Together on Tuesday: This Wonder Woman's Shortcuts

Okay, I'm really not a wonder woman, super woman, etc... I mean I do work full-time, have the house to keep up, dinners to cook, husband, two dogs, and blogs to write...but lets be real here...I have no kids to juggle into the mix like many of you as well as the other ToT ladies.  However, our topic this week lets me pretend, just for a bit, that I am Wonder Woman!  So that being said Mark made this, per my request, for your blog reading entertainment:

Super Woman Secrets: What are your secrets for keeping it all together amid a busy life?  What are your shortcuts - what are you willing to fudge to save time and effort?

What is my secret to keeping it all together??

There are two main ones...1) a great husband who is willing to pitch in and help out whenever with whatever needs to be done.  This is the key to it all right here!  2)...wine...lots and lots of wine!  

What am I willing to fudge/shortcut to save time, effort, & energy?

In short - lots of things.  Lots and lots of things!  If I can think of a way or steal and idea for a way...I will try it!

Most of my shortcuts involve cooking...or cleaning as a result of...cooking. 

1. Leveraging the immense power of a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken!  Really, you don't just have to always eat rotisserie chicken from the store.  You can use them for LOTS of things!  Basically, anytime you want to make something that requires you use seperately cooked chicken, just get a rotisserie chicken from the store and cut it up and use it.  Total time saver, and lots of flavor!  This is GREAT for middle of the week dinners!
2. Grocery Store Salad Bar for sliced/diced veggies!  Again, this is a great one during the week when you come home tired.  Instead of spending time slicing and dicing things like peppers, onions, mushrooms, etc...just hit up a grocery store with a salad bar and grab a dab of whatever of these things you need.  For us, we actually save money.  We can grab only however much we need and it is charged by weight, so we spend less typically and don't have so much waste to either throw away or leave forgotten about in the fridge.  My husband got this idea...from somewhere.
3. Keep a bag of each on hand: frozen diced onions and frozen diced green peppers.  Frozen so they will last a long time, and for those times you didn't realize you'd need/want them.  Again, they are pre-diced and you can just take out however much you need, so no waste!  I stole this one from my mom.
4. Speaking of frozen veggies...my mom does this one!  Do you throw out small (or not small) amounts of vegetables regularly?  Start a leftover veggie container in the freezer.  Anytime you have even a small bit of leftover canned or cut fresh veggies, just add them to the container in the freezer.  Don't use a bunch of containers separating the different veggies, just combine all different ones into one freezer container.  When you accumulate enough...you have your veggies already for a homemade soup!  Vegetable or vegetable beef soup.  You use up what would have been wasted vegetables, and you already have a jump on a nice pot of soup!
5. Aluminum Foil is a valuable thing!  A couple reasons.  If I am baking something that could boil over, drip, make a mess, etc...I cover a cookie sheet in foil to put under it.  Spillage will be caught by the foil, which can be tossed.  So no oven mess to deal with and no cookie sheet to scrub baked on mess from!  Also, in a pinch...if you can't find a lid for a pot or pan, just tear off a sheet of foil and put it over the pan. I did this last night to keep spaghetti sauce from flipping all over the top of the stove, then tossed the foil and no mess!  Sidebar: during this paragraph...I kept stopping myself from saying 'tin foil'...I don't think anyone calls it that anymore...do they??  Please someone...tell me you do, LOL!
6. Saran Wrap to avoid crock-pot spillage while transporting!  Again, I stole this idea.  It is from my friend Lacey after a work pitch-in a few years ago.  Think about it...Saran Wrap is clingy, so if you use it to wrap the lid to the crock pot, it will hold it snugly in place and not leak.  The crock-pot will not be hot enough to melt the saran wrap, and as long as it remains unplugged, it will not get any hotter than it is when you wrap it.  Plus keeping the lid so snugly in place will help keep your food warm.  One more thing I've found...you can just wrap your serving spoon right into one of your layers of saran wrap, so everything is together in just one thing to carry!  I use this one even though my crock-pot has a thermal carrier because the carrier really doesn't help keep the lid in place...especially if you drive like a rally cross racer!
7. Crock-Pot Liners!  If you do not use these, just know that it will totally re-kindle your love affair with your crock-pot!  Even though the inner part of my crock-pot is removable and can go in the dishwasher, I still hate having to soak and scrub cooked-on food from it before the dishwasher will even come close to working its magic on it.  My friend Dayna told me to try these, and there is absolutely no turning back!  I formally give my loyal, non-celebrity endorsement to this product:

So...now that I have confessed all of my short-cutting secrets, its your turn!  Please!  Tell me new ones, I need as many as I can find, borrow, or just outright steal!