Cooking Day

What a morning! I’ve made 3 pans of cornbread, 4 batches of muffins, a meatloaf, 2 pans of French toast, one batch of biscuits, a few pans of meringue cookies, and a mess of meat balls! I’m sure that the questions are just filling your head; the main one is “why?” . No, I’m not having a party, nor am I preparing for a cataclysmic event. This is just one of the ways that I try to save electricity.


Once a week I do all of the baking that we will need for that week. (Remember that menu? Sure comes in handy here.) I just hate heating up the entire great room just to cook a meal. So, as long as I have the oven and the kitchen heated up, I go ahead and do all of the baking that I’ll need. This saves energy by eliminating the need to preheat the oven 7 different times during the week. The cooking times can also overlap each other, meaning that the oven is on for less time on one day than the combined times of the other days. I almost always have at least 2 pans in the oven at a time.

This does make for a super busy morning in the kitchen. My boys look forward to cooking day, because they are directed outside. This is NOT the time to try to teach cooking skills. It’s just one morning a week, so it’s not in the heat of the day. The air conditioner isn’t having to run on overdrive trying to keep up with me. For most of the morning, I keep the window open.

Of course, some baked goods just don’t keep very well. Those are the foods that are schedule for the meals on baking day. French toast really wouldn’t be as good the next day, so that was our breakfast this morning. The boys love corn dog pie. So that’s what they get for lunch.

Side note: Corndog pie is one of my recipe experiments. It is just a pan of cornbread with chopped up bits of hot dog baked into it. They get to dip it in mustard just like a regular corndog. It is super cheep to make, as well as super easy!

Baking biscuits ahead of time just makes my life a little easier. My husband has been spoiled by me. He is used to having a hot breakfast to take with him to work every morning. I certainly don’t mind heating everything up first thing in the morning during the winter months. But once it gets to be air conditioner season, I heat up as little as possible. I don’t even make coffee in the summer months! He can take a few biscuits with him to his office and heat them up there. Since the bacon and cheese are already baked into the biscuit, there is no reason to fire up the oven or the stove first thing in the morning.

I’m sure that you’ll find many reasons within your own homes that baking day is beneficial, from time savings to savings on the electricity bill.