We used to spend a good hour of each evening, after returning home from our jobs, preparing our evening meals. Saturdays and Sundays, we often spent more time preparing more elaborate meals. Think about it . . . over a year’s time, that amounts to at least 465 hours each year, considering the extra hundred or so on weekend cooking!

We gave it a lot of thought and researched methods of cutting our meal prep time and came up with a very obvious solution. I say “obvious” mainly because it should have been; however, it took an article in someone else’s blog to remind us that by doubling the amount of food prepared each time, and therefore doubling the number of meals prepped in the same time, we cut our cooking time in half.

Some trial and error is necessary to refine your technique, however. If you knew me personally, you’d realize that I have a problem with food: I eat too much of it. So, making a double batch of dinner, also doubles my temptation to overeat. That challenge can be overcome, though, by immediately packing away the 2nd meal — it’s not ironclad, but it adds a layer of security, so to speak.

One hurdle to overcome is the fact that just doubling ingredients gives you two batches: not so. Certain seasonings, notoriously salt, should not be doubled (try 1-1/2 the original amount). Others can be more than doubled, like garlic, or stock. Err on the side of caution and taste as you go.

There’s a cookbook around, called “Cook Once Eat Twice”, which gives you a recipe for the second meal in which you modify the leftovers and create an entirely new meal from it.. Not all of the combos appeal to us, so I sometimes try to modify the rerun myself. Today’s roast chicken can become tomorrow’s chicken pot pie (using low fat additions, of course) Take some of Sunday’s pot roast, cubed, and add it to some beef stock and frozen or leftover veggies, throw in some barley and a bayleaf, and you have beef barley soup. Bigger cubes and more barley and you have beef barley stew.

Some great ideas come from a menu/meal planning service called E-Mealz (www.e-mealz.com). They provide, at a cost of less than $5.00 per month, a weekly meal planner that includes shopping lists! When you sign up, you select any one of several categories. I’ve tried a couple of them, including one designed for WeightWatcher’s fans (not endorsed by WeightWatchers), a low-fat category, and one which just prescribes meals of ‘general’ type. Many of the meals may be called “comfort food”, to my way of thinking. Some of the meals are downright ingenious, like one which takes simple broth, chicken chunks, veggies and other simple ingredients, to which you add a few flour tortillas, cut in strips, and PRESTO you have quick and easy chicken and dumplings literally in minutes.

Each week’s E-Mealz edition gives 5 or 7 recipes for dinner and gives a consolidated shopping list, so that if there are two recipes calling for 1/2 pound and 3/4 pounds of chicken breast, it’ll tell you to buy 1-1/4 pounds of chicken breast.

As soon as I figure this blogging thing all out, I’ll be providing links to many of the things I’ve referred to.

I’ve often heard it asked: “If you don’t plan on where you are going, how will you know when you get there?” I’ve also heard it said that, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Many of us approach life’s major transitions without any sort of planning; we just let life happen to us. But, entering retirement is one of those transitions that have a very difficult “do-over”, if any at all.

It’s particularly true if you are already on a tight budget going into your mid-sixties. Perhaps you don’t feel confident that you have enough of a nest egg to enjoy your “golden years,” and you feel a nagging anxiety in your soul as the calendar pages slip away. Good or bad, it is essential that you have a handle on what to expect financially as you transition to living on your savings and a fixed income. It helps to know what’s ahead of you.

The first thing you might consider doing is to create a few spreadsheets and do some “proforma” projections of how your income is going to flow. If you own Excel or a similar spreadsheet program, you can begin right away to create these spreadsheets. Now, if you don’t own such applications, don’t go out and spend a couple of hundred dollars on Excel or some expensive budgeting software. Assuming you have some skill in using a spreadsheet, you could just go to Google.com and sign up for a FREE account where you can immediately take advantage of “Google Docs”. Google Docs consists of a suite of free “productivity” software, including spreadsheet, word processing and presentation functions. If you don’t have experience with Excel (or Word), remember that it costs nothing to sign up and explore Google’s free online applications.

Google Docs makes “office suite software” not only CHEAP to use, but also incredibly easy.  There are books available to help you, including the “for Dummies” series. You will likely find them in a well equipped library, but these are books you’ll want to own for reference, so after looking them over at the library (or the bookstore), pick the best and buy it so you’ll always have it close at hand. In a coming article, we’ll get into more depth on this; for now, you may want to check out some of the resources mentioned.