The Cooking Cure

Day 17: Tuesday, March 25 Today’s Assignment: Take 5 minutes to take stock of your week and your meal plans The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here Our meals on Monday and Tuesday can usually ride the momentum of weekend planning and go off without a hitch. But by Wednesday, things start to go off the rails all too easily.

Last week for The Cooking Cure we tackled dinner, and the final assignment for the week had our readers cooking dinner for the night, and planning breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the following week. We checked out the #cookingcure hashtag to see how Day 15’s assignment went for you — here are some highlights! @thekitchn Enjoying a great dinner thanks to the #cookingcure and recipe for braised coconut spinach & chickpea w/lemon over sweet potato! — Jo R.

Here’s another cooking challenge from my desk to yours: I’ve been making an effort to keep calories down and nutrition up in my daily meals, especially when it comes to snacks. But it’s still chilly outdoors, and I’m not always in the mood for a bowl of crunchy celery sticks. Are all of the healthy snacks cold and crunchy?

Day 16: Monday, March 24 Today’s Assignment: Get yourself a treat to have with dinner The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here Congratulations! You made it to the last week of the Cooking Cure, and if all went well over the weekend, you have a whole entire week of homecooked meals planned, prepped, and ready to go. That’s no small feat! What’s that feeling? Oh, it’s called “being awesome.

Day 15: Friday, March 21 Today’s Assignment: Make dinner! Weekend Assignment: Plan all of your breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for next week The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here We’re heading into the home stretch of our Cooking Cure, and this weekend is a big one! The goal this weekend is to plan, and to prep, for all your breakfasts, lunches, and dinners next week. That’s 21 meals, including the weekend. Feeling pumped? Nervous?

How’s your Cooking Cure going this week? Are you cooking dinner each night? Is there any way we can help you or answer a question? Here’s a challenge from Melabell — it can be hard to keep up with the nightly routine of cooking when there are still dirty dishes from yesterday. Sure, it’s easy to say: “Just clean them as you go!” but sometimes this is just one thing too many, when you’ve already devoted the time to making a home-cooked dinner.

After evaluating dinner habits for The Cooking Cure, yesterday we asked our readers to choose five new dinner recipes. After all, sometimes deciding what to cook is the hardest part of dinner! We checked out the #cookingcure hashtag to see how Day 13’s assignment went for you — here are some highlights! Happy Thursday! Week 3 of #cookingcure, still having a blast! @thekitchn pic.twitter.

Day 14: Thursday, March 20 Assignment: Pick 1 new dinner recipe and shop for ingredients The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here New dinner goals? Check! New dinner recipes? Check! Now it’s time to spring into action. Tomorrow, we’ll be in the kitchen making a new recipes so that means that today we need to shop for ingredients. Think you can spare a few minutes to run to the store this afternoon?

Today’s Cooking Cure Challenge comes from me! I have the hardest time remembering to take meat out of the freezer to thaw ahead of time. Can you relate? I’ve seen the same woes in many comments during the Cure. Do you have any good tips for remembering or thawing meat quickly? Here are a few from our archives. In a Hurry: 3 Defrosting Tips for Super Fast Results Freeze Individual Portions For Expedited Defrosting Any other tips or smart ways to remember to take the meat out?

Day 13: Wednesday, March 19 Assignment: Find 5 new recipes to make for dinner The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here Sometimes deciding what to cook is the toughest part of making dinner, don’t you think? Whether you’re in a total dinner rut or, the opposite, you’re overwhelmed with the number of recipes you’re constantly accumulating, the problem is the same: taking time to make a conscious choice about what to have for dinner.

We all have busy nights where it’s tough to cook dinner after work, but jaudre has an even more challenging issue: she needs to come home, make dinner, and then be somewhere else quickly in the evening. Do you have any dinners that are especially good for these squeezed-in mealtimes? My “problem” with making dinner is, three nights in the week I have to be somewhere else by 6:00 p.m. or 7:00 p.m. That makes dinner preparation, cooking etc. a little challenging.

Day 12: Tuesday, March 18 Assignment: Review yesterday’s list and rethink your dinner habits The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here What gets in your way when it comes to making dinner each night? That’s the main question we’re talking about today. Is it time in the evening to cook? Is it boredom with the same old meals night after night? Is it a new diet that’s thrown all your usual meals out the window?

Day 10: Monday, March 17 Assignment: Make a list of what you ate for dinner last week The Cooking Cure: See all the assignments so far here. It’s a little hard to believe, but we are exactly halfway through The Cooking Cure! How have things been going so far? Are you keeping up with all the cooking, or do you find yourself struggling? Anything the community of Cure Takers might be able to help with? This week — at long last! finally! — we arrive at dinner.

Day 10: Friday, March 14 Today’s Assignment: Make lunch! Weekend Assignment: Plan all of your breakfasts and lunches for next week The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here Here we are at the end of the second week of our Cooking Cure. High fives all around! How did things go this week? Did your breakfast plan go smoothly? Run into any snags? Were you able to go shopping yesterday for your new lunch? Today’s assignment is simple: make — and eat! — your lunch.

Day 9: Thursday, March 13 Assignment: Pick 1 new lunch recipe and shop for ingredients The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here It’s action time! Now that you’ve set yourself some brand new lunch goals and found some fresh meal ideas to shake up the lunchtime doldrums, it’s time to actually put your plan into motion. How do we do that? Grab your car keys, friends, because we’re going grocery shopping!

How is Week 2 of your Cooking Cure? How is lunch going? I sense a couple trends: Many of you are Bored With Lunch. Others of you snack your way through the afternoon. And then others, like Bright Lights, dutifully pack a lunch, but work gets in the way, and the nice lunch deteriorates in the fridge. Can you relate? Do you have any suggestions for Bright Lights and lunches that last well for a whole week in the fridge?

Yesterday for The Cooking Cure we asked you to ponder three important questions related to your lunch habits and what you want to change. Are you a bored luncher? Well-intentioned, but don’t follow through? Or are you a serial lunch buyer? We checked out the #cookingcure hashtag to see how Day 7’s assignment went for you — here are some highlights! My main goal: bring more home-made lunches (instead of that storebought crud!

Day 8: Wednesday, March 12 Assignment: Find 5 new recipes to make for lunch The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here Midweek check-in! How’s making breakfast been going so far this week? (Oh, yeah, breakfast!) Are you still on target? If you need to need to tweak part of your breakfast plan, take a few minutes today to figure that out. Back to lunches — today we’re finally getting into the heart of it.

What challenges are you coming up against as you look for new inspiration in your lunches? I loved this question from one of the Cure-takers about vegetarian freezer meals. Here’s what cuminafterall said: My lunch is almost always leftovers from the night before. I haven’t gotten bored with it (our dinners are quite varied!), but if we decide to eat out for dinner, it can be challenging to scrape together a lunch for the next day.

Day 7: Ask yourself 3 questions about your lunch habits. How sad is this lone chicken thigh? It’s the only thing leftover from last night’s dinner. We ate all the broccoli that went with it, and there wasn’t much of the freekeh and butternut squash salad to begin with, so that’s definitely gone.

This week The Cooking Cure tackles all things lunch. If you’re sick of eating leftovers every day, are looking for fresh ideas, or simply want to bring your lunch to work, this is the week to hop on the bandwagon. Yesterday’s assignment was to remember everything you had for lunch last week. We checked out the #cookingcure hashtag to see how Day 6’s assignment went for you — here are some highlights! Gah! Wish I had written down my lunches as I ate them last week!

Day 7: Tuesday, March 1 Assignment: Review yesterday’s list and rethink your lunch habits Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here Lunch feels to me like one of the trickiest meals of the day — it’s so easy for good intentions to go completely off the rails.

All right, we’re into Week 2 of The Cooking Cure, so it’s all lunch, all the time. Except, lunch just means leftovers, right? Oh leftovers — sometimes delicious, sometimes worn-out, always convenient. We heard from a lot of you yesterday who said you’re wishing you weren’t so dependent on leftovers for lunch. Like sparklingsapphire, for instance. sparklingsapphire says: Lately, my lunches are almost always leftovers from dinner a night or two before.

Last week in The Cooking Cure we tackled all things breakfast. On the first day we asked readers to remember everything they had eaten for breakfast the week before, and on Friday (Day 5’s assignment) we had readers make a new breakfast and plan ahead for the next week (so fun!). How did it go for you? We checked out the #cookingcure hashtag to see how Day 5’s assignment went for you — here are some highlights! I finally added breakfast to my dinner menu planning.

Day 6: Monday, March 10 Assignment: Make a list of what you ate for lunch last week The Cooking Cure: See all the assignments so far here. Welcome to the second week of the Cooking Cure! How was your weekend? Are you feeling prepped and primed for making all your breakfasts this week? Ready to add another layer to your Cooking Cure? This week, we’re putting our lunch routine under the microscope. We’ll be setting new goals and — yes, oh, yes!

The Cooking Cure is rolling into Week 2, and we’re moving on to lunch. But we don’t want to just leave breakfast behind, since your assignment over the weekend was to plan and strategize all of your breakfasts for this week. So here is the first Cooking Cure challenge of the week: But what if you don’t want to cook breakfast? What if breakfast needs to be the easy meal in your household? That’s the situation alicelost is in and we can relate.

Day 5: Make breakfast today and plan next week’s breakfasts. This morning I woke and up and made breakfast in a clean kitchen. And it felt so good. As I shared yesterday, my biggest deterrent to cooking everyday is a messy kitchen, so one of my goals for this Cooking Cure has been to clean the kitchen after every meal. Last night I cleaned the kitchen both before and after dinner (hopefully I won’t be doing that again for a long time!

We got an email to our cooking cure (at) thekitchn.com inbox from Sophie, who is working with the challenge of cooking just for herself. Is this part of your own Cooking Cure challenge? I thought this question deserved its own space for ideas and suggestions. Read on for Sophie’s whole question! Q: I am a graduate student in Australia who works part-time and lives in a share house.

Day 5: Friday, March 7 Today’s Assignment: Make breakfast! Weekend Assignment: Plan all your breakfasts for next week The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here. Here we are at the end of first week of the Cooking Cure! How do you feel? Or the better question: how are you feeling about breakfast? Your mission today, should you choose to accept it, is to make yourself breakfast. Your mission for the weekend is a little bigger.

Day 4: Stock your kitchen for one new breakfast. In between blog posts and coworker chats this morning, I slipped away for a half hour to go to the grocery store. I needed just a few items for my new-and-improved breakfast tomorrow morning (I’m making this sandwich), and wanted to beat the after-work rush.

Day 4: Thursday, March 6 Assignment: Pick 1 new recipe and shop for ingredients The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here. So far, all our assignments have involved a lot of sitting at the kitchen table and thinking about breakfast in a cerebral, big-picture sense. This has been time well-spent since by now you should have a good idea of the things you’d like to change about your breakfast routine, how you want to change them, and even a few recipes to kick off the new habit.

Day 3: Wednesday, March 5 Assignment: Find 5 new recipes to make for breakfast The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here. Earlier this week, we took a good hard look at our breakfast routines, and yesterday, we set some brand new breakfast goals for ourselves — now comes a really fun assignment! Today, we’re asking you to get cozy on the couch with your laptop or a pile of favorite cookbooks (or both!

Are you participating in The Cooking Cure? All month long we’re helping you take a closer look at your daily meals and set new culinary goals to get you excited about cooking. If you’re sick of winter food or just need some fresh perspective, follow along! It’s always better with company. Yesterday our assignment was to ask three specific questions about your breakfast habits.

Day 2: Ask yourself 3 questions about your breakfast habits As I shared yesterday, my daily toast and peanut butter breakfast routine is ready for a revamp. I’m craving more variety, more protein, more fruit! I like having a breakfast routine during the week, though, so any changes have to be easy to implement. With that in mind, here are the 3 breakfast goals I’ve set up for March: Eat some fruit with breakfast every day.

Day 2: Tuesday, March 4 Assignment: Review yesterday’s list and rethink your breakfast habits The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here. How did it go yesterday? Have any trouble remembering what you ate for breakfast in the last few weeks? Were you able to resist skipping ahead to thinking about your new breakfast habits? Today we’ll go deeper. Let’s see which breakfasts you loved and which ones need to get the boot.

Day 1: Monday, March 3 Assignment: Make a list of what you ate for breakfast last week The Cooking Cure: See all assignments so far here. Welcome, welcome! Today marks the start of The Kitchn’s first ever Cooking Cure! Our goal over the next few weeks is to help you get fresh inspiration and build some new habits with the goal of three home-cooked meals a day. Yes, that’s right: breakfast, lunch, and dinner (oh, and some healthy snacks) — all cooked at home, all made by you.

Last fall, many of you joined us for The Kitchn Cure, a two-week group cleaning spree and refresh of our kitchen spaces. Are you ready for a new challenge this spring? Next week we are introducing a brand new Cure: The Cooking Cure! Want to be the first to try it? This 4-week Cooking Cure is designed to get you cooking at home every day, starting with 5-minute baby steps and culminating in a week of 21 home-cooked meals.