If there was one thing I wish I was better at in terms of the kitchen, it would have to be meal planning. I can do it, it’s just one of those things that slips my mind and next thing I know, I’m at the grocery store with not a clue what to buy. I know what to do, but I never make time for it. Therefore, in the spirit of trying to improve my kitchen habits, I am going to give you some of the advice I should be taking myself and have that as a motivation. After all, what good is it for me to give advice I don’t use? So we’re going to focus on two of the major things that I get hung up on: how to plan ahead and how to make in bulk.
Figuring out what to make is usually the hardest part of planning ahead. I tend to be spontaneous with my dinner habits, so rigid things like a schedule would not work very well for me. I mean, I do not want chicken paprikas every tuesday even though I love the stuff intensively. So, how can I accomplish this task? Well, I would think not having a designated day for each thing but instead having a category of dinners to choose from with similar ingredients. I mean, pasta with chicken, buttered noodles, and beef stroganoff all have at least one ingredient in common: noodles of some sort. Not to mention certain meats fit with a variety of dishes, and as long as I say “I am having chicken today” I can work from there, much like a private Iron Chef competition.
But outside of staples I should keep in the fridge anyways, I should also plan for certain themes every week before I go to the store. If I schedule out different foods like that, I will know what I should be looking for in the store. For example, if I say want the week’s meals to include an Italian dish, I’d look for pasta sauce or maybe even put it on the list. Using a plan as a springboard for the shopping list so I don’t end up clueless in the middle of the grocery store in terms of what I need for dinner. Also, one thing I should always have as a weekly thing is leftovers night. While both myself and my boyfriend eat a lot, we don’t always finish our meals first thing. There should at least be one “free” day to eat up all the leftovers so they don’t go bad and crowd the usually already crowded fridge.
Now, another thing I really should do to save me a lot of hassle is to cook in bulk. Sure if it is thanksgiving or we make corned beef hash it’s pretty much guaranteed we will be cooking in bulk. Yet for everyday foods, I could save plenty of time just cooking them all one day and then freezing them. Yet, the biggest problem with this is twofold: freezer space and container space. Like most people, our fridge isn’t designed to hold a lot. It has room enough for a few choice liquors, ice trays, frozen meat and ice cream but it’s not designed to hold prepped meals that well. I could always fridge the first few days of meals, but our fridge is usually crowded to. If I were to attempt this, I’d need a bigger fridge probably. Also, we don’t have many good large containers for that. Sure, we have a few containers that can hold a lot, but most of our Tupperware is kind of designed for small leftovers, not large meals. I think I could do this in small amounts though, like cooking up a ton of pasta ahead of time to use for meals (as it holds up well in the fridge). Same could be said for rice too, especially because it has such a long cook time. I’ll have to look at my menu to see where I could make this work, so figuring out meal planning could help lead me to meal prepping.
What do you guys think? Got any ideas to help make meal planning and prepping easier? Any tricks you use to figure out what you are going have set up for the week or do you just sort of wing it like I do? I’d love to hear your answers and do let me know if you like this segment style in the comments below. I don’t claim to be an expert in most topics I cover here, as we are all continually learning things. Also, do check out my twitter @TChefette for I have a poll currently up that will go away in roughly a week. I want to know if you guys want me to post recipes or not, because I don’t want to be the stereotypical food blog that gives you 1000+ words on the recipe only to finally at the end give the instructions. I think I can solve this, but I need to know if people want recipes in the first place! Let me know and I will see you all next Horror Tuesday.