Make Ahead Mom - Stacking The Deck in Your Favor

Sometimes, the idea of what to make ahead is obvious - Curried Chicken from earlier this week, for instance. 

Sometimes, it’s more about seizing the make ahead moments with foods you are already set to cook in your kitchen. The challenge (or opportunity) is to dissect all the make ahead moments that exist within a given recipe. 

Take my Perfect Pancakes. 

A fairly easy, straightforward pancake recipe, these don’t “really” take a ton of time to make. But as any busy mom (redundant, perhaps) can attest to, finding even small bursts of dedicated cooking time can be a challenge.

That’s why I have taken an easy on-the-griddle a.m. option and turned it into one of my make ahead standbys. I do it in two ways: 

Make Ahead Method

Part 1

Stir together dry ingredients in a bowl the night before. Either cover with plastic wrap or pop the bowl into an empty, cold oven (my secret off the counter, out of the way hiding place). 

Whisk together wet ingredients, cover and in the fridge it goes. 

Put the griddle right on the stove with your spatula near by. 

[This may all seem oversimplified, but the reality is that these simple steps are what makes the difference between actually “cooking” pancakes in the morning vs simply opting for a bowl of oatmeal.]

Part 2

Invariably there are always pancakes left over. At our last home, we used to walk to the lake periodically and allow the community resident ducks to join our feast. But we are duck-less these days, and I have wised to the fact that leftover pancakes can find a perfect home in my freezer. 

People recommend a number of different ways to freeze leftover pancakes. My favorite is to stack them between sheets of deli paper, place in a zip-top and pop in the freezer. 

By stacking between deli paper, they can easily be taken one-by-one from the freezer and either warmed in the microwave or toasted in a toaster oven.

In either respect, the advance prep is certainly stacking the odds for a worry free meal in your favor.