Right before Christmas, I told you what to add to your kitchen. Now Mark Bittman suggests things you can get rid of. My top ten:
1. Jar tomato sauce: takes five minutes of prep, 40 minutes of no-stir simmering, to make your own, which keeps for weeks: cheaper, better, and only a trivial amount of extra effort. Incidentally, for the fellow who asked: the large tomato cans referred to in that recipe are indeed 28 ounces. But I'm flirting with a switch to Pomi, which don't have that metallic taste. Home canned are best, of course, but not economical unless you grow your own or live in farm country.
2. Preground parmesan: forget the lack of fresh taste; the damn stuff clots and wastes half the jar. Try a microplane cheese grater and a block of fresh cheese from Costco or another warehouse club.
3. Bottled water: Distilled water has some uses for cleaning. Bottled water for drinking, however, is a total waste of space and money. It is tap water, just tap water you've paid someone to pour and transport. I repeat, most bottled water comes out of a municipal water system somewhere. If your tap water tastes funny, buy a Brita filter.
4. Mystery frozen things: They were on special 6 months ago. You got an amazing deal so you bought an extra pack and popped it in the freezer. Now you can't find a recipe for "mystery meat with a two-inch-thick crust of ice". Unless you have a deep freezer, the natural lifespan of frozen meat is six months. Throw it out. Then resolve not to buy and freeze anything you don't have an actual plan to consume. You will save money in the long run, and also, right now.
5. The crepe maker. The quesadilla maker. The margarita machine. The fondue pot. Used each of them twice, didn't you? If you haven't used an appliance or a pan in the last nine months, give it away, to a friend, relative, or goodwill. Exception: Christmas cookie cutters, ice cream machines that get heavy use three months out of the year, wedding gifts from immediate family. Do not let your fantasy kitchen take up more space than your real cooking.
6. Expensive cooking wine, "cooking" sherry: Anyone who tells you they detect a difference in the quality of wine used to cook is lying: the things that make expensive wine taste like expensive wine are denatured by heat, which is why you don't store your '62 Yquem in the closet next to the boiler. "Cooking" wines are a stupid waste in another direction: loaded with salt and priced higher per ounce than a decent table wine. Go to the liquor store and buy the cheapest bottle they'll sell you, dry or sweet as per the recipe.
7. Brownie mix: Brownies take ten minutes to make in one bowl: microwave the butter and chocolate together on low, then add the other ingredients, stir, and pour into a cooking plan. There is no excuse for wasting money on subpar baked goods.
8. Winter tomatoes, asparagus, etc: There are plenty of vegetables that it is fine to consume in winter, because they travel well (and inexpensively) from happier climes. Green beans, for example, or broccoli. But it is not worth it to pay the kind of money that is asked for crunchy, flavorless tomatoes, or something that tastes like a ghost of an artichoke. Better to dress up frozen (or, if you must, canned) during the winter months and save your money for a produce orgy come spring. You can make a spectacular, springy tasting soup by simmering frozen peas in a little broth with fresh tarragon, and stirring in buttermilk and fresh ground pepper at the end.
9. Bad frozen dinners: there are actually quite a number of things that are good frozen--I'm currently enjoying frozen onion soup from Costco, and I'm a big fan of the frozen pea. Frozen puff pastry sheets are a dinner-party life saver when your souffle dies. But how often do you actually enjoy a Swanson's salisbury steak that you could have produced in five extra minutes with a packet of Knorr onion soup mix and a cheap bottle of red wine? (Mix the onion soup mix into the hamburger. Shape. Pour a little wine mixed with soy sauce over the steak and broil until the outside is crispy brown).
10. Potato buds: With the Rotato on the market, there's just. no. reason. Use the rotato to peel some actual, cheap potatoes (kids love this). Cut into 1-inch chunks. Simmer until tender in skim milk, whole milk, or cream, depending on the condition of your budget and waistline. Especially delicious if you throw a clove of garlic or two into the pan. Then pour off half the milk and all of the garlic, and mash. Took you five minutes of prep time, and saved you infinite taste bud agony.
My biggest new years resolution for the kitchen, and one I commend to readers, is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good in your endeavors. If you can't whip up crepe suzettes, that doesn't mean you have to resort to box brownies; try baked apples or use frozen puff pastry sheets and fruit to make a quick strudel. If you are worried about animal welfare, but can't give up meat, or afford the humane stuff, try having one or two vegan meals a week, or splurge on pastured beef once in a while. If you're too tired to cook, try to find a recipe that takes an extra five minutes and one dish over heating a frozen dinner, like simmering chicken breasts in barbeque sauce for half an hour (or sticking them in a 400 oven in a baking dish with same for 50-60 minutes). If you're too tired to spend five minutes cooking, you're too tired to eat. And better to have a good tuna sandwich that tastes like a tuna sandwich should than a frozen "pizza" that could just as easily be the plastic one from the store display.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
If you're too tired to cook, try to find a recipe that takes an extra five minutes and one dish over heating a frozen dinner, like simmering chicken breasts in barbeque sauce for half an hour (or sticking them in a 400 oven in a baking dish with same for 50-60 minutes).
In what fantasy world does trimming chicken breasts (which you have miraculously thawed somehow) and cleaning up both the raw-chicken-contaminated stuff and the baked-on-barbecue-sauce stuff take 5 minutes? Not to mention that it takes much less time than 30 minutes to heat up a frozen dinner.
I like good food, and I even like cooking, and you often have great advice. But you are also a single woman. I am a father of two. I think you will find that your nonchalant advice is much harder to follow when any shopping trip involves somebody actively opposing whatever you're doing and every moment you spend in the kitchen is a moment you can't spend preventing well-intentioned but ill-informed souls from killing themselves in some creative way.
You certainly seem to have a lot of time on your hands.
It's tough to cook in my office.
I've inherited my horror of frozen dinners from my mother, who both worked and had two children, whom she also managed to prevent from finding creative ways to kill themselves. But the point is not that all frozen dinners are, full stop, bad; it's that it's worth making marginal improvements in your cooking, rather than waiting for the day when you have time to throw beef wellington together.
But I love owning a mandolin, even though I can never get it to work right without making a horrible, horrible mess. Owning it makes me feel like a Real Cook. Must I discard it? Any pointers for making it work?
Get your mother to email me and explain how the hell she cooked with kids. We can only manage it if the preschooler consents to play alone, which is rare. There needs to be one full-time set of hands to chase/hold/distract/feed the baby, who otherwise has an astonishing propensity for suicide.
To be frank, I hate frozen dinners, too, which is why we usually don't eat until 9:00 or even 10:00. But the marginal cost of even a simple meal from real ingredients as compared to "hurl pizza in oven and hope you don't forget it" is much higher than you estimate, especially when the need for advance planning and the tendency of teething or illness to disrupt advance plans is taken into account.
Start with a kyocera ceramic slicer, and work with things like cucumbers, that aren't too demanding, to get the feel of it.
Also, if you are going to have a mandolin, get a good one. The reason $30 mandolins make a horrible mess is that their blades are dull and they don't cut cleanly.
Rob: I will solicit a guest post.
I'm going to stick up for the frozen pizza, which I occasionally get a craving for (due to a childhood where they were a very rare treat.) Now this is not the same thing as getting a craving for a real pizza, which is an entirely different and more delicious foodstuff.
The same thing happens with BigMacs. I never think "oh, I'd love to have a burger so I think I'll pick up a BigMac." Big Macs are their own separate thing. The last time I had one it was really disgusting so it'll be a long time before I want another one. Thank god.
I'm going to have to check into this Rotato thingy. I detest peeling potatoes.
When you mentioned that it's cheaper to make your own tomato sauce, I was really intrigued.
But after clicking on the link for the recipe. I think cost of buying all the necessary ingredients and devices to make my first jar would exceed my total weekly food budget. I have none of those items in house. Don't think it's worth the effort to go out and by sugar, salt, olive oil, a blender and the rest when I can get a jar of Ragu at the Super Wal-mart.
And not everyone has municipal water. Some of us are doing it old school with a well.
I make my own pizza crust, bread, yogurt, pickles, and jelly, so I take your point about spending a bit of time on cooking. But you can have my potato buds when you pry them from my cold dead hands. They make many baked goods more tender and can be used to bread chicken. Potato flour doesn't work as well for me.
Thanks for the food-blogging. It's a nice addition to business as usual.
I just checked out the NYT list and for the life of me I can't figure out why this is on the list:
OUT Canned peas (and most other canned vegetables, come to think of it).
Last week a can of peas 15oz was $.50 at Wal-mart, while a 16oz frozen bag went for $.88
Not to mention the fact that most households are woefully understocked and prepared for some sort of local disaster where it is impossible to get to a grocery store (or the stores are not resupplies). Canned veggies are a cheap way to stockpile food, just in case.
@Barbara:
FWIW, I've heard nothing but good things about the Rotato. I have a number of friends who enjoy making "ironic" purchases of as-seen-on-TV products. Most of these end up as kitschy conversation pieces, but, in the case of the Rotato, the result was unironic product use on a semi-regular basis.
@Rob:
I didn't mean to suggest that _you_ were the one who had a lot of time on your hands...
>_>
Get your mother to email me and explain how the hell she cooked with kids. We can only manage it if the preschooler consents to play alone, which is rare. There needs to be one full-time set of hands to chase/hold/distract/feed the baby, who otherwise has an astonishing propensity for suicide.
As the father of a toddler and an infant, I sympathize with Rob Lyman. IMO, the difference between Megan's mother's generation and ours is that the earlier generation didn't seem as fazed by toddlers' propensity for suicide. My parents didn't have the childproofing things we do like outlet protectors and gates for stairs. Frankly, I dont understand how I lived through it. But it seems to me that our parents could cook for us because (1) they had the time and (2) they didn't feel the need to monitor our every move to make sure we didn't kill ourselves.
That said, Rob's main point is exactly right: single, childless 30-somethings have no clue how much difficulty and time it takes to deal with kids. And no, the fact that they were once kids (nor the fact that they have friends with kids) is an adequate substitute for personal experience with their own kids on a daily basis. People our age simply don't raise kids in the same way that our parents did.
Megan's undervaluing of time under those circumstances is readily apparent in this post.
This is my favorite Costco-centric meal: Dump olive oil in a frying pan with some minced garlic, some jarred sun dried tomatoes and pine nuts. Cook until the pine nuts are toasted and the tomatoes are slightly blackened and pour over pasta.
I am a single father of two who is also a lazy ass, but most cooking doesn't really waste that much time. What sucks is cleaning the crap up.
I have never made homemade tomato sauce that I have liked, though I think my pesto sauce is very good. I will try the sauce you linked to, otherwise, I will spend the rest of this recession buying Classico Basil and Tomato
I think the mandolin blades are plenty sharp, and I may have to face the reality that I just don't know how to use the damn thing. If you happen to find yourself in Maine, I will happily buy the ingredients if you will come demonstrate how to use it. In the meantime, I will continue to content myself with my kick-ass knives.
But I'm still keeping it. I am 100% with you about frozen peas, though. I'll have to try that soup recipe. How long do you simmer, and do you blend the soup at the end?
MINUTE RICE - gaaaa! The TV ads used to say all good moms made minute rice so their rice wouldn't stick together (good luck, chopsticks-users). Flavorlessness was the added bonus.
What sucks is cleaning the crap up.
When I am able to cook without distraction, I do lots of clean up during in-between moments when I'm waiting for something to boil or whatever, so cleanup is next to nothing. When I am dealing with whiny requests for this or that at the same time, I quite literally throw used utensils or containers into the (thankfully large and deep) sink to make room or get raw food away from cooked.
And of course, with two kids, it's not just suicide, but fratricide that is a worry. Or at least the destruction of a carefully build Lego tower for no particular reason.
Dan--how do you sharpen your knives? I do my best, but they're never as sharp as I want, and I've started to alter the shape of the blade on my daily-use kitchen knife.
On the subject of cooking wine, I am very happy with those little 187ml bottles that come in cardboard 4-packs. Cheap, perfectly acceptable for cooking, and the portion is almost always right so there's no waste.
PSA: the "Black Box" brand of California wines, sold in 3L (that's four bottles' worth) cartons for around $20, make excellent cooking wines -- not least because you just dispense what you need and the rest stays good for several weeks. The Cab in particular is a great all-purpose substitute in French recipes that call for Cotes du Rhone or similar.
Mandoline Lessons on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gebfG75Iqxs
When I cook certain sauces and stews I will cook a larger amount than I need and freeze the rest. My favorite way to label my freezer containers is masking tape and a sharpie.
Dan--how do you sharpen your knives?
I'm not Dan, but there is likely a professional knife sharpener in your area. Especially if the blade shape is altered a professional sharpener may be the best idea at this point. The kitchen store down the street from me sharpens knives for $5 a shot or $8 for serrated blades. I personally use a simple metal and ceramic manual knife sharpener with the angles pre-set so I don't have to worry about getting the angles correct. It seems to get my knives very sharp. I use a steel every couple of uses to keep them in good shape.
I'm not convinced that making tomato sauce is any cheaper than buying it canned. At Trader Joe's their sauce is $1.99 per jar everyday, and the supermarket has sales that sometimes drops prices to $1-$1.50 for the better quality sauce. Canned tomato sauce also lasts far longer and doesn't require refrigeration until opening. I've also had a variety of tomato sauces from fresh to canned, but haven't tasted anything that would compel me to make it myself.
Ah, the joys of cooking with children. If they are the right age and you can deal with the mess, let them help you. Mine loved to mash potatoes.
I never buy tomato sauce or tomato paste because I never use them, but I try to always have a few cans of stewed tomatoes on hand, plain and some of the "flavored" varieties.
Cream is also a staple in my fridge. The ultra-pasteurized keeps forever and just a tiny bit can turn a can of Italian style stewed tomatoes in which you've cooked some tiny frozen shrimp into a wonderful dish. Do not fear the fat!
Mandolines...
I suggest getting one that has the cutting blades at an angle rather than square or perpendicular to the sides of the body.
The angled blades allow a cut that is more like a slicing motion which really provides an easier more damage-free cut for softer veggies. The ones with the squared blades act more like a cleaver and I have never liked those.
My main mandoline is a cheap plastic Japanese one with a couple of interchangeable blades that I have had for 20 years and it still cuts like it is brand new.
Rob,
I know it's not PC but what is wrong with a playpen?
An even better idea for cooking wine: wine in a box. Keep it in the fridge after opening and it is good for at least six months. And you don't waste the rest of a bottle (or drink it to avoid the waste).
I often was reluctant to open a bottle of wine to cook with for those reasons, with a decent box in the fridge, and they do exist, it becomes trivial to get just a cup of wine when you need it.
Count me as another person who doesn't buy Megan's cost/taste claims about homemade tomato sauce.
And brownies are the *only* baked good that are reliably good from a mix. The few times I've made them from scratch I've been underwhelmed.
When I am able to cook without distraction, I do lots of clean up during in-between moments when I'm waiting for something to boil or whatever, so cleanup is next to nothing.
I used to be really good at doing that, but it was before the internet and kids. If my kids aren't distracting me between items, I usually am wasting time on line.
May I suggest that showing off your knife skills with a good-quality chef's knife (or santoku) and paring knife will make you feel more like a Real Cook than owning any amount of other tooling will. Good-but-cheap knives cost very little (chefs use the cheap carbon steel knives because the pricey knives get stolen) and a decent "intro to knife skills" class will run you less than the cost of your mandolin. Yes, it does make a difference.
Real foodies know exactly what it means when they see a SubZero fridge in a kitchen with dust on the whisks, and are not impressed with how much you spent...
DougEMI writes: "If my kids aren't distracting me between items, I usually am wasting time on line."
Surely you're kidding.
On the subject of cooking with kids, I'll note that with a little work, kids can actually become a net benefit to cooking. My seven-year-old can make salads and garlic bread, stir sauces, set and clear the table, and is working on her tong skills. Next step, sauteeing!
(Teaching children to cook well is an important and often overlooked parental responsibility, not least because it increases the quality of mates they eventually bring home.)
Dave writes: "Real foodies know exactly what it means when they see a SubZero fridge in a kitchen with dust on the whisks, and are not impressed with how much you spent..."
Heh. The SubZero fridge is more of a class marker than anything else.
One of my co-workers recently married an attorney. I jokingly asked if they received a KitchenAid as a wedding gift, and indeed they had. Have they ever used it? Once, to make cookies. He conceded that actually making anything with it is beside the point; it's really just a nice counter-top centerpiece that indicates that, yes, you _really have_ arrived as a yuppie.
Dave writes: "(Teaching children to cook well is an important and often overlooked parental responsibility, not least because it increases the quality of mates they eventually bring home.)
Don't you mean the quality of _men_ they eventually bring home?
Best advice my dad ever gave me: Make 'em laugh, feed 'em well, and the panties just melt right off...
Dave writes: "Best advice my dad ever gave me: Make 'em laugh, feed 'em well, and the panties just melt right off..."
I don't know dude. I had a buddy that did that par excellence, married a girl, and three months later she divorced him for some guy who got accepted into NYU law school :-/
If you're making 160k a year as an associate, you can afford comedy clubs and restaurants.
I know it's not PC but what is wrong with a playpen?
The persistent habeas petitions from the inmate.
I agree on most of your points. However, Crepes Suzette is neither difficult nor particularly time consuming to make. And having just a few days ago try to make cheese fondue with no fondue pot, and have it stay melted at the table, I would hold onto the fondue pot.
"The persistent habeas petitions from the inmate."
I think you need some Barney/Dora/Little Einsteins DVDs, my friend.
Rob,
If you tell me you don't let your kids watch TV - I will have lost all faith in you.
"Cooking" wines are a stupid waste in another direction: loaded with salt and priced higher per ounce than a decent table wine. Go to the liquor store and buy the cheapest bottle they'll sell you
Wild Irish Rose? Cisco? Night Train Express? I really don't think you mean the very cheapest bottle.
Noggin, man.
I've gotta agree with Rob here. Without an assist from Elmo/Dora, I would never get anything cooked. The real problem though is not cooking dinner, it's getting out of the house on time in the morning with all the kid's stuff AND remembering to defrost something. We've nearly become vegetarians of convenience.
Re: bottled and otherwise purified water.
Find GOOD bottled water. Stick to it. Even if it did come from a tap somewhere, it must be one swell tap. Hereabouts the water to beat seems to be the [famous or infamous] Ozarka; YMMV.
Tea, coffee and soup taste funny unless made from good [meaning purified] water. Brita filter ain't it. My water of choice is a 60-40 mix of deionized (about the same as distilled) and regular purified (with reverse osmosis) water handmade by myself in local Whole Foods store.
Rob,
I hear you. I cooked like crazy until my oldest started to crawl and then I basically forgot how for the next six years (pizza! Chinese delivery! Thai takeout! Indian sauces from a jar!). Among other things, the prospect of cleaning up after real cooking was just too demoralizing, particularly when the odds are that the kiddies won't like what you made. The good news is, once the youngest kid was 3 and a few months old, he suddenly was responsible enough that he could be allowed to wander off and do his own thing. Best of all, he's big enough that he's reasonably safe from big sister. We mostly eat at our college cafeteria these days, but we've managed pretty well during holiday closures. We did all sorts of small cooking projects with the kids over Christmas break (including brownies from a box). The dishes were horrible with all four of us eating at home almost all the time, but we survived. The kids have also become very fond of sweet potatoes over the holidays, and have been demanding them for lunch. I've been peeling them, slicing them into a glass dish, adding water, butter, brown sugar, and microwaving them until tender.
Agree with the post. People who think brownies from a mix taste good have no tastebuds.
But artichokes? Bad example of food that's not in season. I bought artichokes at the farmer's market last week. They are in season right now (and all year round) in California-- which is, if I'm not mistaken, where you East Coast folks get their artichokes from.
So stay away from tomatoes, corn and peaches until the summer, but enjoy delicious fresh artichokes right now.
Michael Ruhlman has a follow-up with what he recommends keeping in the freezer. I like his idea for the tomato paste, I don't recall seeing the tubes at my local supermarket.
http://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/2009/01/the-freezer-pan.html
I love to cook, and I love fresh ingredients (I won't even buy powdered spices, but grind my own), but cooking and convenience do not go hand in hand.
I make my own tomato sauce all the time and much prefer it to anything I can buy in a jar, but it does take time. Opening cans, crushing garlic, chopping onions, etc. (not to mention the clean up) take MUCH longer than 5 minutes. Its more like a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon than a quick alternative to opening a jar from the store.
Last night I planned to use some chicken breasts I had in the freezer, but I forgot to thaw them (and I hate defrosting in the microwave. Parts seem to cook before other parts thaw). I used them tonight though, but I spent more than 5 minutes with the prep work and cleanup.
My roommate (who opts for the convenient things you denounce) will cook, eat, and clean up before I'm even to step three of my recipe. I'm single and I have the time, so I do it, but I don't blame working parents who don't (though stay at home parents have no excuse).
As for those with kids, I suggest doing what my mother did. Include the kids in the cooking! In Washington, a 5 year old even has his own cooking show on a cable access channel. There is usually a part to every recipe that doesn't involve extreme heat or sharp metal objects, but even then, kids are capable of a lot more than you expect if you give them the chance. Making food is a very satisfying endeavor emotionally. It builds confidence and makes you feel self-reliant. It also shows your kid you trust them and kids love being part of the action in the kitchen. It makes them feel really special and will provide great memories and teach them useful skills that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
And PS. How the hell does James B. not have salt, sugar, olive oil, and a blender in his house?! (I could understand not having garlic, fresh basil, or other items in that recipe, but salt and sugar? That must be a joke!).
In short...cooking good food at home is actually quite easy, and can indeed be cheaper, and if you have the time, DO IT! You'll love it, but, rarely does it take just 5 extra minutes (especially when new to cooking).
Max: Tap water quality is locally variable. For whatever reason, I seem to remember you live in Texas, and my Texas friends' tap water is not all that pleasant. San Diego tap water is....um, probably not actively harmful.
OTOH, my town is blessed with an excellent, granite-basin reservoir in the Taconics, and our tap water tastes better than most bottled water. I actually have to add minerals to keep the pH in my fish tank stable. New York City, where Megan grew up, gets its water mostly from reservoirs in the Catskills and also has good water out of the tap.
A clue for you people: Get a sex life. AIDS is no longer that big a killer; you can go back to indiscriminate humping & can devote your energies to something fun, rather than sublimating your desires w/ your sad food fetishizing.
I can empathize with Rob w/r/t the difficulties of cooking with kids. But I don't think all the criticism being levied on Megan for not having kids, and perhaps having more free-time to cook, is fair.
While it certainly takes more organization to cook well while raising kids and working, it is not impossible. My wife & I are fortunate enough to get home from work at around the same time. One can watch our 21 month old, the other can cook. Since we found out we are now expecting #2, I've started doing the cooking.
What works best for me is finding relatively simple recipes (less than 30 min prep time), planning them in advance so that I have ingredients on hand, and, if necessary, cooking certain parts (like beans) ahead of time.
That might sound like a lot of work, but it really isn't. It just requires a little bit of planning. But the results are worth it.
Dictyranger: I've traveled around ;-) There MAY be places where tap water is good enough but they are certainly not the norm. Also, I would keep the tap water in an open container for 24 hours or so before using, however good it seems to be: traces of water treatment chemicals, while not harmful, impact the taste.
Right before Christmas, I told you what to add to your kitchen.
Can someone link me to this post? I'm having trouble finding it.
There's actually some pretty good frozen food out there. I'm a big fan of Trader Joe's, and they have a bunch of stuff that's pretty tasty, not too bad nutritionally, and not too unreasonably priced. Their Chinese food in a bag, chicken tenders, and mini frozen pizzas are stuff I keep on hand for when I don't feel like cooking.
I do think Megan seriously underestimates the time it takes to plan meals, buy a ton of ingredients, cook, and clean up. By the time I roll back home after work and my after-work gym workout at 8pm or so, I don't feel like standing over a stove for a while. I do cook sometimes, mostly on weekends.
The other thing is, as a single guy, if I cook something I end up with several days worth of food, which doesn't always freeze well. Which means if I cook something, I end up eating the same thing for days, which gets kind of tiring.
"Count me as another person who doesn't buy Megan's cost/taste claims about homemade tomato sauce."
You need to have a heavy hand with the salt and spices, otherwise homemade sauce can be bland. I've used a friend's Italian-American wife's recipe, and managed to make a decent sauce, but it's sort of a pain in the ass and time consuming.
"I have never made homemade tomato sauce that I have liked"
Try the Lucini marinara sauce at Costco. We had some last night for the first time. All, natural and tastes great. Here are all the ingredients: Italian plum tomatoes, EV olive oil, garlic, salt, parsley, basil, oregano, and black pepper. That's it: no corn syrup or other crap. Bottle says it's made in Italy and "handcrafted in small batches". Tastes like it. I've made my own sauce, and it's not worth the time and hassle when you can get sauce like that at Costco.
Growing up in an Italian household and watching my mother and father make sauce (they both call it gravy) on Sundays I would never buy something from the store.
It is way too easy to make, tastes too good compared to the store version, and is much more exciting than popping the top of a bottle of Prego.
If you think that your homemade sauce is bland then you aren't adding the right spices, enough red wine and probably no sugar.
Buying good cooking wine is worth it, unless I am cooking for a real crowd the rest of the bottle is going to get drunk.
My one weird cooking utensil is a pastry brush. I very seldom use one, but when I want to use one I've never come up with a half-way decent substitute.
@Barbara
With a couple of in-a-pinch exceptions, I have to say that I really hate frozen pizza even though I love good fresh pizza (which I don't have a source for near my house). As a result, once every 6 months or so I break down and buy a frozen pizza and end up throwing half of it away after I remember why I don't eat frozen pizza :-)
I've never used a microplane cheese grater, but I can't believe that it's any less likely to incorporate bits of knuckle in the product than the low-tech kind. Get a rotary (Mouli) grater.
A good list, and I definitely agree with the general sentiment that you can make a large improvement in your meals with a small marginal increase in effort. But like others, I'm gonna dispute two items:
My mother was also aghast to find that I purchased Ragu sauce rather than making my own. But when reading that list of ingredients and instructions, I don't see much in the way of cost savings, I see a significant increase in time and effort, and I don't automatically agree that I'll like the taste of my own made sauce better. If you love your homemade sauce and never wanna eat Prego/Ragu again, more power to you, but I don't necessarily agree, and it's not 'cause I'm ignorant of the option.
The other one is the brownie mix. I've heard from two different cooking shows (both of which I trust on matters of baking) that the Duncan Hines / Betty Crocker mixes use a combination of chemicals (oh noes! chemicals! beware dihydrogen monoxide!) that make the process fairly foolproof - no worrying that you used 1/8th teaspoon too much baking soda or powder, or that you beat it a little too much or slightly too little, it's always gonna turn out pretty good.
I've made homemade brownies which matched my preference of thick, rich, dark chocolate, though that is not the preference of the rest of my household (light and fluffy). They tend to come out too crispy on the outside, and a little too wet in the middle (I'll try lower heat and longer time next attempt) but I definitely can't call them a complete win, and the ingredients definitely weren't cheaper.
So as I said, I strongly agree that you can make some big improvements with small efforts, but having done most things in both the "proper homemade cooking" way and the "box of prepared food from the supermarket" way, I don't agree that the former is universally better for everyone, and a lot of the assertions that it does seem like snobbery. Also as Rob indicates, it's easy to say "spend an hour cooking your meal, it's worth it!" but not everyone has that hour.
While potato buds make terrible mashed potatoes they are not bad as an ingredient in gnocchi. They reduce the amount of work by about half, total prep time by over one half, and mess by at least a third. The gnocchi are not quite as good as fresh ones made from real riced potatoes, but are as good frozen (even homemade ones that I've frozen).
I have to dissent about the quesadilla maker, unless you're extremely space-deprived. It really is very cool, if you like quesadillas of course. We got one as a gift and first thought it was pointless, but we have really taken a liking to it. The Santa Fe is a good model and I think Cooks Illustrated rated it the highest as well.
I wouldn't bother with Pomi--the way they produce the puree involves grinding the seeds along with the tomato and it tastes sort of bitter. Buy Muir Glen whole peeled tomatoes and a food mill and you'll be all set. Italian tomatoes aren't as good as our californ-eye-ay ones.
I'd recommend reading cooks illustrated's thoughts on cooking wines (and cooking with wine). Pretty interesting stuff.
With regard to boxed brownies, Ghirardellis makes a mind-blowing mix that you used to be able to get at Costco. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to make better brownies than that without spending a bundle.
@Tracy W
Nothing weird about a pastry brush. I use one for lots of things (typically other than pastry). I find the newish silicon ones great because you can just pop them in the dishwasher and they clean right out and don't shed.
Rob, I really don't understand how cooking with young kids is such a big problem. While I'm past that stage I do have two kids born 3 years apart in the 90's. We managed just fine by cooking big meals on the weekends (stews, soup and things like moussaka, lasagna, or chicken and rice). Make one big meal on Sat. and one big meal on Sun. Alternate eating them over the week. About once a week we either cooked a quick meal (pasta, grilled something, or fish/chicken/porkchops that had been bought that day and didn't need defrosting) or go out. Most weekday meals were just microwaving stuff. Plus one parent was almost always available to deal with kids while the other cooked. Single parents certainly have it harder!
Of course neither my wife nor I has bought into the full blown modern parenting mindset. We feel there is a lot of overblown fears and over protection of kids now. In many ways we really were raising kids similar to how we were raised. It seems to have worked so far.
Megan is right about the sauce, although whats with sugar as an ingredient in the linked recipe? She's also right about the parmesan. Even if you go with jarred sauce get yourself a real piece of cheese.
Potato buds are convenient as an ingredient in bread.
Now that I've thrown out some of my unused appliances, I'm interested in buying a yogurt maker. Any recommendations?
For some recipes, vermouth works well as cooking wine and it keeps in the refrigerator.
Megan, I have no doubt that you are a reasonably good cook, and since you grew up in New York (as did I, though in Brooklyn), I don't doubt that you know what good tomato sauce tastes like. But you really need to stop telling unsuspecting folks that they can make their own high-quality tomato sauce in 45 minutes. This is a fantasy propagated by selling cookbooks and tv shows. Yes, you can probably equal jar sauce (which is frequently terrible) in that amount of time. But it takes me about 5 hours to make a tomato sauce I'm really happy with. My grandmother used to start hers immediately after breakfast for sunday supper (midafternoon). Of course, I have enough left over to feast on homemade pizza, stuffed shells, eggplant parm, and pasta for the next two weeks, so it really does still save time.
My wife's family is first generation Italian. None of the 10+ varieties of sauce they make takes 5 hours. The myth is that your sauce needs to simmer for hours.
though stay at home parents have no excuse
I've been a lawyer and I've stayed at home with a toddler, and anyone who thinks the latter leaves more time and energy for cooking is insane.
One can watch our 21 month old, the other can cook. Since we found out we are now expecting #2, I've started doing the cooking.
You are about to discover that the marginal cost in effort of caring for the second child while the spouse cooks is greater the "effort cost" of the first.
Jmo: no, my kids don't get to watch TV as a matter of course. Sometimes, certainly, but we limit it. I'm of the opinion that anesthesia should be sparingly used. Plus it just leads to hundreds of whiny questions which require attention: "WHY did he do that? Is that the bad guy? What's going to happen?"
Oh, and I liked this contrast:
I really don't understand how cooking with young kids is such a big problem...Most weekday meals were just microwaving stuff.
As somebody who has used both a Mouli and a micrograte planer (when the Mouli broke):
You don't grate knuckles with the micrograte, since you can easily move the grate rather than the block of cheese, unless you are trying to grate the last couple of cubic millimeters (which I just snack on). Nevertheless, you don't always HAVE fresh parmesan at home, so I really WOULD have a pre-grated shaker available if it didn't taste so heinous. But it does.
(this does not apply to pre-grated parmesan that you got grated at the store an hour before....finer palates might be able to detect the difference, mine doesn't.)
However, the micrograte planes a bit TOO fine. Once I got a new mouli, I went back to using that (and STILL snacking on the remainder, which it mushes against the roller). But when the mouli breaks again (WHY must they be plastic?), I am ready.
The best tool for cooking w/ a child around is a Learning Tower--esp. if you can get one of the folding kinds. Seems like a big investment, but well worth it. When my daughter was very young, I'd get home from work, have a few minutes for a cuddle, then we'd *both* go in the kitchen and work on dinner. The Tower keeps her out of trouble, and she can either play w/ her own things in there (play-dough is a great way to keep them busy) or "help." And surprisingly, a toddler can actually be pretty helpful. Just keep them away from the knives and the boiling water.
"With regard to boxed brownies, Ghirardellis makes a mind-blowing mix that you used to be able to get at Costco. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to make better brownies than that without spending a bundle."
We have a box in the pantry right now, and I know I couldn't make anyhing better - spending a bundle or no.
And you can have my Margaritaville when you pry it from my shaved-ice encrusted, tequilla-stained hands.
My wife's family is first generation Italian. None of the 10+ varieties of sauce they make takes 5 hours. The myth is that your sauce needs to simmer for hours.
okay - my guess, though, is that the 'sunday' version doesn't take 45 minutes from the moment you enter the kitchen to the moment the sauce is ready. real cooking takes care and effort to do the little things right, especially at the beginning when you're learning a new dish.
also, I have no reason to think that your wife's family's food is anything but delicious, but that they're "1st generation Italian" doesn't convince me either way. Some of the worst Italian food I've ever had has been in Italy (also most of the best). Anyway, my whole family and I were born and raised there so to the extent that metric is relevant at all, I win. Let me make it clear though that I don't think it's relevant at all.
I don't mean to suggest that someone couldn't make a delicious sauce in less than 5 hours. Just not in 45 minutes. Come now.
to be clear, the first paragraph there was quoting from mac's post
People are not taking into account experience. My husband and I are avid cooks, and we can whip together a tomato sauce, homemade brownies, or an excellent meal in about the time it would take us to use pre-prepared products. However, this facility comes after years of cooking; it's not something that just anyone can do, especially if they're distracted by children or exhausted from a long day at work.
Re: pasta sauce - while it may not require 5 hours of simmering - if you throw in some meat balls and italian sausage and let it sit in the fridge for a few days... not that's some good eatin'!!!
Holy crap!! Lay off Megan, will you, you bunch of whiners!
I am a mother of 3 little kids, all under 6, who works full-time, and i manage to make fresh, home made meals 5-7 nights a week (the other nights are leftovers of the fresh homemade food).
Get a grip. Kids are hard. They're not _that_ hard.
lebecka: tell me how.
Isn't there some sort of economics lesson here? Everyone has different trade-offs in terms of time, money, and taste.
I'm not even the tiniest little bit Italian. For my wife and me, spaghetti is a great meal because it is something which can be cooked very quickly from ingredients we virtually always have around the house, namely a box of pasta and a jar of Prego. Which is exactly the way our mothers prepared it, too. (Well, my mom might have preferred Ragu.) Anything that complicates that or triples (!) the 20 minute cooking time is seriously detracting from the appeal of the dish.
On the other hand, when I want to cook potstickers, I will only use dumplings we've made ourselves, even though that usually means a trip to two different groceries for ingredients and at least an hour's active work making the things. (Usually done ahead and frozen.) I've never found store-bought that could come close to comparing. They're a pain in the neck as a meal, too -- even starting from ones I've frozen it's more work cooking one batch of them than spaghetti, and that doesn't make enough to be a proper meal for us, either.
But it's all trade-offs. For us, the pain-in-the-neck of potstickers is well worth it for the taste, while spaghetti is usually chosen precisely for its convenience.
Rob, what problem do you have with leftovers of quality homemade food? I see no contradiction or hypocrisy in calling it cooking when I intentionally make large meals on the weekend and then microwave portions 3-4 nights a week.
Of course I'm weird and generally find the hassle of getting takeout (agreeing on something, calling ahead to get it ordered, and going out of my way to pick it up) is at least as bad as cooking. All in all a total pain while cooking is relaxing. Given the stocks we have on hand I can almost always make something (even if it is only a stir fry or curry) in 45 minutes or less (the amount of time it takes brown rice to cook). I might have to use frozen meat (either thaw and use or cut up frozen and cook from that state). Yes I do use frozen veggies (for some veggies like peas and green beans) and canned diced tomatoes. I find it odd that everyone can't do this; what do you have in your pantry, fridge, and freezer if you don't have the makings for a basically from scratch meal?
On the other hand we seem to just have different temperaments. I did not find the "effort cost" of two kids to be greater then one kid except for the brief period prior to the second child sleeping through the night. Once that happened regularly it was different but not really harder to deal with 2 instead of 1.
Rob Lyman -- I sharpen my knives with a steel; I think there's something of the angle it's done at that matters. As a young adult, I worked at a Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA. For a few weeks, there was a thatcher from Ireland there, and his trade depended on sharp knives. I learned from watching -- or better yet from listening -- to him. His blades sang, but they didn't whine. It was a quiet ring, not a squeel. Changing the angle changes the sound, so listen and you may be able to hear when it's right. Making that same sound works for me.
As to food and tools, for cooking, I believe one or two great pans are worth the investment; they'll last a lifetime, they aid the cooking process in surprising ways, and they produce consistent results. My favorites are the All-Clad copper core, but they're outrageously expensive. (I watch the end-of-year clearance sales; Williams Sonoma has sold me most of mine at 50% off.) Even given that hefty price tag, I still think the pans are worth the cost; particularly a small (2 or or 3 qt.) sauce pan and a larger braising pan or dutch oven.
The other dishes I use frequently are ceramic; of various shapes and sizes. We have a wood cook stove and fireplace; they can be used with either for braises, roast vegetables, etc. Among my favorite recipes for this type of cooking (which can also be done in your oven,) is roast squash --
Rob Lyman -- I sharpen my knives with a steel; I think there's something of the angle it's done at that matters. As a young adult, I worked at a Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA. For a few weeks, there was a thatcher from Ireland there, and his trade depended on sharp knives. I learned from watching -- or better yet from listening -- to him. His blades sang, but they didn't whine. It was a quiet ring, not a squeel. Changing the angle changes the sound, so listen and you may be able to hear when it's right. Making that same sound works for me.
As to food and tools, for cooking, I believe one or two great pans are worth the investment; they'll last a lifetime, they aid the cooking process in surprising ways, and they produce consistent results. My favorites are the All-Clad copper core, but they're outrageously expensive. (I watch the end-of-year clearance sales; Williams Sonoma has sold me most of mine at 50% off.) Even given that hefty price tag, I still think the pans are worth the cost; particularly a small (2 or or 3 qt.) sauce pan and a larger braising pan or dutch oven.
The other dishes I use frequently are ceramic; of various shapes and sizes. We have a wood cook stove and fireplace; they can be used with either for braises, roast vegetables, etc. Among my favorite recipes for this type of cooking (which can also be done in your oven,) is roast squash --
Sol,
You've got it. I'm not of Italian origin, and like my mom before me, I use Ragu to make a fast meal. Frankly, all these tomatoey Italian dishes taste exactly the same to me. The expensive versions taste no better than the cheap ones. If I were going to slave over a hot stove, it would be to make something where I could actually taste the difference.
I think I'm a somewhat better judge of baked goods and Asian dishes.
Rob,
Here's one more thought. "Cooking" is actually antithetical to feeding little kids, because little kids often prefer to experience foods separately. A lot of kids hate the idea of dishes (casseroles, lasagnas) made from multiple foods with sauces, or with different kinds of food touching each other. So if you cook for them, if they eat it at all, they may just pick through and look for the items they actually like, like my kids picking the meat off their pizza and leaving the cheese, sauce, and crust. For a long time, I just fed them separate ingredients: fruit, kidney beans, bread, whatever. It's probably healthier, actually.
Rob, what problem do you have with leftovers of quality homemade food?
None, but it simply isn't "cooking with kids" if you microwave something from the fridge, regardless of origin. The fact that you chose the leftover route shows that actually cooking with kids is indeed difficult, even by your own estimation.
For a long time, I just fed them separate ingredients: fruit, kidney beans, bread, whatever.
I do that, too. Even before our second, when we made dinner before they went to bed, we'd reserve portions of the dinner for separate presentation. Now of course there's no choice because he's getting frozen peas and M&C or whatever weird combination he's into this week.
Once that happened regularly it was different but not really harder to deal with 2 instead of 1.
My boys spend 100% of their time attacking each other unless physically restrained or actively distracted. They have no ill intent, the older being cognitively unable to distinguish between a baby and a teddy bear, and the younger being a baby, and they seem to really like each other, but the inevitable result is somebody crying. So the caregiver has to either banish the older one to a different area, where he periodically demands help or attention that you can't give him, or else carry a wiggling, lunging baby around to keep them separate.
I can kick out a stir fry in 45 minutes, too, I just can't ask my wife to carry a baby for that long.
I tend to agree with intj -- do major cooking over the weekend, then freeze part of it. It also isn't necessary to have a different, unique menu for every meal. I have a repertoire of 10-12 basic dishes and rotate them.
And by the way...doesn't anybody here own a slow cooker?
I really can't avoid canned or frozen produce -- I live in a part of the country where fresh produce is available during one weekend in mid-August. The only vegetable that grows locally is sagebrush.
Rob, sounds like yours are about as far apart as mine -- also boys. I didn't allow much TV in the house either, with the main exception being dinner time. Husband worked 3 jobs back then, so no help for me. Baby in playpen, Elmo or Veggie Tales video, done. Dinner never took longer than one children's video to cook and serve. Answer whiny questions with "What do you think, honey?" If it wasn't for the DVD player I never would have gotten dinner cooked, and since it was one of the rare times they got to watch TV, they sat still and enjoyed it. And if someone didn't like being in the playpen, I think my pediatrician said it best when she said "Crying never killed anyone." I followed that advice for bedtime with both kids and by night 5 they each went to sleep without crying a peep.
Re: "If you're too tired to cook, you're too tired to eat."
Yes, but my doctor doesn't recommend me starving, either. I've done that. I've done malnutrition, too. And I've also done going to the emergency room with bad burns on my hand, because I was so tired that I forgot the burner was still on. Yeah, I really want to be questioned as if I were a battered woman when I'm just weary.
Food is fuel and vitamins. The rest is just foof. Nice foof, but foof nonetheless. The sooner I eat, the less I walk into oncoming traffic out of low blood sugar and exhaustion.
(Did that last week. I was so tired I didn't even get any adrenaline rush when I realized what I had done. I just stepped back and tried to figure out how I'd stepped out toward the wrong side of the intersection.)
There is maybe an hour a week when I really feel alert enough to cook safely, and by the time I got ready to cook, I'd be past that hour. So keep doing what you do, but don't expect the rest of us to do similarly.
Why all the fuss about making tomato sauce? Just get tomato powder from www.thespicehouse.com and mix it with water, 1:1 for paste, 1:3 for thick sauce. The freeze dried finely ground powder keeps forever in the frig. Tastes better than the canned stuff, almost as good, or as good, depending on the tomatoes, as freshly made.
I followed that advice for bedtime with both kids and by night 5 they each went to sleep without crying a peep.
Worked for the first one in 2 nights. Still waiting on the second one to give up 5 months after we started. Funny how different they can be.
I generally agree with Ms. McArdle's list, with maybe this exception: Ghirardeli brownie mix sold at Costo ... always make the double batch and bake 10-15 minutes longer than the package instructions indicate. These are simply the best and can't be replicated with any Betty Crocker or church auxillary cookbook recipe.
But, man, you got a lot of whiners posting! :-) Simple cooking is liberating, therapeutic and forces us to slow down.
And to those who complain about their problematic children, I expect Ms. McArdle's mother's recipe for the situation was the same as my mother's ... a time out and / or the requisit smack on the behind! Plus we got excellent operant conditioning. Crying and screaming didn't result in getting the wanted attention ... behaving ourselves did.
"7. Brownie mix: Brownies take ten minutes to make in one bowl: microwave the butter and chocolate together on low, then add the other ingredients, stir, and pour into a cooking plan. There is no excuse for wasting money on subpar baked goods."
Megan,
You'll get no argument from me on this (or the rest of your list for that matter) But when I mentioned this item to my daughter, who loves to bake, she asked "so,does she have a recipe?" Most she's tried so far have been unsatisfactory to her. So, do you have a recipe you like?
It certainly is cheaper and healthier to make your own tomato sauce. 1 28 oz can of tomatoes is about $2.50, 3 cloves garlic, 3 TBSP olive oil...
take a look at the preservatives, salt and sugar in bottled sauce which costs $5.00, that jar is not even enough for a pound of pasta
can vegetables are fine for emergencies, but check out the amount of salt ! Frozen are better, Fresh, in season, are best.
Ditto to Swilcinburn's comment re: the Costco brownie mix. Stuff like that is a godsend to the college crowd. After all, although I love to cook, I don't exactly have the time, money, or will to buy every little thing you need for baking (baking powder, soda, spices, etc, etc) and then keep track of it during moves from one apt to another. The same thing goes for the equipment required for the tomato sauce.
That said, most of the other stuff on that list is fantastic, even for the college guys. Sorry dude, but that weird frozen... "thing" in the back of the freezer that has been sitting there for 3 semesters has got to go. And get your stupid ___-maker off the kitchen counter! I want to make a friggin sandwich and I can't find space with all the stupid gizmos you bought to impress your girlfriend for Valentine's.
Can I add one more thing? Clean out the dang fridge! Get rid of that container full of cream o' crap that's in the back, the box of takeout from 7 months ago, and all things that drip, splat, or otherwise ooze. I'm positive that your health will improve, and I think there's a good chance your fridge's performance will improve, if only because it no longer is playing host to some sort of microbiological experiment gone awry.
Hey, hey, hey! Some of you are mighty quick to jump all over Megan, and granted it's not easy with kids (hey, Rob Lyman? Been there, done that), and granted she has the time to do more stuff than we childrenly-challenged, but I think her point is that it's better to improve on store-bought than to rely upon it.
To use Food Network stars as metaphors, she's somewhere between Sandra "Semi-Homemade" Lee and Alton "Good Eats" Brown.
Wanna make tomato sauce? Dump a can of tomato puree into a pot. Add some garlic powder and Italian seasoning. Simmer for ten. Bada-bing, it's sauce. Yeah, it's like that. Even Rob can manage it. {g}
I don't agree with the fondue pot comment. We use ours maybe once a year, but we really enjoy that cheese fondue once a year.
Brownies: Sorry, have to disagree. I've never in my life had homemade brownies that were as good as the "made-from-a-box" ones. And I've had them from people who trained in NY pastry shops...
1) Professional chefs do not sharpen their own knives. They send these out. Take the hint.
2) Any good cook can make a meal with one pan, a spoon, a knive, and an open flame. That doesn't mean all the other gizmos aren't nice; bread makers, microwaves, and double boilers all have their place in cooking. It just depends on how much space you have to store all the rest when you're not using it.
3) As a rule the more processed the food the less nutrition and value per portion you get for it. Frozen foods are about the most processed on the market so you almost always get low quality at high price in exchange for the convenience. That being said, convenience does have its own value. A frozen pizza is quick and easy and if you grate a little extra cheese over it and add some fresh ingredients it becomes quite acceptable. Microwave a burrito, top it with chili and grated cheese, you've got a meal fit for a king.
Rob--
Mom of two, now old enough to help cook: you can cook with kids around. It's called "crock pot". Set it up at 10pm or 8 am, and breakfast or dinner is ready with little fuss. I was also a big fan of cooking huge quantities on weekends--because oooking for 10 is no harder or really much more time-consuming than for 4, and you just freeze the rest to be nuked later.
The best investment ever to keep kids occupied? Play kitchen---mine both loved to pretend to cook while I was cooking--I set theirs up where I could see them from the kitchen.
Regarding the inevitable dissing of the fondue set: I live at 6600 feet near Lake Tahoe. I get an average 30 feet of snowfall. The Donner Party camped outside the entrance to my subdivision. Bottom line: fondue goes down good this time of year. Fat fuels the body furnace, as they say. As to all the other suggestions in the post and Bittman's article, well, they all add up to a considerable amount of time away from shoveling snow. See ya.
For another data point, at-home mother of 2 yr old here and I cook most nights, sometimes my husband does, sometimes he picks something up on the way home, sometimes we have a whatever-fend-for-yourself night. I am by no means a gourmet (despite my dreams) - meat & veggies usually, crock pot if I'm on my game, most often sauteed or baked. In summer, veggies are usually chopped up farmer's market produce and in winter usually frozen bagged. If I haven't been to the store or remembered to thaw anything, ye olde standby is those 5 lb bags of frozen chicken breasts - 2 slapped (frozen) on the George Foreman Grill with Emeril seasoning (or such) and steam-in-bag snap peas and voila in like 15 minutes. (When he was single, my husband probably cooked on the GF almost every day.)
I probably spend 30 min on prep on average and for my kid have always just used whatever tactic was currently working at each age: timing naps, vibrating chair, high chair snacking on things, letting her play around in "her" cabinet while keeping watch from the corner of my eye, gating her in the room with the toys (which is in view), and just recently she started watching DVDs (but loses interest fast). I expect it to only get easier from this point as she is already much less self-injury-prone than she was in the 1-2 age.
We're actually cooking the same kinds of simple meals we used to when we were both working pre-kid, except now it's usually me cooking. ITA with the practice issue - we've had this routine down to a science. I would actually really love to branch out in my cooking more. My husband likes to do out-there fancy meals for special occasions (pulling up recipes/instructions online) and it usually takes him FOREVER. :)
When are you going to start blogging about Gaza again?
I agree with you...it doesn't take much time at all to throw together a decent meal. As a military wife I found moving every couple of years was always a great incentive to give away all those useless gadgets, such as the quesadilla maker. But I'll never part with my fondue set! Speaking of which, I wonder where that thing is??
Rob, Having had four boys - and my number two was a wild man also - you have my sympathy. For a couple of years, survival is the key. Make ahead meals that you can cook during pre school or nap time; and the crock pot is a lifesaver. You can make a stew, or pot roast or soup - start it at night, when they go to bed, do the browning of the meat and stuff, chop the veggies - put it in the fridge overnight and then start the crock pot in the AM - by evening, viola! Dinner. Get through this time and before you know it they will be building legos together peacefully while you expand your repertoire. This too shall pass.
Maybe because my 5 kids (ages 10,8,6,4,2) are all able to help out and our routine is so strong, I am able to cook from scratch every night. Because of the sheer volume that needs to be prepared, buying anything prepackaged is out of the question. Pre-mades are sized way to small for my family and they are very expensive compared to fruits, veggies and fresh meat (sorry Megan,we eat vegetarian on Tuesday nights).
Since I went back to work 30hrs per week, hubby is required to do the grocery shopping (usually in the evening) and kitchen clean up. I can't stand grocery shopping with kids - he can go late enough on his own, the stores all close at 11 pm in my town. After the kids are bathed I don't like having to clean the kitchen.
Rob, make a meal plan and stick to it, get the next night's meat out the night before to defrost. When you buy meat for your plan, cut/prep/trim it for the meals you have planned for the week so once it is thawed you only have to throw it in the pan. Even consider a monthly chore of pre-browing bulk batches of hamburger(with some onions) and portioning it before you freeze it. On Sunday evening, each week (after the kids are in bed) prep/cut any veg that can be done in advance without spoiling. Learn to enjoy your slow cooker. Eggs are always fast and every culinary tradition has something to offer in that category.
The best scratch cooking tip I can offer any parent is make certain your kids have a regular bedtime. Anything, including cooking, dining, cleaning up, bathing and reading stories is doable, so long as you know there is a nice finish to it all. In my house, 7:30 pm for under age 8, 8:00 pm for age 8 and up. No exceptions. I can start my supper/evening routine with good will so long as I know at 8 pm my house is quiet.
bobbi: You're my hero. Sounds like you & hubby really enjoy your family life. Routines are vital. (I've tried it both ways, and although my routine isn't as swell as yours, it's way better than the chaos that preceded it.)
Rob Lyman: You ask for help yet you shoot down every suggestion. If you don't want to cook ahead or use a crock pot, or refuse to answer your older child's every whim while you're cooking, you're out of luck.
Reliably cheap cooking wine: Vermouth! It's great to have around the bar, but you're not exactly going through it with those dry martinis, so throw it in with the tomatoes. It works great, you can get sweet, dry, or both because they're cheap, and it's there in your liquor cabinate when it's time to make Manhattans.
Yikes! I started reading the comment thread and thought I had accidentally gone to a stuffwhitepeoplelike.com parody site or something.
RE: Knife sharpening (Assumption: You have high quality carbon steel knives and you know the difference between "really sharp" and "sharp enough"):
Choices:
1) Go to a real specialty knife store, one that sells only knives; they'll have either a dry belt sharpener and someone who knows how to use it, or a professional wet-wheel sharpener. Belt sharpeners are superior to dry grinding wheel sharpeners because they don't heat the steel up as much, wet wheel sharpeners are superior to belts, but much slower. A very good sharpening requires starting with a medium grit wet wheel and moving to a fine grit, then a very fine grit wheel to improve the edge, finishing with a gentle pass on a leather wheel.
If there is a knife manufacturer in your area, call them for recommendations on who to go to; it doesn't hurt to ask them how they sharpen their knives and if they can sharpen yours. Usually they won't because their business isn't set up to introduce knives from outside their manufacturing process into the workstream, but you never know.
2) Find someone who is a real woodworker; he'll have something like a Tormek or Jet wet-wheel sharpener for chisels. Odds are he's also learned grinding angles for knives. Alternatively, find the nearest specialty woodworking tool store (such as Woodcraft, or ask around for who carries top brands of things like plunge routers or mortisers), go there and ask them who in the area is real good at sharpening.
Don't be tempted to get a cheapie electric sharpener, even a wet-wheel horizontal wheel sharpener. Those work fine on chisels - which are narrow - but stink on longer blades like knives. Needless to say, the $50 "name brand" electric dry grinders are to be avoided, unless you didn't pay over $10 for any of your knives.
Different knives have different purposes, so they need to be sharpened to different blade angles. An 8" or 10" chef's knife does a lot of chopping so a broader angle works well, say 26-28 degrees, to balance between sharpness and resistance to dulling. A 3" paring knife used for fine work - such as decorative cutting - needs to have a sharper edge, mine are ground to 18-20 degrees. For everything else 22-24 degrees works well.
Finer blade angles are sharper, but dull more quickly.
Once you have a good edge, ground to the proper angle and polished on a leather wheel with jeweler's rouge, keep it that way. A couple of swipes with a ceramic rod every few days will help, but learn the proper angle (a leather strop is superior, and about the same cost as a decent (read: large diameter) ceramic rod). Eventually you'll change the blade angle with enough use of a ceramic rod if you stroke at the wrong angle. Don't cut anything that's not on a true cutting board, never put a fine knife in a dishwasher, and they should be in individual blade sheaths, not stuck in a knife block (each removal/replacement cycle works the blade edge against the surface, dulling it, and dirt on the block surface in the slots speeds the dulling). If you need rapid access to a selection of knives use a wall-mounted magnetic strip instead of a block.
Even with frequent touchups with a strop or ceramic rod the knife will dull. Figure on a professional sharpening every 3-5 months for a high quality home kitchen knife, 1-2 months for similar knives used commercially.
Every metropolitan area has a couple of outfits that are in what I call the "commercial kitchen support business" and one of those functions is contract knife sharpening. They'll visit restaurant kitchens every week or two to pick up knives to be sharpened and drop off a replacement batch of sharp ones. The knives aren't top of the line, just "good" and they usually get sharpened by dry grinding, frequently with a belt sharpener; this is "assembly line sharpening". Sometimes you can make personal contact with one of the employees who does the sharpening and get your knives done with greater attention to detail than the restaurant knives.
One way to find a good sharpener is visit a very high end 5-star restaurant and ask your server to take a note to the chef asking who he (or she) goes to for sharpening. Top end chefs own their own knives and guard them like their children.
If you have a ceramic knife, check with the manufacturer. These are difficult enough to sharpen (read: sharpen well) that the very specialized equipment required is rarely found outside the factory. If someone local to you can sharpen them the factory will know who it is.
On tomato sauce: how long it takes to make depends on what kind of sauce you like...heavy meaty sauce takes all day. Light, bright sauce takes 15 minutes. I will never buy jar sauce again, it's just too easy to make your own. All I need is a can of diced tomatoes and spices.
If you can't make a good sauce, your not doing it right. Mine blows away any jar dog food sauce, and it takes 20 minutes to make. Make a double batch and freeze, you have the best of both worlds.
Which brings up the subject of "doing it right". Cooking is like anything else, you need to invest in education. So, you buy a cookbook, and all the recipes turn out like dog food, right? Because most cookbooks blow chunks. "Good Housekeeping", especially. Get the "New Best Recipes" book by Americas Test Kitchens, good recipes that actually work, and a course in cooking, all in one!
You folks with kids, I hear ya, but remember, you may pay in health later for all that crap food your eating today. Penny wise, you know?
"Pre-mades are sized way to small for my family and they are very expensive compared to fruits, veggies and fresh meat"
Very true. Frozen dinners (stir fry in a bag, etc.) are most appealing for two, and then it gets really expensive. (Or you eat frozen lasagna every night.) And of course restaurant eating becomes very expensive once there are four of you.
"You folks with kids, I hear ya, but remember, you may pay in health later for all that crap food your eating today. Penny wise, you know?"
We're probably all paying today, actually. However, I think that eating with kids changes your eating habits, whether you are cooking or not. For one, with small active kids, eating a salad is problematic--it just takes way too long when you are also feeding someone else. Pizza goes down so much faster, which of course is part of the problem. My kids are currently mainly starch and meat eaters, and that has a way of rubbing off.
I don't think anybody has mentioned what happens at 4 PM with kids of a certain age. Right about then (even if there was an after school snack half an hour earlier) all hell breaks loose and it stays that way until after dinner. It's like clockwork. This is one reason why the slow cooker is such an important piece of technology.
We are currently rediscovering the kitchen during the breaks when the (very cheap) college cafeteria is closed. My husband's main culinary insight has been that you can replace half the flour in any baking recipe with whole wheat flour, and it's still edible.
Right now, I'm feeding my 3-year-old a breakfast of whole wheat Ritz crackers, natural peanut butter, and frozen blueberries. (The kids normally eat sugary instant oatmeal, but we're out.)
MargaretC:
"I tend to agree with intj -- do major cooking over the weekend, then freeze part of it. It also isn't necessary to have a different, unique menu for every meal. I have a repertoire of 10-12 basic dishes and rotate them."
Amen, sister! I did that even when I was single, not because I didn't have time, but because I didn't want to eat the remains of the stew/lasagna/chili for 6 days straight.
That was pre-microwave. All it took was enough foresight to get a container out of the freezer in the morning.
Re: cooking with kids---Actually, a lot depends on the temperament of the kids (and also the layout of your kitchen). Among my four (the youngest two are now 13, so I've had lots of experience), I've had two who were impossible to cook with, one who loves to cook, but has a short attention span, and one who will contentedly peel as many potatoes as I need. Kitchen layout is important too--this was all much easier in my last house, where I had a wonderful L-shaped kitchen, than in my present one, where no matter where someone chooses to stand, they will somehow get in my way.
I do have to say that when my kids were toddlers, I found that making a "15 minute" recipe usually took about an hour. During the first three years with our twins, we ate more convenience food than we had during the first twelve years of our marriage combined.
And Rob--get a slow cooker. It's a life saver, and with the right cookbooks to guide you, it turns out real food. It's the best way to get flavorful broth from a pile of bones and a few scraps of meat. Bean soups, pot roast, long-simmered stews, Irish-style oatmeal cooked overnight instead of the instant stuff--it all becomes possible with a $29 appliance. I have three, in different sizes. The one I use most often is the one I bought in 1979, and it's still going strong.
For pastry brushes - just go to any local Home Depot or Lowe's and pick up some small boar bristle paint brushes. They cost about $.25 apiece and at that price, I throw them in the dishwasher. They last pretty well.
If you have baby proofed your home and set up baby gates to prevent escape beyond your sight, you can cook while having very young children. Be realistic in what you cook and always plan ahead making a grocery list from a list of meals to last until your next major grocery shopping day. The list also helps you know what to cook each night. Make enough for at least 2 dinners when you cook so you cook half as often.
Children need to learn to entertain themselves. Wisdom my mother passed to me. They do not need constant direct adult attention once beyond infancy and early toddlerhood (second year of life is the hardest). They need monitoring and toys that require effort and thought on their part (like building blocks). Play with these kind of toys with them to show them how to play with them alone. For siblings who fight, don't try to intervene other than putting them all on time out, or send to their rooms. The number of loud fights will decrease signifigantly.
Easy crock pot recipe: wash one chicken (either broiler or fryer), place in crockpot, add one cup of orange juice, and turn on crockpot before leaving for work.
At dinner time, you have the options of mashed potatoes or rice (or kasha). You also have the option of making a quick gravy from the cooking juices.
For variations, you can use additional spices or different liquids (such as red wine). You don't really need any additional liquid, but it gives you the opportunity for some different flavors.
A real time saver for me are those roasted chickens from the grocery store. You can get a hot one for around $7.00. Carve it up and serve with mashed potatoes and a veggie, make a chicken pot pie with dough from the fridge section or use it in a cassarole.
Tap water quality is locally variable. For whatever reason, I seem to remember you live in Texas, and my Texas friends' tap water is not all that pleasant.
I'm from the Dallas area, and my tap water is just awful. I'll use it to make coffee or boil it to cook things, but little else (it even looks a little suspect coming out of the faucet). And since I have up to four different work sites on some days, bottled water (I'm a Dasani man myself) is a lifesaver. Sure, I could get a Brita filter and a couple of "permanent" bottles, but that's a lot of work when I can buy a 24-pack of Dasani for five bucks and have it last two weeks.
Don't get me wrong--if I could drink my tap water, I might well do so. (I spent a week in Burlington, Vermont last summer, and someone should bottle and sell their water, especially the kind that comes from the fountain in the basement of the Flynn Center. I wish my tap tasted like that...)
When I'm too tired to cook, I almost always go with "grains, greens and beans", a neat dish you can make with chopped shallots or onions, olive oil, maybe garlic, greens (spinach, chard, or kale), beans (white beans of some kind from a can, drained), and a type of grain (pasta, quinoa, rice).
If you use good olive oil, it tastes like something you spent hours cooking, even though it takes about 30 minutes.
You can also add veggie stock and call it soup.
And it's vegan, of course.
On the two-boys about to tear each other to pieces: I lived that for many years. (The two boys are now delightful young men, ages 20 and 22.)
Each morning, I put on Sesame St. and had an hour to myself. Typically, I read the paper (Boston Globe, we were in Boston at the time,) and drank a coffee. It was the only time I had to keep up on world events, and the internets were not up and informing yet. One day, I clearly remember noticing that the papers NEVER had stories of young toddlers ripping each other to shreds, despite my fears they would. It gave me courage they wouldn't, and allowed me to back off a bit, and let them learn how to resolve their differences on their own. (The older was more passive, the younger, more reactive, I suspect this aided me.)
They shared a room, and I insisted on an afternoon nap. If they didn't fight and argue, however, I wouldn't "notice" if they weren't napping. It's the theory of puppy training at work -- reward the behavior you want; ignore the behavior you don't want.
And on food for those toddlers: Cooking did change because like so many children, they didn't want things mixed together or things touching. The best help to overcoming this was involving them in the cooking, engaging their sense of smell, taste, etc. and teaching them through cooking to honor the ingredients, to find the best method to bring out the best in each vegetable, etc.
The older is a good cook now, the younger is a great cook (he benefitted from my having more experience as a cooking teacher). If he invites you for dinner, I recommend accepting. It will be delicious and nutritious. (And I wonder how many 20/22 year old men have such abilities? They also had to wash their own laundry from age ten on. Wish I'd made them balance a bank account that early, too.)
i am vegan for 15 yrs. i eat 1 tofurkey per day, but never eat frozen pizza because megan tells me not too.
Yeesh. So much kitchen angst.... Any decent Italian cookbook will contain both 15 minute and 5 hour sauce recipes. Any decent general cookbook will contain four or five brownie recipes. If you can't produce something from scratch that tastes better than sludge from a can or box, you need better cookbooks and/or better ingredients.
(I like Marcella Hazan and Fannie Farmer, respectively.)
In Seattle, our tap water comes from the Cascade mountains. Nothing bottled comes close.
I don't have kids, so I'll stay out of the time debate, except to note that our mothers and grandmothers managed it, and we all survived to grow up.
Rob,
I wish I could give you advice on how to cook with kids around, or how to be a better (or more comfortable) cook. I have a hard time understanding exactly what the problem is, but that's because cooking comes easily to me, probably because I started at age 11 after joining the Boy Scouts and being amazed that the older patrol members could burn hot dogs and beans. (In the Boy Scouts, on camping trips, each patrol comes up with their own menu and does their own cooking.)
So I went home and asked my mother if I could help her an learn to cook. She was glad to have a helper.
I started on spaghetti sauce, and she would taste it and suggest various spices. I learned how to do fried chicken (not deep fat fried) upon learning that we Boy Scouts would be winter camping in cabins with propane stoves. So I cooked fried chicken and mashed potatoes for our patrol when I was 12 or 13, and boy! were the other patrols envious.
We came from a large family, so I have a hard time with making small portions, so I just plan on having lots of leftovers in the fridge.
As one commenter said above, taking tomato puree and adding a few spices will give you a quick spaghetti sauce. Personally, I don't like using puree because of the consistency of the resulting sauce, and I don't like using paste because of the bitterness it brings to the dish, which is why I suspect some people use sugar in their sauce, although carrots or butternut squash work as well as sugar.
I usually use chopped or crushed tomatoes and whole tomatoes, in a ratio of two cans of crushed tomatoes to one can of whole tomatoes. Start with olive oil, saute chopped onion and garlic until translucent or beginning to brown, add the cans of tomato types, set for a low simmer to prevent burning on the bottom of the pot, and then add spices. Rosemary is key, but I also add thyme, sage, a little oregano (too much oregano and it tastes like pizza sauce; the main difference between pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce is the oregano in one replacing the rosemary in the other), basil, salt, and pepper. Let simmer until the spices have blended in.
I can't give you a time for all this, because I use a 16 quart pot, and my cans of crushed and whole tomatoes are #10 tins (6 lbs, 6 oz size). Two or three sweet onions, three or four cloves of garlic. So a lot of time is used just bringing the sauce up to a simmer.
Variations: for Bolognese sauce, brown ground meat along with the onions. For meatballs, make the meatballs using your favorite meatloaf recipe, but be sure to add a little extra garlic. Bake meatballs in oven until cooked, then add to pot of sauce and let simmer until nice and tender. For Italian sausage, cook sausage separately (fry pan or broiler or grill), cut into pieces, and add to sauce in pot to simmer until tender. (The reason for cooking meatballs or sausage separately is to cook out most of the fats; otherwise the sauce can get quite oily.)
At the end of the meal, sauce and pasta can be saved and combined for a microwave meal whenever hungry. Or, the pasta can be placed in a casserole dish with enough sauce added to it to make it the right consistency for baked spaghetti, and then popped into the fridge until you pop it into the oven for baking for dinner.
Cooked pasta tends to last from 4-7 days in the fridge, but sauce lasts 4-6 weeks in the fridge. The acidity in the tomatoes plus the salt and pepper all act as preservatives.
Sauce can also be used for follow on meals of lasagna (layer sauce, noodles, cheese in that order), stuffed shells or manicotti, chicken cacciatore, or chicken parmesan.
So the last little bit of sauce frequently gets thrown out before being used, so what? The #10 tins I talked about using are bulk foods, so they cost maybe $3-4 per can, which is not much more than the much smaller 28 oz cans cost. The price per meal goes way down with large quantities. The costliest ingredient is time, so sauce tends to get made on Sundays. But it sure beats most store brands, although the Wegmans Putannesca Sauce is quite nice. As is the Classico. But almost anyone can make a better sauce than Prego or Ragu with just a little bit of time.
Most depressing comment so far (from J Reece):
"The Donner Party camped outside the entrance to my subdivision."
Rob--your sons and my sons appear to be psychic twins. Mine are now 3 and 5 and cooking dinner is a different experience than it was 2 years ago. It's still not the leisurely place it is for Megan, or many others, but even kids like ours do grow up eventually (and I don't mean that in a world-weary way). Lots of these tips were helpful (use crockpots, use naptimes; Rachael Ray's 2nd cookbook gave me some good quickie recipes too); some people clearly have very, very different kids than we do.
But all these people mildly noting that "our mothers did it:" long before I had kids, my mother told me flat-out that if it hadn't been for Sesame Street, she wasn't sure she would have ever gotten dinner on the table. She completely relied on me be absorbed for that hour (which was 3 or 4 pm as I recall) as her opportunity to get dinner done. Which is what I remind myself on the days when the toy trains are crashing or the car races are too close to the stove or the baseball game is moving towards the living room, and I cave and put on the tv.
Hang in there. They'll get older, and squeezing lemons won't seem to be the impossible task that it totally is right now.
Oh, and my use of aluminum foil has tripled. I'm liking the idea of the chicken breasts in bbq sauce, but no way in hell I'd try that without lining the daylights out of the pan. Environmentally reckless, sure, but a lifesaver for the time being.