookies so they all cook at the same time, but I also use them for filling muffin tins and meatballs.   
4. Meatballs can be made ahead when you are doing batch cooking,    I usually buy three to five pounds of ground meat on a rotation for three of us.    I have done as much as ten pounds when all the kids were home and ate meat.    Taco meat, hamburger crumbles - de-fatted and a meat loaf and meat balls gives you variety and stretches your meat,    Meatballs can be portion scooped onto a rack that is placed over a sheet pan and baked in the oven.  I start looking at 10 minutes with a 350 - 375 degree oven.   The rack drains the fat and you have more healthy meat.    Meatballs can be meatball subs, on soeghetti w sauce, with gravy on rice or noodles 🍝- just a real versitle and quick meal when you have them ready made in the freezer.    
5. Make your own binder of easy, inexpensive recipes.  Plastic sheet protesters help to keep them clean.  Having go to recipes that are cheap, family favorites, and easy keeps the fast food gremilins away.    More healthy, less money  a winning combination.    

Note : my mother had a kitchen that looked like a showroom .   You would never know she ever cooked.   There was a plate stand with a wedge wood plate next to the stove.    No appliances except the microwave were on the counter.    Not so with  me.  I recently out all the appliances I don't use on a regular basis in the cupboards.  I put all the stainless steel pots and pans away in the blind cupboard and out the plastics that were in the blind cupboard in the own cupboard so they weren't buried.    I use enameled cast iron pans and just leave them on the stove.    I have crocks of cooking implements near where I use them.   Cupboards are organized with the things I use in that part of the kitchen - zone organization,   Baking, salad making and cooking from the island, table setting, coffee bar.  

The easier you make it, the more likely you will cook scratch.   

Some people, I understand, would be really uncomfortable of their kitchen didn't look like my mothers.    If you aren't that personality, zone organization and keeping often used appliances on the counters make things more efficient,    I did that with a 8 x8 kitchen with an eating area.  It can be done.   I did add a rolling chopping cart in the middle of the kitchen for Prep work.    

If your kitchen is set up to be convenient and you have easy, scratch recipes , you will be more likely to stay on track and scratch cook.     It's easy to start out enthusiastic, and wane when life's ;););  storms Happen,    LOL.