“When I think about my old approach to cooking, pre-menu-planning era, I can’t believe how many hours per week I wasted doing something I hated doing.”
Hater to Hater, no compilation of kitchen shortcuts has saved me more time than consistent, simple menu planning.
If you find yourself HATING cooking, but also find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to cook regularly, get down with menu planning.
By default, when you menu plan, you cut down on your cooking time commitment BIG TIME in 3 ways immediately: (1) You only go to the food store 3-4 times per month versus 2 or more times a week; (2) No more time is wasted during your day, wondering “What am I (are we) going to have for dinner tonight?” followed by recipe site browsing, often followed by opening and closing the cabinets & fridge, trying to figure out if you’re going to (a) throw something together, (b) run to the store really quick for a couple things, (c) say “F it,” and order takeout, or (d) say “F it” and end up making grilled cheese or mac & cheese or something with cheese, probably.
Oh and don’t forget the KEY # 3 time saver! When I used to employ the “fly by the seat of my pants” approach to cooking, I’d just figure out what I was going to make that day and make it. And then I’d do the same thing the next day, and the next and the next, without any consideration of how much time I’d already spent in the kitchen that week.
When I plan my meals for the whole week, I can visualize how much time each meal takes to make, and purposefully plan to make a few really quick meals to balance out one or two that take a long time. Additionally, I can visualize all aspects of the process, not just the actual cooking. For instance, I might pick out a couple “one-pot” meals to balance out the other meals that use lots of pots and pans. (Because we all know that the clean-up is just as annoying as the actual cooking, so minimizing that aspect of the time involved is very important for any cooking Hater.)
These three things, all thanks to menu planning, have given me 2-3 hours of my life back per week!
And that’s just THREE, basic, one-size-fits-all time-saving angles – Believe you me, I’ve figured out all sorts of other ways to use menu planning to cut down time spent in the kitchen…
For instance, I have certain types of meals in regular rotation around here. We go through a lot of canned beans, canned tomato products, pasta, rice, chicken/beef/vegetable broth, and so on. So I load up on these items, especially when they’re on sale.
But even when they’re not on sale, it’s still worth my time to load up, as a Hater. If you need to purchase every single item for every recipe you make every time you make it, you’re wasting a lot of time at the store.
One more key way menu planning saves me time? Menu planning by its nature has trained my brain to think differently in my approach to cooking – To look for shortcuts… To PLAN FOR shortcuts. At this point in my cooking odyssey, I’ve managed to pull a slick magic trick – I spend less time in the kitchen than I ever have in my adult life, yet we eat more deliciously than ever!
(Of course, now I spend plenty of time thinking/writing/blogging about it, so I guess my time saved is a wash, Doh!!)
All joking aside, when I think about my old approach to cooking, pre-menu-planning era, I can’t believe how many hours per week I wasted doing something I hated doing.
…But anyway… Let me give you an example of how planning effectively can bring deliciousness with minimal effort: My menu plan from this past week.
If you’re a Hater, this probably looks WAY ambitious. But let me break it down for ya…
(Good) lasagna takes forever so that’s definitely a weekend meal. But it’s also an opportunity because I double the amount of meat sauce and freeze half of it, so next time I can skip that whole part of the process. (FYI the sauce for my lasagna takes 2 hours: a half hour of prepping and cooking, then an hour and a half of simmering.)
Helluva long time for a Hater.
But I love love LOVE lasagna! I gotta be eatin lasagna at least once every 6-8 weeks in the winter (which is basically the fall/winter/spring in the mountains where we live.)
So I looked for an opportunity to save myself some time in the kitchen, and wouldn’t ya know, I found one. (And FYI, Mike has never noticed the difference in the lasagna produced with the frozen sauce versus the freshie version.)
I also made the lasagna purposefully planning to freeze 2 or 3 portions. I knew my other meals would yield plenty of leftovers for lunches and Leftovers Night, so I planned to freeze a few lasagna portions as future “Get Out of Jail Free” cards.
I also find other ways to save myself time using simple planning. See the chicken enchiladas and Rachael Ray’s “Chicken Satay Noodle Salad” on my meal plan? Both require shredded chicken. So yeah… I’m only gonna do that once – when I make the enchiladas, I’ll double the amount of chicken and trow half of it in the fridge.
Even the order, enchiladas THEN the peanut buttery chicken noodles, is planned that way quite purposefully. If you Google this RR recipe, you’ll see why… Because all ya have to do is cook a pot of spaghetti, whisk together some sauce, cut a small amount of veggies, and you’re DONE. Pretty easy week night meal if you already have shredded chicken on hand.
And then I planned leftovers for Thursday night.
And don’t let Friday’s “Turkey Chili” fool ya – It’s a 30-minute chili recipe. And Saturday’s Minestrone? A little bit more effort, but not much because the meat is pancetta, which is basically bacon and requires very little effort.
So, you see, I’m not cooking ANYTHING on Thursday, and Wednesday/Friday/Saturday’s plans are all relatively easy meals. And as an extra bonus to me, majority of this week’s meals are one-pot meals.
I plan things this way very purposefully, because HELLO, I hate cooking.
And if YOU plan with purpose, you can absolutely minimize your efforts while maximizing deliciousness.
You may be thinking “WHOA, Girl! Let’s slow down a bit here…”
I know it still sounds like a bit much if you’re a Hater, but remember… If you’re just starting to ease into the cooking game, don’t be ashamed to throw grilled cheese and a can of tomato soup on your plan. And include 1 or 2 meals made with semi-prepared items from the store to supplement a couple make-from-scratch meals.
And if you don’t stick to the plan, NO BIG DEAL.
I don’t stick to the plan 100% of the time. Please!
I fall short all over the place. I end up at the store twice in one week, shit rots in my fridge, and there are plenty of nights that I simply decide I’m too damn lazy to cook whatever I had planned for that night.
But the point is that I stick to the plan most of the time, so I still save myself so much time compared to the old way of doing things.
Which reminds me… I better get planning for the upcoming week…
My menu plan “framework” is pretty basic: 1-2 meals that take a lot of effort, the rest EASY. 1-2 chicken meals, 1-2 vegetarian meals, 1 beef or pork meal, 1 fish meal, … And I try to keep things varied by region: 1 Italian, 1 Mexican, 1-2 Asian/Indian, 1-2 American/Irish-American meal per week, in addition to any other region… (But those are my fave types of food, so that’s what I make most often.)
I don’t stick to it rigidly – There was no vegetarian dish on this past week’s menu plan, for instance, but I made 3 vegetarian dishes the week before.
If you were to make a plan for the week, what kinds of things would you include?
Most weeks I ask Mike if he has any requests. Sometimes he volunteers one on his own. This week he suggested chicken parm.
Um, YEAH, you got it! Who doesn’t love chicken parm? Vegetarians and psychos.
And BONUS! This knocks out two meals – one easy dinner and one VERY easy piggyback meal.
Since I make and freeze large batches of marinara, chicken parm with a side of spaghetti is a pretty easy meal. And of course I’ll make a few extra chicken parms so we can be chomping on delicious chicken parm sandwiches a couple days later.
So that’s two meals taken care of… What next?
Ooooh! I’ve been wanting to make fish tacos for a while… Mmmm… Taco Tuesday, here we come!
What else?
Oh yeah. The leftover minestrone will get Mike half way through the week, so I need another meal that will produce leftovers… And I need something Asian or Indian… So I’m thinking some kind of stir-fry, maybe vegetarian, over rice.
Since I have stuff from this past week bleeding into this week, that might be all I need. And if I need to throw something together before next weekend’s shopping trip, I have soup bases in my deep freezer…
So I’ll break it down for you again, quickly. The fish tacos are the only thing that will take a while. Chicken parm/chicken parm sandwiches = easy/very easy meals. And the stir-fry will be relatively quick and easy. And if I have to make a soup, well, that’s already part-way there, so that will be easy too.
Believe you me, I’m coming at cooking 100% practical. My number one objective is to minimize TIME while maximizing TASTE. Period.
No Suzanne&Food love story here…
Jersey Suzanne smirks at people who love cooking. Same way I feel about people who “love” working out – I sorta don’t believe you, but if it’s really true, Hey, Good for you.
No real hate behind it… Maybe slight jealousy? But nothing that makes me dwell beyond my snarky thought-comment. It’s mostly just me being “Jersey.”
Colorado Suzanne? Still snarky as hell. But effin practical. I want to eat well. Period. I want to feed my family well. Period.
And until we can afford a personal chef, I’m the personal chef (cringe).
So I’ve begrudgingly been coming to terms with this life sentence for over a decade now (cringe).
For all of you who feel me, this is why I decided to share my hate, as well as my best Hater-centric cooking advice with you. No one deserves to serve a life sentence in solitary.
And I’ve managed to come up with a lot of good bits of Hater-centric advice over the years, but I’ll say it again – No catalog of kitchen shortcuts will save you more time than consistent, simple menu planning.
So get on it. Do it. Right now. And then get your ass to the store.
You know what YOU like to eat. If you made a plan for the week, what would you want to see on it (that is reasonable for you to cook)?
Is there anything you could double, either to freeze, or help out with a meal later on in the week? Any common ingredients between some of the meals (so you might, for instance, chop all the veggies at once for two different meals)? Any other ways you can visualize an opportunity to save yourself a little extra time?
What nights will you be home late? (Good leftovers nights.) What nights will you be out/eating elsewhere?
What are some other variables, specific to you, that come into play?
For example, for many years now, Mike’s teaching schedule has had a very short lunch break 4 out of 5 days per week – No time to go out and grab something. And he only has access to a fridge and microwave. And he’s not as into cold cuts as much as you’d think a guy from Jersey would be…
So my plan for the week always includes four portions of microwavable dinner leftovers for him to eat for lunch.
Side Note: Mike often tells me that other teachers “oooh and ahhh” and sniff over his shoulder. “What’s that?” they ask, possibly a little jealous? HA! Go figure!
I never thought I’d be that wife, I’ll tell you that!
Among my ~25 cousins on both sides of my family, ZERO of my aunts and uncles would have predicted that I’d be the one to become the good cook. In fact, I probably would have been one of the last, if not the very last, pick by all of them.
So believe it, if I can do it, there’s hope for you too ?
Stay tuned for “Menu Planning Part 2 – How Menu Planning Saves You MONEY, Honey!” Yeah, you hate cooking… But maybe, just maybe, your love of money outweighs your hate of cooking a tiny bit.