Today was Cooking Day!

As you've probably noticed, I am in a constant quest for better organizing my time, home, meals, children, and life in general.

I recently re-read (well, re-skimmed) a popular book called Side-Tracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise.

Mostly, it irritated me.

It irritated me for several reasons, but the main one was this:

The core of their plan is to have a weekly schedule. For example, one day should be Errand Day, when you run all the errands for the week (including any your husband needs done). Another day is Heavy Cleaning Day, where you clean for 4-6 hours.

Why does this bug me? Because they do not spend a single sentence discussing what to do with, or how to manage, your children when you are doing these six hours of cleaning (or several hours of errand-running.) At least one of the authors had three children under the age of six when she discovered and began implementing this plan ... and yet, she says nothing (that I can see) about how she went about pulling it off.

Well gee, Pam and Peggy, I know I need to clean. If I knew how to clean for hours and hours in spite of my kids, I wouldn't be reading your stupid book!

What does all this complaining have to do with Cooking Day, you ask?

Well, one thing they said was to have one day a week be Baking Day, and to only agree to make cookies for the PTA -- or whatever -- if it fits into your Baking Day schedule.

I liked that idea. And then I had a sudden, brief flash of genius of how to do it: Why, use the principles from Managers of Their Homes, of course!

So, this morning I set the timer for 35 minutes while I cooked with Rachael, while Benjamin and Becca played together in another room. Then, 35 minutes cooking with Becca while Rachael and Benjamin played together, then 35 minutes cooking with Ben while Rachael and Rebecca played together.

It was very cool. I felt very smart. Nobody was fighting over who got to measure the sugar or who got to stir. Nobody was getting in each other's way. Nobody got bored with baking before we were done. Everybody (believe it or not) enjoyed their limited time with one sibling.

Here's what we made:
- Two pans of lasagna
- A double batch of Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins, from The Sneaky Chef.
- A double batch of Cocoa Chocolate Chip pancakes, also from The Sneaky Chef.




I actually was hoping to make more, but I'm still pretty pleased. Keep in mind that this was all accomplished before lunch. I do still have to make dinner for tonight though. I'll quickly do that by myself when I'm done typing this.

I hadn't planned this, but we had the muffins for lunch. They were pretty cool; there's a blob of jam "hidden" inside the muffin. Since they have also have peanut butter, sweet potatoes, carrots, wheat germ, and wheat flour, it was probably the healthiest lunch we've had for a while.