I recently talked to someone who is adjusting from feeding a large family to feeding a small family, due to her children growing up and moving out. I told her a little bit about how I organize my cooking, and I realized it’s something I’ve attempted to tell others, too, and I thought it would be handy to have my ideas on cooking all in one place.
If these ideas are helpful to you, then that’s wonderful; if not, then by all means do something that works for you. I am a firm believer that there are many good ways to feed your family. My way is not “the correct” way, but just something that more or less works for my family. If what you’re doing is working, then you should probably keep doing it. If what you’re doing isn’t working as well as you’d like, and if you want to change something, then you can see if some of these ideas are helpful.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
First, I have noticed that the meals I make for my small family are not what I grew up eating in my large family of origin. To illustrate what I mean, I’ll share some advice I was given in my first year of teaching: Multiple-choice tests take more time to write but less time to grade; short-answer tests take less time to write and more time to grade — so, if you have a large class, write multiple-choice tests, and if you have a small class, write short-answer tests. There is more than that to creating a good assessment, but if you’re looking to use your time most efficiently, that is the way to go.
I think something similar is true about cooking for a big family vs a small family. I cook just about everything on the stove in the skillet; I rarely bake anything. And yet, I remember childhood dinners mainly coming from the oven. I think the ratio of work to food is probably in favor of baking for large families and sauteeing for small families, or something like that. I don’t have the math worked out, but if halving your big-family recipes isn’t working for your small family, then this is something to consider.
Second, I think it’s very important to organize your cooking in a way that actually works for you. Do you work better with very detailed and structured plans, or winging it? How much do you actually like to organize? I find that I work best if I have something of a plan, but not a rigid one. The idea of a detailed meal plan stresses me out (even though other people find it exciting, or at least necessary). But if I have no plan at all, then it’s 5:30 p.m. and I’m at a loss and I just don’t want to think about it, whereas other people are excited at the endless possibilities. If you feel like you want more or less organization in your meal planning, then try being more or less organized, and see if that helps.
I read somewhere about meal plan templates, and for me this is the sweet spot between a detailed, rigid plan and no plan at all. For me, it goes something like this:
Monday - chicken
Tuesday - soup
Wednesday - beef
Thursday - stir fry
Friday - meatless
Saturday - pork
Sunday - rummage
I know other people have a pasta night, a crock pot night, an egg night, a casserole night, a taco night, or whatever, and you can organize your weekly template any way you like. If you have regular events, e.g. if there’s something you attend every Tuesday evening, or every Friday at the crack of dawn, then take that into consideration when arranging your template. I also recommend having your most flexible/forgiving recipes the day before grocery day, so you can use up all those odds and ends in your fridge. (That miscellaneous half-onion and four slices of green pepper in your fridge? Add them to just about any soup or stir fry.)
I use the same template every week. Before I make my grocery list, I look through my recipes and find one chicken recipe, one soup recipe, one beef recipe, etc., and pull them out of my recipe box. (It’s best to do this when you’re hungry, because nothing looks good when you’re full.) I consider what I have and what I need (for the recipes, and also staples) and then I make my grocery list. (If I’m honest, I usually only plan and shop for about 3-4 recipes a week. Often, something will come up, or we’ll have enough for leftovers, or I have a lot of miscellaneous vegetables that I can throw into a pot and call “soup.” Or we have an evening or two when dinner is just not what I hoped it would be.)
During the week, I know that I have ingredients for these specific recipes. If it is Tuesday and I don’t have the energy to make a plan for dinner, I can default to the soup recipe that I shopped for. But if I have a lot of time and energy, and I want to reinvent the recipe in a creative way, I can do that. Or if it turns out to be a really stressful day, I know we have hamburger patties in the freezer. Or if I need avocados for that particular soup and the avocados I bought are still green, I can make Thursday’s recipe on Tuesday and plan to make the avocado soup on Thursday — or I can make the soup without avocados and do something different with the avocados later in the week. For me, this is the level of planning that works really well.
I end up with plenty of variety because, for example, “beef” can be beef stew, Korean ground beef bowls, hamburgers, Ugandan bunyaro soup, beef stroganoff, tacos, spaghetti with meat sauce, or any number of things. But I find that, while I struggle to decide what to make for dinner, I have a much easier time deciding what beef dish to make for dinner.
The one thing I try to be careful of is using up any unusual perishable ingredients. I don’t use whipping cream very often, so if I bought cream for a recipe this week, I make sure I use that recipe, or find some other way to use the cream so it doesn’t just sit in my fridge and spoil.
This system isn’t perfect, but I end up having real dinners more often and throwing away less food compared to anything else I’ve tried, so I’ll call that a win.
One of my favorite meals was "leftovers deluxe." I still remember cooking a meal for my daughter's family that consisted of canned salmon, tomatoes, onions, cream, and whatever vegetables were left in her refrigerator. It was delicious, and I was asked to give her mother-in-law the recipe.