Cooking is always cheaper than eating out and personally, Nikkie loves to cook. The only problem is, her schedule sometimes makes it difficult to cook a lot. Therefore, the first thing she does each week is plan the menu for the week. Sometimes she even plans for the month. She knows which days are going to be the busiest and plans really simple meals for those days. She plans bigger meals for the less hectic days. And she always has a quick back-up plan in case something doesn’t work.
Growing a garden is a great way to have healthy foods and save money. Of course, having a large freezer is a much needed purchase when having a garden in order to store all those foods for the winter. Nikkie loves having a garden, and using it to teach the children about plants, responsibility, and more. Everyone helps with every part of the planting, growing, and reaping process.
Cooking meals in a crockpot is a great way to have a healthy meal that is easily fixed and is hot and ready to eat when returning home from a busy day. This is something Nikkie loves to do when she knows that she's not going to have time around supper time to actually prepare a meal. Having meals in the freezer is also a nice way of saving yourself time if something unexpected comes up. During her pregnancies, Nikkie has always taken time to freeze up several meals prior to the due dates so that in the first few days postpartum, Scott can easily pull something out, let it thaw, and get it ready to eat.