This past week really tested my cooking mettle. Last week, I ran the dishwasher every single night, even the night we didn’t cook; even yesterday when we’d been gone most of the weekend. Seems we’ve been getting off easy with the kids in daycare. Without having to provide them with 2 of the 3 meals they require four days out of the week, my life has been a vacation. Well comparatively anyhow.
We made bigger batches of everything so we’d have enough leftovers to send with the kids to school. I prepped tons of fruit, dispatching a giant watermelon with my chef’s knife and paring pints of strawberries with my paring knife. I did a bunch of cucumbers too – the kids love those dipped in anything. I took the easy way out and bought the “baby carrots” though I am much more fond of carrot sticks. We went through a family-sized thing of hummus, just parceling it out for the kids’ lunches.
The whole thing was exhausting, even though I had Matt right by my side, marinating meat and hulling strawberries along with me. Still, I generally enjoy it and know that even if I don’t, it’s important. That’s why, I think, this article from Slate struck a real chord with me. The author postulates that we need to stop billing home-cooking as “fun” and start labeling it the chore that it is (much in the same way that we’re not supposed to “lie” to new moms and tell them that motherhood is wonderful when really it sucks the life out of you). A chore that though it can be drudgery is really really important and we should do it anyhow. I find myself, as usual, both agreeing and disagreeing with this. I love the message that it is important but I truly don’t think it has to be drudgery. Now I have a lot of friends who hate to cook and chock my predilection for it up to a personality quirk, but I don’t think I always enjoyed it as I do now. And as I thought about this, I came up with some ways to make it easier:
- Plan!! I cannot stress the importance of meal-planning enough. We plan for the week, shop once and have everything on hand to make our meals. This eliminates so much stress. And the rest of the packet of bacon you bought to use when making Clam Chowda can be served with your French Toast. Plus, when you plan ahead, you can use your slow cooker. That is mighty nice too.
- Build a repertoire of easy meals. I have a host of favorite dishes that we make all the time and we pepper in a new recipe or two almost every week to keep our interest piqued. There is no need to do a new recipe every week, but building a good repertoire of things you can make almost without thinking about is really key to ease in the kitchen.
- Learn to use a knife. I’m not suggesting you study at CIA, but learning how to quickly chop up an onion, mince garlic and dispatch a watermelon in good time is key for keeping things quick. I acquired my skills through lots of practice and a few You Tube videos.
- Cheat a bit. Though I stand by my stance on knife skills, if you have the $$ there are a number of things that can make your life easier: pre-chopped mushrooms, frozen turkey meatballs, rotisserie chicken, canned beans, frozen veggies.
- Don’t take no for an answer. We serve two things at our house: take it or leave it. It may not be a popular stance, but we do not cater to individual food preferences. The kids have to try everything on their plate and whatever we cook for dinner is what’s available until breakfast time the next morning. To compensate at least somewhat for this, they do get a say in the menu for the week. Ben
- Employ child labor. The kids are required to set the table (sometimes with hilarious results), get their own cups of water and clear their plates. Tabby is also now spraying down the table after most meals.
- Clean as you go. Food is a helluva lot easier to remove from dishes if it hasn’t had time to harden/oxidize, etc. for an hour or 10. First mission when I step into the kitchen is to make sure the dishwasher is empty. I load it as I cook and we wash the dishes immediately following dinner or breakfast.
I know I’m an annoying evangelist for home-cooking, but I’m OK with that. I hope this helps someone somewhere get a good meal on the table.
These aren’t annoying at all. We are so scattered, especially after the summer. I HAAAAAAAAAAATE my kitchen, more than anything in this house, so I avoid it. Luckily, the hubs likes to cook, but we often throw our meals together as we go. Saving this so that I can use it in our kitchen streamline when we get to it. (Also? Math? SERIOUSLY? You couldn’t just use a captcha word 😉 )
I thought about doing quadratic equations, but that just seemed cruel. 😉 It will go away after the first go-around at least. Hope you get your chef on. And if you have lunchbox ideas we should share them. I let Tabby buy today because she was dead set on it and I was feeling lazy. :/
You forgot another reason that cooking at home is a help: cost. J and I are notorious for eating out when I’m stressed. It’s a horribly expensive prospect when you actually look at how much you spend going out.
I’m one of the odd ones who likes to cook too, but I never seem to have the time when I’m working. I’m always looking for more easy recipes to lighten the load.