(no subject)

[rivka]

From the results of my poll, it seems that I am not a space alien - but neither is my friend. Which is about what I would have expected prior to our conversation.

What she found so incredible was that, most nights, I make a full cooked dinner for my family. ("Do you just really love to cook? ...Don't you ever just eat something bad? ...I just can't believe that you do it.") We sit down and eat at the table together, usually with a glass of wine for Michael and me, sometimes with candles lit. (Lest you think we're totally June-and-Ward Cleaver, the other end of the table is usually piled high with mail, books, nursery school projects, and miscellaneous cruft.)

I do really enjoy cooking, although I have to confess that when you do it almost every night there are times when all it is is work. I do find it satisfying to feed my family well. When I make something particularly tasty, I really glow. Part of what I enjoy is the sense of doing something concrete, hands-on, and real, which makes people feel good right away. Mostly the things I do with my time are a lot more nebulous than that, and the rewards or benefits are less clear.

The food I make is pretty simple. I don't use Rachael Ray's cookbooks, but I know a lot of recipes that take about a half-hour to make, and we mostly cycle through those. Some of them are pretty damn fancy (salmon with tropical fruit salsa, say, or pan-fried tilapia with soy-ginger sauce), but other meals are pretty much the sort of thing my Mom learned to cook in her 1950s-era home ec classes: say, broiled steak with mashed potatoes and peas.

Part of what enables me to cook at home nightly (or almost-nightly) is that I don't adhere to foodie-level standards. I use canned chicken broth, canned tomatoes, and spaghetti sauce from a jar. (It's the fancy kind of jar, at least, and I add meat and vegetables. But still.) We eat a lot of frozen vegetables. I buy tubs of pre-grated parmesan cheese.

I plan meals and do a major supermarket shopping once a week, with additional forays to a small neighborhood grocery store as needed. I shopped today. I was feeling stressed out at the time, so there's nothing particularly complex or adventurous on the menu. This week's meals:

Sunday: Michael had gaming, so it was just me and Alex. I don't really cook for just the two of us, because it drives me crazy to put in a lot of effort to make something and then have her refuse to eat it. Tonight we had frozen fish sticks, organic tater tots, and a choice of sauteed fresh spinach (me) or raw spinach (her). I haven't had fish sticks since I was a little kid, and was surprised to discover that they're actually kind of tasty.

Monday: Smoked-gouda-stuffed hamburgers, sauteed fresh spinach with sesame oil, steamed frozen corn.

Tuesday: Baked chicken thighs with garlic and herbs, mashed potatoes, steamed frozen peas.

Wednesday (teaching night): fried ham slice, Pillsbury biscuits, steamed frozen green beans.

Thursday: something with chicken breasts, to be determined later. Popular favorite cooking methods in our household include spreading them with dijon mustard, wrapping a slice of streaky bacon around them, and grilling them on the Foreman grill; or else dredging them in flour-and-parmesan-cheese, sauteeing them, and serving them with a lemon-parmesan pan sauce. Probably we'll have basmati rice and steamed fresh asparagus on the side.

Friday: Special dinner for Alex's birthday. Shrimp scampi pasta, probably a salad, and homemade cupcakes for dessert.

Saturday: The day of Alex's birthday party. After corralling five rampaging three-year-olds and entertaining their mothers as well, we'll probably want to order takeout for dinner.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I happen to think you're an excellent cook, at least based on my experience.

[windypoint.livejournal.com]

If that were my menu plan I'd probably be cooking enough chicken on the Tuesday and vegetables on the Wednesday to be giving myself a day off by just serving heated up leftovers and making instant gravy on the Thursday. I enjoy cooking, but I also like to have days off from it without spending lots of money on a meal out or a takeaway.

[namedphoenix.livejournal.com]

You are awesome.

I can't believe that you think that menu isn't spectacular.

I just made my menu for the week (felt good!) and I planned for all three meals, but here's my dinners, if you're interested.
-Frozen Ravioli with frozen spinach and canned alfredo
-Chicken Cesar Salad
-Sauteed Cabbage, and preparing a new recipe in my crockpot called Tangy Chicken (pineapple chunks and soy sauce and some other stuff)
-ECHO girls meeting will feed me
-Several options because of it being Friday night: Steak and broccoli with potatoes, Hamburger Helper, or eating at Yoli's. Regardless, I'm making myself strawberry shortcake from bisquick.

That is going to be a real accomplishment for me. I'm going to see how long I can do this. The fact that you can do all that, well, it's absolutely awesome.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

my weekly menu includes a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. soon it will switch to having a lot of salami and cheese sandwiches. also, at least once a week, my parents buy me dinner.

i am pondering starting to make something relatively big on sunday evenings and then parcelling it out over the week. i don't mind eating the same thing a bunch in a row (see above pb&j festival for evidence.).

[erisian-fields.livejournal.com]

Whoa! The smoked gouda stuffed burgers sound fantastic! Have you ever tried them on onion rolls or onion bagels?

Go download "Living Cookbook." It's awesome kitchen software. It comes with tons of recipes, but the REALLY cool thing about it is that you can pick your meals for the week and it will generate a shopping list for you. Holy smoke, is that saving me money on groceries!

I've been playing with it for days now. I've stolen a bunch of recipes from Food Network and have created my own recipes as well. I'm a week ahead on my meal planning since I figured out how easy it is to add a recipe to the calendar. The hard part is deciding what I want to cook.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Whoa! The smoked gouda stuffed burgers sound fantastic! Have you ever tried them on onion rolls or onion bagels?

Aw, man. Now I want to put them on bialys.

They are very good, and very easy. I season the ground beef with horseradish and "Montreal Seasoning" (any steak seasoning or dry rub would work) and form it into twice as many patties as I want servings. I put strips of smoked gouda on top of one patty, put another one on top, squash them together gently, seal the edges, and put them on the Foreman grill.

[lissamc.livejournal.com]

I usually insist that the family sits down to table together for supper, so we get at least a half hour a day all in one place to connect. My son usually wants to eat buffet style, so he can watch his shows and play his games.

The past month has been incredibly hectic, with us all running six ways to Sunday, so I have given in on the buffet thing more often than not. Last night, Kevin requested a return to the family dining. He missed it.

Go family dining!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Michael and I used to eat on trays in front of the TV most nights, but ever since Alex has been old enough to eat what we eat we've put a big priority on family meals. They don't last very long before she's hopping down to play, but I still think they're important.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

There was a debate, I think in loligo's journal about cooking, spurred by an article in the NYT. And I thought they were being in their own way as condescending to working people as the locavores they were bitterly criticizing. Sure, it's nearly impossible to feed a family on $21 a week, but it's perfectly possible to cook adequately for a family on a fairly modest budget of time and money.

[ailbhe]

That menu would utterly flatten me. It sounds fabulous, but preparing it would definitely take me way, way too long. Making hamburgers in general is beyond me because it's fiddly to get them to bind; stuffing them as well would be... too complicated. Though since we mainly eat local veg, veg prep does take a fair bit of our food-prep time.

We generally have "some kind of meat (or eggs), potatoes or rice or pasta, two vegetables" as our basis for deciding if we're "balanced," but we don't do much interesting with them.

And I think we get food out most weeks, at least once. We don't have frozen food unless we cooked it ourselves earlier (unless frozen raw meat counts) so that's not something we do. My shopping principles won't allow it.

Now I'm inspired to go make bread; we've been eating showp-bought for days and I'm sick of it. Swings and roundabouts.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Making hamburgers in general is beyond me because it's fiddly to get them to bind; stuffing them as well would be... too complicated.

We must have different ground beef, or something, because I've never had to do anything to get hamburgers to bind - I just shape them into patties with my hands and they stay that way. And stuffing them is easier than it sounds - I make two half-size patties per serving, put the cheese on top of one, and then smash the other one down on top of it and make sure all the edges are sealed.

Now I'm inspired to go make bread; we've been eating showp-bought for days and I'm sick of it. Swings and roundabouts.

Heh. Yeah. I've never made bread at all, and wouldn't have the faintest idea how. I made some delicious oatmeal-raisin-spice cookies last week, though.

Oh! One more thing we're going to have this week, which I forgot about. Alex wanted to get some turnips, because she saw them in a children's book. I have never made turnips in my life - or eaten them, come to that. I am almost positive that she won't eat them. But when your kid asks for turnips, how do you refuse?

...But I have no idea what to do with them. How do you cook turnips?

[ailbhe]

Beef: I wonder if it's to do with fat content? Or just that I need to overcome the squeam and really squish them up hard? They're not something I particularly want to eat, generally; I'd rather have the mince with onions and gravy, so I haven't practiced very hard for burgers.

Bread: I learned it from the yeast packet, after I saw the salt content of shop bread. It's easier for me to make good bread than to use a breadmaker.

Turnip: Your local dialect may vary, but assuming you mean a ginormous root vegetable that goes kind of orange when cooked, I'd recommend dicing it (about 1cm) and steaming it and then tossing it with olive oil or butter and nutmeg. The nutmeg was in the nature of an accidental discovery and I was pleased. It can also be served mashed. I bet it would make an interesting topping for a shepherd's pie. Or you can dice it and use it in cornish pasties, but that involves pastry. Pastry I buy frozen because that way I have a faint chance of producing something edible. The pastry gods no like me.

[kate_nepveu]

Certainly not squishing them up hard. You want something in the vicinty of 80% lean ground beef for burgers. Just press gently and then plop on hot surface (don't squish with spatula while cooking either, all those lovely juices run out . . . ).

Or you can just not make them since you don't particularly want to eat them. =>

[ailbhe]

I'm not sure how to determine 80% lean. My meat supplier doesn't state it, either.

I suspected the fat content issue because I only learned about meat with "marbling" this past week or so. I used to be vegetarian and now eat from http://www.sheepdroveshop.com/ so I'm a bit ignorant about meat in general. Thank goodness for meat thermometers.

[kate_nepveu]

Ah. Here in the northeast US, it generally says on the packages (often with helpful little statements like "great for [X method of cooking]").

Meat thermometers are great. Besides our instant-read, I swear by a probe thermometer (like this one); it makes me so much less anxious about doing meat in the oven.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Definitely different ground beef. The kind we get here just needs to be gently shaped into patties.

By turnips I mean these (http://www.hort.purdue.edu/ext/senior/vegetabl/turnip1.htm). The ones I bought are about the size of my fist, although I have seen larger ones at the store. Wait! Aha! What you call a turnip is apparently what I would call a rutabaga. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutabaga)

I'll try dicing and steaming them regardless; Alex doesn't eat mashed potatoes so I'm sure she would reject mashed turnips. In the story she got the idea from, they go into Stone Soup.

[ailbhe]

So THAT'S what a rutabaga is.

Next, we investigate Swede.

There's so much variation in what people call these things that it's often easiest to just use pictures. As long as everyone in my actual home knows what I mean, I figure that's about all I can hope for without illustration.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I think I'll do this (http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/mybestturnips.htm). Turnips and apples.

I think that a swede and a rutabaga are the same thing, but root vegetables are definitely not my area of expertise.

[ailbhe]

That sounds tasty but also specifically claims to disguise the turnip flavour!

There are people in the UK who use "turnip" to mean "parsnip." I haven't worked out which area they're from yet though. North-ish.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know that this is something a 3 year-old will get excited about, but you can grate up a Granny Smith apple, a couple of turnips, and toss with a spoonful of horseradish for a more or less instant crunchy tangy salad.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I'm quite fond of my breadmaker. I've made bread by hand, and I've made bread with a bread hook, and I still do that for specialty breads, but when I want a simple loaf to make sandwiches with, it takes 30 seconds to put the ingredients in the container and a few hours later, bread! And the thing's a tank; I've had it for 15 years and many many loaves, it's taken at least three dives off of counters or the top of the fridge, and it's stil going.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

My mother has sauteed turnips for me a few times - cube them, and then sautee, and I think at the end, she put some brown sugar on them to caramelize a little bit. They're yummy and sweet.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Hmph. I was going to suggest Turnip Cakes (my single favorite dim sum dish), and am devastated to learn that they're actually made with daikon.

Oh well. They're still yummy, whatever they contain.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I have been pondering this all winter as our organic food box frequently comes with turnips, which are not really in my repetoire. Our two favourites are:

- mashed turnips and carrots. Dice and boil together equal parts turnip and carrot, drain, mash with a bit of butter and milk (or soymilk) and season to taste.

- dice turnips and boil until tender; toss with a cheese sauce (the roux + milk + grated cheese sort), top with breadcrumbs, stick under the broiler so the top gets toasty.

I've also balsamic roasted them tossed with other root veggies (beet, carrot, onion) and that was not bad.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I've just been doing the same, planning for week's menus from my shopping. Apart from bread, I'm not going to have to spend any more money on food this week, including lunches.

I tend to cook (real food from raw ingredients) five or six nights out of seven.

[kate_nepveu]

I love fish sticks. One of the cousins has started bringing cooked-from-fresh fish filets to Polish Christmas Eve, and that's very nice, but give me crunchy fried fish any day.

People's different ways of dealing with food are fascinating. We tried planning menus a week in advance and gave up; we'd not feel like cooking one night, or leftovers would last longer than we'd planned, or *something*. Now we plan at most a couple days in advance. And we rely far more heavily on leftovers.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I don't stick rigorously to the schedule. We'll have all of these meals sometime this week, but the order does depend on how we're feeling at the moment, unless we run into issues with meat sell-by dates. (We have to have burgers tonight, for example, because I don't want to keep ground beef longer than 24 hours.) But, for example, a ham slice stays fresh forever, so if we wind up not eating it this week it'll keep just fine until next.

The only thing that's set in stone is that Wednesday nights require a dinner that can be made quickly - I don't have much time between playgroup and OWL.

give me crunchy fried fish any day.

Every other week, the hospital cafeteria has a fried fish special - usually lake trout, but sometimes catfish or similar. They take a huuuuge flat filet, dredge it in seasoned cornmeal, deep-fry it, and serve it with cornbread and coleslaw. OMG GOOD.

[kate_nepveu]

We don't deep-fry at home--too much work--but a not-awful approximation is to take some thickish white fish fillets like catfish, soak them in milk for as long as it takes the oven to preheat to 500 F, then dredge the wet fish in seasoned breadcrumbs and bake until done with a bit of melted butter under & on top.

(Via Mark Bittman's _How to Cook Everything_, I believe. Yum.)

Man, now I want some of that. And it looks like catfish is safe, too. *makes note to check store for fish*

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

There's no question that planning well is the key to eating well. It might be the single most important bit.

K. [second most important is having your produce in ready-to-eat condition before it goes into the fridge, so that the prep time once you want to eat it is minimal. My theory is that putting away the groceries should take as much time as buying them]