It's 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon. The 2 year old is asking to watch the "Belly Breathe" song by Elmo, Common and Colbie Caillat for the 200th time of the day. The 6 month old's teeth are driving him nuts. For the stay at home parent this is often termed as the "Fussy Hour", "The Witching Hour" or my favorite, "60 minutes Of Hell. Mom is not going to be home for another 1-2 hours. The dogs are getting hungry and looking like they need to go outside. Now is when you remember that you decided to read blog posts during naptime instead of prepping dinner stuff to make it easy on yourself. Now what? Don't panic. I'm here to help and my suggestions may "shock" you.
There really is no way to get around doing the work of preparation if you want to cook healthy, fresh foods for your family. There are numerous ways to be prepared when it's time to put dinner on the table that will make your life way easier and save you a ton of money. First of all, make a list before you go grocery shopping. This very basic tip will be useless if you don't do a little meal planning ahead of time and if you don't stick to your list. Make a budget and stick to it. I like to play my version of "The Price Is Right" while I'm wheeling through the store and the check out is my show case show down. I keep a running tally in my head, which works well for me. I've had some experience at keeping a budget for restaurant kitchens so I've got some practice. If you don't want to risk blowing the budget then carry a calculator and keep yourself on track. If you find good deals on things that your family likes that you can freeze, grab a little extra and help your future budget. With each bargain I find I take off something that would fall in the treat category. A great deal on organic chicken? Good-bye spiced almonds and stuffed grape leaves.
Once you've bagged your groceries and lugged them home somehow, like the urban dwelling super hero that you are, don't just shove everything in the fridge and cupboard and walk away. Put your dry goods away first. Consolidate things like pasta and cereal to make room in the cabinets. Store your bread in the fridge. I usually go through the fridge before I go shopping to make sure nothing is going to get buried in the back of the fridge and become some biology experiment. Throw old food out and make sure that any food storage materials you use are clean and ready to go for the new foods. Wash all of your fruits and veggies and store most of them in the fridge. Buy a salad spinner and use that sucker on your greens and berries. Put your greens in zip lock storage bags and evacuate all of the air before sealing the bag. This will keep them fresh far longer than you can imagine. While it may be time consuming, this step will make your fresh foods last longer and eliminate much of the waste you may be experiencing now. Most items you get from your butcher can be stored in the fridge or freezer as is. Be sure to place any meats, fish and especially poultry below your other foods. Just incase something leaks you won't contaminate anything else. With chicken breasts and the like, I store them in portion specific bundles. I store 2-3 breasts per bag. This way I don't have to thaw the whole package to use a small portion and risk the rest of it going bad before I can cook it. If you buy fish, I recommend buying them whole or sides and learning how to break them down at home. This is not easy for the average home cook to do but it could save you a ton of cash and it's really fun once you learn how to do it. I portion my fish like I do my chicken. It's great to be able to reach into the freezer around 5pm and know that all you have to do is thaw the item and cook it instead of breaking it all down and making a huge mess in the moment.
The last time saver I'll cover today is the wonderful world of Blanching and Shocking. Lets say you have fish, chicken and lamb on your menu for the first few days of the week. You bought Brussels sprouts, broccoli, fennel and asparagus at the store on Sunday. On Sunday night, plan 30 minutes to prep all of these vegetables in order to save at least an hour during the week and making sure that these things actually do make it on the plate and not in your garbage can. Get a medium sized pot full of water to a simmer. Place an appropriate sized colander into the pot so that the contents will be fully submerged. Some people like to salt the water during this process. I do not. I feel that the salt draws out too many of the nutrients. Grab a large bowl (I have a set of inexpensive metal prep bowls that are assumed in many of the techniques I speak of) and fill it with ice and water. Cut each veg into appropriate sizes for cooking. Keep all veggies separate. Once you are done cutting a veg you can submerge it in the simmering water. I wouldn’t keep any of the above-mentioned veggies in the water for more than 2 minutes. Once they have reached your desired tenderness remove the colander full of veggies and place into the ice water. This stops the cooking process and sets the items color. Remember, you eat with your eyes first. Keep your green things green and your red things red... Once the veg is cooled through remove it from the water and dry in a kitchen towel or paper towel then store in the fridge.
It's Tuesday afternoon and you are in minute 10 of your own personal "60 Minutes Of Hell". Reach into the fridge and grab a bag with your portioned chicken breasts. Pop it in the microwave on defrost. Season the breasts and sauté them like a pro (I'll teach if you in another post) and take your beautiful dark green Brussels sprouts out of the fridge. Sauté those suckers as well and it's dinnertime. We'll talk other side dishes down the road but you are off to a good start with these tips.
Never again will you be scrambling around in your mind and your fridge trying to figure out what to make for dinner only to give up and call for Chinese. With these simple techniques you will at least have a fighting chance to get something healthy on the table for your family.
No comments:
Post a Comment