Meal Planning and Bulk Pancake Mix

We all know it's wise to plan out our meals, right? My weeks always seem to run smoother when I have a plan in mind. I try to sit down on saturday and plan out at least one week of meals, but two is better. I then see what I can do ahead of time.

Last week for example on a planned day I ...
- Made 3 meat loaves, put them in loaf pans, covered with foil and wrote the directions on the foil with a sharpie.
- Made 14 hamburger patties, froze individually, and then stacked with waxed paper in between and stored in a freezer bag.
- Made dough for 16 hamburger buns and 32 dinner rolls (same recipe). Shaped in to balls, froze individually.
- Canned chicken veggie soup and beef veggie soup (this was not part of my meal plan, but something that had to be done. These soups come in handy when there are no left-overs for the boys to pack for lunch).
- Made 2 gallons of bulk pancake mix.
- Made 3lbs of turkey sausage crumbles (maybe I'll share the recipe some other time if I remember) to be used in biscuits and gravy and another breakfast dish.
- Made sure I had all the groceries on hand for the next few weeks (but knew I would still get a few things on my regular shopping day).

So why am I sharing this? Well ... it helps keep things running somewhat smooth when they otherwise would or should have been falling apart. We had a should-have-been-tragic-but-still-very-stressful situation happen last week and it was a blessing to have a plan all ready in place to keep everyone fed. This situation left me stressed out and very tired ... and the LAST thing I wanted to do was think about supper. Well actually, the very last thing I wanted to do was think about cleaning. Unfortunately that cannot be done ahead of time, but it helps to have it caught up and organized! Anyway, I did not have to think about supper because there was my handy-dandy meal plan ready to do the thinking for me. Yesterday for instance was meat loaf, roasted potatoes, peas and bread. All I had to do was pull the frozen bread dough out (that was made a few weeks ago) and pull out two of my meat loaf pans. They sat on the counter all day long and were ready to bake at the right time. All I had to do was cut up some potatoes, add some olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic, and throw them in the oven. Easy.

The bulk pancake mix was an experiment but we all loved the way it turned out.

Not the best photo but you get the idea! The sharpie will wash right off.

Here are the ingredients if you are interested in making your own:

10c Kamut flour
10c Buckwheat flour
10c Unbleached white flour
1 1/4c Baking powder
2 1/2T Salt
2c Dry sweetener of choice (I use rapadura)

This yields almost two gallons of mix (we already dipped in to the jar on the right in the photo above). The flours may be substituted for whatever you prefer ... all whole wheat, half whole wheat half white, all kamut, some rye, spelt, rice, whatever. If you use all rice it will be a bit crumbly; you may add 5T xanthan gum if it's 100% rice flour. We have done this before even without the xanthan gum and it works fine ... we just had to get used to the different texture and preferred them more as a savoury pancake along with supper.

To serve:
4c Mix
4 eggs
1/4c oil
3c liquid of choice (I just use water)

Combine the liquids before adding the mix. Gently stir and pay attention to the consistency. If you think you need more liquid or more mix, it's best to add it before it's totally combined. As with any pancake recipe, be careful not to over-mix it!

Variation: You may use a liquid sweetener instead (honey, syrup, molasses, etc.), however it will obviously not be added to the bulk mix! Simply omit the dry sweetener and add 1/4c liquid sweetener with the other liquids.

Other variations:
- Add 2T cinnamon to the dry mix
- Fold in about a cup of berries or other fruit chunks to the batter (apple cinnamon comes to mind ... YUM!)

I welcome your suggestions and ideas.