Great Whole Foods Recipe Site!

Just sharing a great whole foods site, Smorgasbite. They appear fairly new on the scene, but their images, instruction and the high-health factor of their recipes is outstanding!

View → tages / smorgasbite / whole foods / recipe blog / cooking / cooking in chaos

Distractions and Cooking Tips

I’m supposed to be performing some tedious and technical updates to one of my websites right now, but my mind is wandering and I can’t seem to stay on the technical task. Instead I think I’ll add a bit to my cooking in chaos series by sharing some general kitchen tips with anyone who might stumble across my little blog. If you have any specific questions or cooking dilemmas just leave a comment below… I’m always happy to take a stab at them.

• Whenever you buy produce, always do the bulk of the prep work before you store it! This will save you tons of time down the road, and take a lot of the stress out of the “long and arduous challenge” of using fresh ingredients in your meals. Skin your onions. Chop your celery into snack-sized sticks. Rinse what needs rinsing and wash what needs washing. This way when it’s time to cook you can just grab and go!
• While you’re prepping your produce, make sure you’re making healthy snacks easily accessible to the family. A recent gift of a vacuum sealer has made this even easier, but things like sliced apples, orange wedges, pico de gallo, and even tomatoes and cucumbers all make quick and easy snacks that you won’t feel guilty about. And if the kids cover it all in either peanut butter or ranch dressing what do you care? It’s still healthier than the Little Debbie cakes the neighbor’s kids eat!
• Meat should be trimmed and cut in ways that make it easy to just throw in the pan/pot come dinnertime. In my house almost everything is made with either chicken breast or ground turkey, so I buy both in ridiculous quantities. For the chicken I usually split the tenderloins from the main part of the breast and store separately. Breasts are stored 3 to a pack and tenderloins usually 6 in a pack. For ground turkey I repackage the larger “family size” purchases into approximately 1lb portions. This way I can take out a smaller portion of meat for when the kids won’t be around to eat.
• Prepare for more than one night each time. There are some food items that I tend to prepare in bulk, even when I only need a little. This is usually because there’s either a lot of labor, or just a lot of hassle in preparing them many times within a month. Examples: I try to make two batches of meatloaf at a time because I hate mixing it but love the meal. I dice and cook whole packages of bacon for use throughout the following week or so in recipes like chicken carbonara and in salad. I always throw an extra chicken breast or two on the grill when I can for use on salads, in nachos, or as an addative to pasta. Either way, over-preparing one night can mean kicking my feet up the next.
• Let the kids help, if only to keep them busy over here while you’re working over there. Kids can manage a lot of tasks in the kitchen from unloading a dishwasher to peeling potatoes and setting tables. The older they are, the more specific tasks you can give them. I have one child who loves to “make cinnamon sugar” which I tend to use a little more than I should around here. Either way, a kid who helps in the kitchen at an early age gets a lot of benefits out of it. They become more comfortable in the kitchen, and they get that special feeling of one-on-one time with you while you both accomplish something that would have had to get done anyway. Later in life they see that as chatting time and learn to fend for themselves in the kitchen.

I have dozens more ideas and tips and I’m sure I’ll get into those sooner or later, but for now I think I’ll go make some hot chocolate and watch a movie. Next time maybe we’ll cover baking… or bacon… who knows!

View → tages / cooking / cooking in chaos / cooking tips