• Cure Clock: 2 weeks remaining
• Cure Takers: 831
• New Flickr Group: 2009 Kitchen Cure
• Submit your photos directly to The Kitchn
Two weeks to go, guys! This week we're going to focus on meal planning. When you signed up, many of you asked for help in this department. Posts this week will focus on tips for planning menus including shopping tips, suggested menus for a dinner party, and how to stretch dinners into left-over lunches. This is a practice run for planning your graduation dinner party in a few weeks.
Tomorrow I'll post some menu suggestions based on seasonally inspiration about the U.S. (international readers, write in your suggestions!), but in the meantime, here's the assignment to get you started on this meal-planning business...
First our usual note on participation: Do your best, and pace yourself, but march forward. The Kitchen Cure never gets too hard. Many assignments can be on-going through the Cure. Document your progress with photos and discussion on the forum, this way you'll stay in touch with the community and the group will help keep you going. Losing steam? Ask for help!
I'm the "prep cook" and my boyfriend is the chef in our relationship. I can pretty efficiently keep the kitchen clean before, during, and after he makes an amazing meal, and help out with the "mise en place", etc. BUT I would love to be more confident when it comes to putting together a meal on my own.
- Colleen
Week 5 Assignments
1. Plan a Meal: You're going to plan a meal, using the new skill(s) you picked up as part of last week's assignment.
I have mastered cooking and baking in a countertop convection oven. In Celsius! The roasting part was easy, but I ruined several cakes. It takes longer, since it's so small, but I can do anything I could do in a bigger oven.
- annaholl
Plan your meal on screen or on paper, make your shopping list (surprised at how little you need now that your kitchen is stocked?) and cook, ideally using your new skills learned as part of last week's Cure assignment. Take photos as you go.
Things to think about when planning a meal:
- What is in season?
- What are you craving?
- What is your budget?
There are two basic ways to go about planning a menu:
- Start with your favorite cookbooks or recipes (we have over 400 original recipes in our recipe archive), making a list of ingredients from there, and then shop.
- Stroll through your local farmers' markets or grocery stores (if shopping in a supermarket, talk to the produce manager about what's in season and where it comes from), and pick up ingredients that call out to you, then search through recipes for inspiration and figure out a way to use what you bought. This second option may sound scary to many of you, but it's what we're trying to encourage you to do. Try it.
I'd like to improve planning for "cooking once - eating twice" especially in preparing lunches to take to work or cooking for the next day's dinner without eating the exact thing multiple times, e.g. lentil pilaf becomes lentil soup...that sort of thing.
- Clare
Here are some online tools for meal planning and a great post about using leftovers:
We have a series of posts about cooking without recipes based on various cuisines. These might help you plan a meal based on ingredients on hand or a cuisine you favor or crave.
2. Preliminary Party Planning: Put a date on the calendar for your dinner party - ideally in the next couple of weeks when the glow of graduation is still bright - and send out invitations.
These are the tulips my mother-in-law brought me on Saturday from her garden! They'll be on our family's dinner table all week if I can remember to keep the stems trimmed and the water fresh.3. Buy or Cut Fresh Flowers: Each week during the Cure, and hopefully beyond, we're encouraging you to keep fresh flowers in your kitchen. Also, many people have expressed concern over allergies, so try a potted herb. If you have a pot or windowbox, it should be tended each week: watering and using your kitchen herbs once they're big enough. Here's some info on how to plant a windowbox.
4. Stay in touch! We have an exciting community of over 800 people currently signed up for the Kitchen Cure. Smart people. Fun people! And you can meet them all if you get active on our Cure Discussion Page. Also, don't forget to check in every day with the Kitchen Cure Page where all the Cure-related posts live in one neat little package. While assignments are posted once a week on Mondays, related posts are going up every day and there is a lot of conversation to be had in those posts comment threads as well.
Reminders about photographs:
• If you'd like your progress to be showcased, please take "before" and "after shots" and submit them directly to The Kitchn. Make sure to explain what's going on in each image.
• We also have a 2009 Kitchen Cure Flickr Group. If you post your photos to this group, please include captions so we understand what's going on in each image.
(Grocery Bag image by Flickr member timsamoff licensed for use under Creative Commons, Refrigerator Meal Planning and Notebook Meal Planning images by Flickr member petit hiboux licensed for use under Creative Commons, Indian mis en place image by Sabra Krock for The Kitchn)
First, do you have a source for those net bags? I would LOVE to have some to take to the produce stand.
Second, meal planning is always difficult because people think they have to stick to the recipe. Basically, this is how /I/ do it:
1. Get a list together of the perishables in your fridge, from "about to die" to "really fresh".
2. Plug deadest into the ingredient search at AllRecipes.com.
3. Find something that sounds scrumptious. Don't worry if you don't have something on the list.
4. Make substitutions based on what you have in the cupboards and freezer. Meat substitutions are often the easiest - just remember to account for liquid levels (ie: hamburger has more 'juice' in it than fish).
5. Don't be afraid to toss some cooking wine in - use red or white as you would if you were serving it with the meal.
6. Don't be afraid to substitute herbs and spices. Think about the mixes that you put on other similar meals, and use those combinations in tandem - ie, oregano, basil, and thyme always go well together for an italian meal. Ginger, soy, and lemon always go well together for an asian meal.
7. If you don't have everything, don't panic; pick up the items you need AFTER you've substituted meats, produce, and spices on the recipe. (It helps to print the recipe and write in substitutions to keep yourself straight at the store) Jot anything you need down on your list.
8. File the printed, substituted recipe in a binder or tack to the bulletin board for the week.
I generally stick recipes to use in the pocket on my calendar, and then as I use them, punch them and put them into my recipe binder, which sits on the bookshelf in my kitchen for future use. Generally, after a meal, I'll "rate" the recipe 1-10 (ten being "OMG have to make this again THIS WAY") on the entry and make notes as to what I'd change (too dry, too wet, needs more rice, needs less cumin).
view bfootnovellista's profile
This is not so much for menu planning, but when I create my grocery list, I tried to put it in the order the items are in the store. For example, milk, cheese, and eggs are all in the same area, so they are all together on my grocery list. That way, I don't get all the way to produce and realize I forgot something on the other side of the store. It's quite efficient (but of course, you have to know the store that you're going to in order for this to work.)
view ssmith's profile
I go with what is in my fridge, what needs to be eaten, what is in season if I am buying something (love that spring is here!), etc.
We post lists and scheduled menus for the week up on our chalkboard paint covered cabinet doors. An occasional food quote goes up there too.
I don't catalog what we have eaten though. When we clean the doors, it is gone.
view kmarie's profile
Since I am the house cook and it is my responsibility to get meals on the table, menu planning is something that I am quite familiar with. However, it has a way of becoming a giant drag. I'll have a system that is working for me, and then life changes I find it doesn't fit me anymore. Right now I am experimenting with "heavy rotation" and just beginning to catalog in hopes it will help me the next time my brain goes blank.
My "new skill" is developing a repetoire of almost-instant spring-summer foods we like. Tonight is pasta w/ramps, pine nuts, and olive oil. That's done when the pasta is ready. And it's the last of the ramps I fear.
view cmcinnyc's profile
We use google calendar as our family calendar so that my husband and I can both easily make changes. I created an additional calendar titled "Dinner" and the menu for the week goes there. It's nice because it can be hidden so that the calendar isn't all cluttered, you can just move entries around if you change your mind during the week, I can go back and look at past meals (since November '07!), and if you go into "edit event details", you can drop in links to online recipes in the notes section.
My favorite menu planning was my mom's as I was growing up, though. She still has the stack of 1976-1993 Hallmark pocket calendars (the ones they used to give away for free) detailing every dinner I had growing up. It's awesome.
view LauraII's profile
I agree with bfootnovellista's suggestion to search for recipes by what you have. I have discovered some truly delicious recipes that I would never have thought of, simply by "googling" ingredients I have on hand that need to be used. I am never shy about tossing in a few more veggies and wa-lah - new and delicious meals that use up what I have left after a long week!
view teetee's profile
I have begun to do this over the last couple of months-basically just writing down on Sunday what we will be having Monday-Thursday, and perhaps Friday. The workweek is busy enough without having to think of what to make for dinner the morning of or even worse, have no idea until you get home from work that night. Even though I grocery shop on Saturday, I begin to plan my menu on Sunday morning before heading out to the farmer's market and then refine it based upon what I've picked up fresh at the market and the items I have on hand. This eliminates any second, or third, trips to the grocery store over the week.
Given that I dogear so many recipes out of my various magazines, oftentimes my menu for the week is based upon those particular recipes, or some variation of those. As the week progresses, my menu relies more on leftovers from earlier in the week. For example, tonights flank steak on the grill will be Wednesday nights arugula and flank steak salad.
I will also do as much food prep as possible during Sunday's dinner prep. If I know I will be using chopped onions, carrots, celery, etc. for a dish later in the week, I will chop it up at that time, place it in a labeled ziploc bag and then it will be ready to go for when I do need it.
view rosebud's profile
Re: Meal planning, if anyone's interested in a well-designed list for printing off weekly, check out the latest post at http://www.beckyhiggins.com/blog/.
view sbs's profile
@rosebud, whenever I have pre-chopped my onions, they seems to get very strong and acidic. Have you noticed this? Or am I doing something wrong?
view cmcinnyc's profile