When you're a mother, you end up taking so many tasks just to get to the millions of other things you need to do done; feeding our family, doing laundry, cleaning, shopping, spending quality time with our children, organizing parties, etc. And when you work through it all, you have no choice but to organize.

Thank goodness for summer recipes. They are fun, fast, and satisfying.

Today I am going to give you one of the tips I developed for my summer kitchen. When the the summer arrives, I always make a double portion for red wine marinade and another with white wine. I put it all in two glass jars that I keep in the bottom of our fridge. I have not really tested how long these marinades keep, but they do not last that much longer than summer in our household.

When I arrive home from the grocery store, all I have to do is put the fresh meat in a glass dish. I cover it with minimal marinade, enough to make the meat tasty and tender but just enough. I want to save on the amount I use so I don't have to mix another batch.

Everything will be ready in a few hours, just in time for hubby to get cooking on the BBQ! I let them sit in the refrigerator for up to twenty-four hours. I use red wine marinade for beef, pork or lamb. And the one with the white wine, for the chicken. You'll think about labeling your pots to identify them.

You can also put the meat with the marinade in a ziploc style bag or a more eco-friendly bag to be "zero waste". Then you put it all in the freezer. By the time it freezes and thaws, this will be marinated to your liking to be BBQ'd.

I would be unable to tell you the origin of these recipes, since I have been making them since the dawn of time and I have adapted them to my liking so that the original may not bare any resemblance to my current recipe.

As a super efficient mother, you will obviously have thought about preparing enough meat to make two meals… That is what we always do, because I never cook for one meal. After eating our marinated chicken coming off of the BBQ with vegetables and rice, we'll make a salad-meal topped with this cold chicken. After tasting our beef skewers, we will make a meal with a pita bread wraps with the rest and throw on a strong or sweet mustard. Otherwise we'll be tempted to eat it with mayonnaise for a beef sandwich.

Once you have used the marinade with raw meat, you cannot reuse it a second time!

Red wine marinade (simple recipe)

• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 clove garlic crushed or 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 2 tbsp ketchup
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• 1/2 tsp dried marjoram
• 1/2 tsp dried rosemary

White wine marinade (simple recipe)

• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 3tbsp soy sauce
• 2tbsp concentrated chicken broth
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dry mustard
• 1 clove garlic crushed or 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 dried bay leaf
• Pepper to taste

As you can see these will add a lot of flavor to you BBQ. I use recycled pasta sauce jars to store the them in. I always keep the pasta sauce on hand in my pantry to save my life in the event of a nuclear attack or if I have an unscheduled visit.

Wishing you a beautiful July afternoon, I await your comments.