The Cursing Gourmet Tip of the Day:
If you’re a Hater, buy semi-prepared foods!
Ain’t no shame in my game!!
As a follow-up to the menu planning post from a couple days ago, I mentioned picking “easy meals” to make… Easy GOALS, in general, is a solid step in the right direction for any Hater.
When I first started cooking, I sure as hell wasn’t making 5-6 dinners per week from scratch!
But there’s this glorious thing called semi-prepared food!
Sure, it costs more than if you were to make it from scratch, but if you’re a Hater, you gotta start out LIGHT.
I used to love buying those seasoned, breaded fish filets that I could just pop on a pan and trow in the oven, maybe alongside a pan of asparagus.
And those rotisserie chickens? I’ve bought plenty of those to serve alongside some mashed and corn. Jar of gravy? Easy peasy.
The BEST time to utilize one of these semi-prepared meals in your rotation is the day you go shopping! It’s an old common joke – “I just spent $200 at the grocery store… I’m ordering a pizza tonight.”
Here’s the thing – Whether your goal is to cook (from scratch) 2 meals per week? 4? More? If you hate cooking, supplement those meals with semi-prepared ones, in addition to whatever else you have planned (takeout, dining out, going to a friend or family’s house, all of which, Hallelujah!, you don’t have to cook a damn thing!)
Semi-prepared meals are good for two key reasons: They tend to be cheaper and healthier than takeout, and they get you in the habit of cooking more often.
Getting in there, at least for a quickie-cook most days of the week will *cringe* eventually, naturally, make you slightly less hateful towards walking into the kitchen (most days.)
Back in the day, semi-prepared meals were a 1-2 day per week crutch I used that eventually led me to getting HERE today – “Here” meaning Taste Heaven.
So check out some of these pics I snapped while I was waiting on line at the deli counter…
Get some inspiration!
A big grocery store’s got pre-packaged salads, make-your-own salads, pre-packaged sauté veggies, all sorts of main courses and side dishes, soups, regional semi-prepared cuisine (like Mexican & Italian in my store), then all the semi-prepared stuff in the meat & fish department.
If you’re just getting started in the cooking game, supplement a couple “from scratch” meals with a couple semi-prepared meals. It’s the first step towards building confidence in your cooking game.
And even if you’re a seasoned, salty girl like me, don’t be shy about supplementing your plan with some of this stuff either.
Ain’t no shame in my game ?
