There's something about cooking and shopping for food that can get very overwhelming. The irony is that enjoying food - it's preparation and its delicious consumption - is one of the main ways in which we, as human beings nourish and enjoy one another.
There are two approaches to kitchen time-saving. One is all about literally getting you out of the kitchen and includes a lot of take out, prepared foods, and leftover cartons languishing that, the next day, look used and unappetizing, as if they are doing the walk of shame in your fridge.
The second involves cutting down on the dreary and overwhelming parts of food prep so that you can enjoy the good parts, like watching your loved ones slurp up your meal or actually feeling a sensation of calm wash over you as you sit down at an actual table to eat and, perhaps, drink a bit of wine out of an actual glass. (The wine itself can come from a box, but drink it out of a glass.)
I am a big fan of takeout, actually. I love pizza, for instance, and don't think anything is quite as fulfilling as sitting down in my pajamas and watching Battlestar Gallactica while eating pizza and drinking Chuck Shaw. But I've come to the conclusion that take out tastes better when it's planned. Just like a romantic encounter, a whiff of desperation can take away from one's enjoyment of the main course.
I'm more of a fan of the second school of thought when it comes to saving time. It's not so much about "saving time" but about eliminating, cutting down or consolidating the tasks that make you want to poke your eyes out.
So here are my thoughts on saving time in the kitchen:
- Plan your meals and become a once-a-week shopper. I know, I know we've already discussed this. But really, there is nothing that will make you feel more frazzled than stopping at a grocery store on your way home from working wondering what's for dinner. Mostly when I did that I would begin to cry as part of a hypoglycemic meltdown and run from the store.
- Simplify your dishes. Cook recipes with 5 or fewer ingredients. When I first started cooking I would reject any recipe that had fewer than 20 ingredients. This was the height of insanity, I now realize. Here's an article from Cooking Light to get you started.
- Explore and Embrace Quick Cooking Methods. I'm talking stir-fry people. You could feed people stir-fry every day and every day would bring another mouthwatering mix-and-match flavor combination. I'm talking broiling - which is still the only acceptable way that I've found to cook a chicken breast (no offense George Foreman). I'm also talking about slow-cooking, either on your stove or in a Crock Pot, because slow-cooked foods usually do not ask for a lot of your time, just a lot of totally unattended time left alone in their pot. Check this out - The Julie Powell of the Crock Pot: A Year of Slow Cooking
- Weed. No, not that kind of weed, that just makes you want to eat White Castle. I'm talking about throwing away any crazy gadgets, hoo-has and bangdimlers that have accumulated in your kitchen. At least put them into a box and shove it in the back of your closet. If you don't have to hunt for every G-D thing, you will be less stressed in the kitchen. Same goes for your fridge. Clean it out regularly, like every week before you go food shopping with your list.
- Work Clean. I totally used to just throw everything in the sink as I went when I was cooking. The only problem is that then, after dinner, you have to face the mound of dishes after dinner. That's drudgery. You should be drinking wine or cuddling up to some NCIS after dinner. (I miss you Mark Harmon.)
- Block out a 1 hour, weekend kitchen session. This may sound counterintuitive. You want to get out of the kitchen and I keep drawing you back in, Michael Corleone-style. But the truth is, if you work during the week, finding a couple of hours on the weekend to pre-cook some meals and chop some veggies can make weekday meals as simple as heating something up, or throwing some stuff in a stir-fry. The best part of that system is that instead of cooking when you are beat after a day at work and just want to eat, you can cook when you are fresh and sated, meaning that you might actually find that you enjoy cooking more.
Some things you can do during this block of time?
- Wash all of your vegetables and herbs for the week.
- Cut up any veggies like onions, celery, peppers. Store in Ziplock bags or Tupperware. Imagine how easy those stir-fries will be if all the veggies are pre-cut? (The store will do this for you too, but at what price?)
- Cook up batches of rice, couscous, barley, quinoa or whatever kind of grain. It all keeps pretty well and reheats pretty well (you might want to add a sprinkle of water)
- Cook meals to freeze, say a lasagna. Freeze it in individual servings in ziplocks.
- Cook a chicken or slow cook a big hunk of pork that you can adapt into a variety of meals all week long.
Finally, remember that sometimes it's actually less about saving time and more about feeling less harried and stressed. I used to feel really stressed about cooking dinner because I was always ravenous when I got home from work. So, I started having a sort of first course, usually something like hummus, when I got home and then starting in on dinne
A teacher I used to work with, every time you said you had to do something like, say, you had to go and feed your cat would smile wide and say, "No! You get to go feed your cat!" (I know that sounds annoying, but it really wasn't because this guy was so great and was usually wearing an Hawaiian shirt or a Math AP conference t-shirt with Star Wars/Math puns, so how could you be annoyed by anything he said?) But, there's something to that "get to" stuff with cooking. Even if you hate cooking right now, find a way to enjoy it - at least a little. Maybe cook with a glass of wine (which always makes me feel vaguely Italian) or to blast you favorite music (I like Louis Prima for cooking and if you've seen Big Night you know why).
