This is one of the easiest and least time consuming meals I make.
I’ve been talking here lately about cutting out the fast food and eating seasonally and eating locally and … blah, blah, blah, be quiet already Jen, no one can eat like that and still have a life.
Actually, yes you can. I swear it’s possible.
Here’s how we do it in our house.
My husband and I both work. Yes, my job is part-time, but I pretty much hit the ground running every day at 5:45 a.m. and don’t stop until the last child is tucked into bed somewhere around 9:00 or even later, depending on how much stalling is involved. In between, there’s work, exercise, errands, schlepping the children hither and yon for their activities, the nightly homework rodeo, and occasionally getting the laundry done.
In the midst of all that, my husband and I almost always cook from scratch. I swear I’m not making this up. Please note that I said almost always — hey, we’re not perfect.
Here’s a typical week’s worth of menus for us this time of year:
- Monday — pasta with red sauce, steamed broccoli, bread (usually made in the breadmaker).
- Tuesday — baked potatoes, peas, applesauce
- Wednesday — chicken and wild rice casserole, edamame, pineapple
- Thursday — slow-cooked pinto beans served in tortillas, with salsa, etc.
- Friday — pizza (sometimes homemade and sometimes ordered)
- Saturday — enchiladas
- Sunday — roast chicken, roasted potatoes and carrots, edamame
We buy our meat and chicken locally — from a couple of specific farmers at the farmers’ market (including Wolf Creek Farm, which does in-town winter deliveries) and from the Organic Butcher. This time of year, some of our veggies come from our freezer and were grown by us last year. My applesauce was made last fall from apples gotten at Carter Mountain Orchard. I usually make my own pasta sauces, but I usually keep some pasta and sauces from Mona Lisa Pasta in my freezer for those really busy nights.
Spaghetti is so incredibly yummy and so incredibly easy.
So when do I do all this? Usually when I’m in the kitchen working on dinner anyway. If I cook a chicken, I’ll dump the bones in a pot afterward and use it as the base for chicken broth, then the leftover meat is frozen for use in a soup or casserole at a later date. If I make bolognese sauce, I’ll make enough for a couple of batches. When my husband makes pizza dough — and he’s the designated pizza guy in our family — he makes enough dough to freeze half of it for another time.
I am a big fan of my freezer and it’s usually pretty full with batches of chicken and vegetable broth, pasta sauces, and more. Every summer, my garden produces enough food that I can freeze or can a lot of stuff. It’s not necessarily enough to last us for a year, but it’s a good start.
All this is not to say that we don’t have those days when things are chaotic and dinner is the last thing we want to fool with. On days like that, our default is to either defrost something from the freezer (e.g. soup) or cook up some pasta and microwave some peas and then add a quick sprinkle of fresh Parmesan. (We always have a chunk of Parmesan in the fridge and it takes less than a minute to grate it.)
And since I’m confessing anyway, did you notice what I put for Friday? In theory, we really like homemade pizza. The reality, however, is that we’re exhausted on Friday evenings, so rolling out dough and all that is not always something we have the energy for. In fact, I personally don’t even attempt it, what with me not being a very patient dough-roller and all that. If my husband isn’t the mood to make pizza, then we have no qualms about ordering it from one of the local places (never a national chain).
And, I’d like to point out that even though we try to eat seasonally, we’re not perfect. Especially this time of year when there’s just not a lot available. Yes, you’ll find broccoli on our table, but not tomatoes.
Finally, since I know that someone will ask, my daughters are 9 and 11 and no, they definitely don’t like all of the foods mentioned above. That said, I have an advanced degree from the University of This Kitchen is Not a Cafeteria, with a minor in Eat or Starve. I make a point to serve at least two things that each person will like and figure that if, say, my 9 year old isn’t happy about the chicken and wild rice casserole (all those ingredients mixed together — disgusting), at least she’ll eat the veggies and fruit without gagging.
I hope this post is helpful in showing you that it is possible to cook, even on those crazy-busy week nights when there’s hardly enough time to think, much less whip out a dinner worthy of Julia Child.
Note: The author is not employed by the companies mentioned in this post, nor was she asked to mention them. Photo credits: gatewaygourmet.com, I Puzzled’s Flickr photostream.
