Kids Dish

To be honest, last week’s menu plan didn’t really work out for me. I sort of stuck with it, but instead of actually cooking the meals I planned every night we ended up eating the leftovers the following night instead of freezing them as planned. So the week looked like this:

Monday: Homemade cheese pizza
Tuesday: Bean, cheese, and sweet potato burritos
Wednesday: Leek and potato soup, sourdough baguettes
Thursday: Chicken and white bean stew, baguettesLeek and potato soup, sourdough baguettes
Friday: Garlic chicken( the other half of Thursday’s whole chicken), asparagus, mashed potatoesChicken and white bean stew, mashed potatoes
Saturday: Pepperoni bread (making one for Sunday), leftoversChicken and white bean stew, mashed potatoes
Sunday: birthday party food (I’m making macaroni and cheese, lots of cold appetizers and everyone else is bringing the rest)

This week probably won’t be much better. With all of the food we still have from the birthday party this week is going to be leftover heavy. It looks like I won’t have to go grocery shopping or actually cook anything completely from scratch until Saturday.

Monday: Chicken and white bean stew, mashed potatoes (yes, again.)
Tuesday: tomato pie, green salad
Wednesday: asparagus risotto, pepperoni bread
Thursday: chicken quesadillas, broccoli, leftover risotto
Friday: appetizers- cheese and crackers, hummus and pita, crudites, chips and buffalo chicken dip
Saturday: crockpot brisket, mashed potatoes, broccoli
Sunday: brisket sandwiches, oven fries

And of course we still have plenty of birthday cake in both chocolate and vanilla. For your entertainment, please enjoy a video of me preparing the Thomas the Tank Engine cake. I am not a professional.

Yes, it’s Tuesday, and by the time I get around to actually posting this it will most likely be Wednesday, but I need to get on the ball and start doing this before I lose my mind.

You may have noticed that posting around here has been even lighter than usual. It’s not because I’m not cooking, it’s because I am cooking badly. I stand around and stare and pull out cookbooks and rummage through the pantry and dither and dather and come up with nothing except for meals that I am not proud of.

I’ve done several things I’m not proud of recently, including a meal of leftover pasta (two kinds!) heated on the stove top with a can of tomatoes, a bunch of leftover chopped green beans and a handful of mozzarella cheese. It was the most disgusting thing I think I’ve ever cooked, not because of the ingredients, but because of how last minute it was. I couldn’t bring myself to actually eat any of it.

So I’m done. From here on out I’m planning meals to avoid being completely disgusted with myself.

Monday: Homemade cheese pizza
Tuesday: Bean, cheese, and sweet potato burritos
Wednesday: Leek and potato soup, sourdough baguettes
Thursday: Chicken and white bean stew, baguettes
Friday: Garlic chicken( the other half of Thursday’s whole chicken), asparagus, mashed potatoes
Saturday: Pepperoni bread (making one for Sunday), leftovers
Sunday: birthday party food (I’m making macaroni and cheese, lots of cold appetizers and everyone else is bringing the rest)

It’s a start. Now I just need to stick to the plan.

I saw a recipe on a blog for a spaghetti pie of sorts. Maybe it was called a strata. Maybe it was called a torte. I don’t remember. I do remember thinking it looked like a good idea.

Yesterday I made a simple dinner with spaghetti and garbanzo beans. Since the box was more than enough for the three of us I left a portion of the spaghetti aside, planning to use it in a pie today. It seemed simple. Just spaghetti, maybe some sauteed onion and garlic, parmesan and eggs cooked in a pan.

I was feeling cocky and didn’t bother looking up a recipe. I sauteed the onion and threw in some cooked, chopped kale. I added the spaghetti, let it warm up a bit, then added the garlic. After I smelled the garlic I poured three beaten eggs into the skillet along with some thyme, oregano, parmesan, salt and pepper. I could tell by looking that things were not going to go as planned. But rather than wing it and start throwing more eggs or liquid into the skillet I decided to stay the course. I turned the heat to low hoping the eggs wouldn’t stick too badly and kept my fingers crossed. After a few minutes I could tell that the eggs had set. I tried to flip the egg/spaghetti pancake over all at once but I failed miserably. I flipped it as best I could and waited for it to finish cooking through.

It wasn’t pretty. It definitely didn’t make the pancake/strata/torte I’d envisioned, but it was good. I’d recommend it as a fine way to use up your pasta leftovers. Only I’d recommend looking up a recipe.

Want to know the real reason I’m so crock pot happy these days? I accidentally poured bacon grease in the oven and the cleaning cycle sets off the smoke detector so haven’t cleaned it yet. I preheated the oven to reheat some pizza the other night and it started to smoke so I turned off the oven and reheated the pizza a slice at a time in the toaster oven. I’m going to have to get on the cleaning before Thanksgiving, but until then the crock pot is working out quite nicely.

Today’s crock pot meal was Red Thai Curry with chicken. It was incredibly easy to assemble. It took about 15 minutes of prep before I just threw a bunch of ingredients into the crock pot and let it cook on low for 6 hours.

Red Thai Curry with Chicken
1 can coconut milk
1 teaspoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons red chili paste
1 tablespoon brown sugar
4-6 bone in chicken thighs (I used 2 whole chicken legs and 2 wings)
1 onion, chopped medium
2 sweet potatoes, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped small (seeded if you don’t like too much heat)

1 head of broccoli cut into florets

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup basil, chopped
2 tablespoons lime juice

Put the coconut milk, chili paste, fish sauce and sugar in the crock pot and stir it around. Add the next five ingredients and cook on low for 5 hours. Remove the chicken and let cool. Turn crock pot to high, add the broccoli and cook uncovered for 20 minutes. In the meantime, remove the chicken from the bone once you can handle it. Add the chicken back into the pot and cook ten minutes more. Add basil, cilantro and lime juice. Serve over rice.

My neighbor gave me a huge bunch of parsley that she wouldn’t use and didn’t want to go to waste. She splits a CSA share with a friend who was on vacation, leaving her with more vegetables and herbs than she can use. It was nice of her to pass it along, but I have a ton of parsley in my garden. Most recipes call for small amounts of parsley, not several cups worth, so it sat in my fridge for close to two weeks before I decided to suck it up and just use it all at once. I figured a pesto would be the quickest and easiest way to go.

I found a great recipe in my Bon Appétit cookbook for roasted potatoes with a parsley-based pesto, but my sister in law stopped by with my niece right when I started getting dinner ready. By the time they left I was running out of time if I wanted to make it to yoga. So I skipped the potatoes, boiled up some tortellini, and made a quick parsley pesto using just parsley, lemon juice, garlic and toasted pine nuts. I tossed it all with some fresh fava beans.

It was good, but the cheese tortellini wasn’t quite right with the flavor of the pesto. It’s not like a basil pesto- it tastes fresher, brighter if that makes sense. If I were to do it again I’d use regular spaghetti and add zucchini ribbons.

I had entirely too much parsley for my mini food processor to handle, which means I still have time to make the potatoes with parsley pesto another night.

So far this is shaping up to be the panini summer. Rather than slave over a hot stove I’ve been using my Griddler to make delicious sandwiches without heating up the entire kitchen. I’ll be honest and admit that I can’t just throw a bunch of stuff on bread and let the panini do the work. I prefer my onions caramelized and my greens sautéed so I do a bit of prep work beforehand. But the prep is worth the effort, and caramelizing several onions and sautéing a bunch of greens all at once can leave you with enough for two days worth of sandwiches.

Making a panini (the word panini is pretty much Italian for sandwich) is simple enough. Build a sandwich with your favorite ingredients, brush both sides with butter or olive oil, and grill it until it heats through. If you have a griddler, panini press, sandwich maker or George Forman grill, use that. If you have none of the above, grill it like you’d make a grilled cheese but if the sandwich has a lot of ingredients, weigh down the top slice of bread with a heavy pan so the sandwich heats evenly.

To make a good panini you’ll need a good loaf of ciabatta, focaccia, French or Italian bread to stand up to the ingredients, especially if you’re using sautéed greens or caramelized onions. Paninis are a good vehicle to use up leftovers from the grill. Think flank steak, chicken, peppers, zucchini, or even leftover hot dogs and hamburgers to start. If you don’t have leftovers, lunchmeat will do just fine. If you don’t eat meat (or your kids won’t) try cheese, fruit, and condiments to make a quick healthy dinner- nutella and banana sandwiches are always a crowd pleaser, or thinly sliced apples or pears can add flavor and nutrients to a simple grilled cheese.

The panini of choice these past few weeks has been a winner: roast beef, cheddar, caramelized onions and sautéed greens with raspberry mustard on ciabatta or whole grain Italian.

Currently in the freezer I have a 9� x 13� tray of eggplant parmesan, three two-adult and a toddler servings of baked ziti, half a tray of black bean sausage and cheese enchiladas, half a dozen cranberry muffins, about a week’s worth of blueberry pancakes, chocolate chip cookie dough, and a quarter of a chocolate zucchini cake.

I have an unspecified amount of chicken stock in the fridge. I need to skim the fat from the top and decide exactly what I what to do with it. I’ll leave some out for risotto for tomorrow night’s dinner, but the rest is going to soup I’ll make and freeze for later. Also in the fridge, I have about four cups of shredded chicken, a by-product of the chicken stock. Two cups will probably go to another pasta dish- probably baked rotini with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and spinach. The other two cups might go towards more enchiladas. Or maybe I’ll just use it for chicken noodle soup so I don’t have to buy any more tortillas. It’s a tough call.

The good news is that I’m feeling prepared. I no longer fear that we’ll be forced to eat pizza and cheesesteaks for weeks after the baby is born. I still have three cups of zucchini to make bread or muffins with, a small 2 lb roast and two whole chickens I should cook in the next week or two to make more room in the freezer for meals.

I placed a fairly large meat order for May that included a 10 lb value pack of ground beef so we’ll have no shortage of ground beef for burgers as well as steaks, and a couple of whole chickens for when we run out of frozen dinners. My CSA starts in early June which means plenty of veggies.

Little by little I’m emptying my extra freezer of the fruits (and vegetables)of last year’s CSA share and the meat we ordered over the summer. I no longer have a deep, chest freezer in the basement. We sadly had to sell it after realizing it was costing us more than $30 a month in electric bills. We just have a regular sized refrigerator in the garage with a regular sized freezer. Our kitchen fridge is a side-by-side model, which I hate, so having the extra freezer space is a necessity. Without it there would be no frozen Trader Joe’s pizzas on hand, whole chickens, and a place to store freezer meals for when the new baby comes next month.

I don’t know when I’m going to be motivated enough to start cooking, or what exactly I’m going to cook. The meat pickings are slim right now, so I may have to stick to mostly pasta based meals, which is fine since they freeze well anyway. I do have a few whole chickens, so I can make some chicken dishes too. I think I’ll make lasagna, a dish of chicken enchiladas, eggplant parmesan, a baked ziti, and a chicken potpie. Other than the potpie, the other dishes can be cooked in advance then frozen in individual or smaller sized portions. That way we won’t have to defrost a lasagna then be stuck eating it for days in a row.

I’ll probably make a few batches of muffins using the last of the grated zucchini and the sour cherries so I’ll have quick one-handed breakfasts. Pancakes also freeze well. If I keep making full-sized batches of pancakes over the next few weekends I’ll be able to build up a nice stash so I can pop them in the toaster oven and feed Sam without too much trouble.

What else do you make and freeze?

I am not usually a fan of pork roasts. I’ve only ever had them with my in-laws, and honestly the majority of the roasts I’ve had their have been cooked for an hour or two too long, making excessive quantities of gravy a necessity. But for some reason I bought a pork roast from my pastured meats buying club on a whim. I think I imagined that I’d make pulled pork for sandwiches from it, but after the roast sat in my freezer for a few months and I looked up some recipes I realized that the boneless pork butt roast was too small, I don’t have a smoker, and it’s not the perfect cut of meat anyway. So it was back to Mr. Google for some recipe ideas.

An Epicurious recipe for Garlic-Roasted Pork Shoulder looked sublime, but it called for a bone-in pork shoulder which I just didn’t have. A recipe from Tyler Florence at the Food Network for Roasted Pork Shoulder seemed to be similar, but for some reason it just didn’t look quite right. So I split the difference. I prepared the roast using the method from the Epicurious recipe and cooked it according to the Tyler Florence recipe. It was superb.

The recipe calls for several hours of marination so I let it sit overnight, but popped it in the oven a bit too late the next day. We ended up eating a quick dinner of pasta and veggies while the roast cooked. When I removed it from the oven, the skin was brown and crisp. I was sorry we’d eaten. The following day I sliced the meat and reheated it in a gravy made from pan juices. My in-laws joined us for dinner and the meat was so tender, so flavorful, they assumed they were eating beef, not pork, until I told them otherwise. My father-in-law who claims to hate garlic ate several servings, not even noticing the garlic paste clinging to the meat.

If I get my hands on a bone-in pork roast I’ll be sure to follow the New York Times recipe exactly (and eat the meat immediately), but for boneless, the compromise worked well. This cheap cut of meat makes an incredible meal.

Garlic Roasted Boneless Pork Shoulder
adapted from the two recipes linked above

1 head garlic, cloves peeled
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1 1/2 tablespoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 3-4 pound boneless pork shoulder with skin

Mash garlic to a paste with 2 tablespoons kosher salt using a mortar and pestle or side of a large heavy knife, then stir in oregano, vinegar, lemon juice, and 1 tablespoon pepper.

Pat pork dry. Using a small sharp knife, cut a wide pocket at large end of roast to separate skin from fat, leaving skin attached at sides and stopping before roast narrows to bone.

Make 1-inch-deep slits in pork under skin and on all meaty sides, twisting knife slightly to widen openings, then push some of garlic mixture into slits with your fingers. Rub any remaining garlic mixture over roast (not skin). Wipe skin clean, then rub with remaining teaspoon kosher salt (to help it crisp). Transfer pork to a glass or ceramic shallow dish and marinate, covered and chilled, at least 8 hours.

Put pork, skin side up, on a rack in a flameproof roasting pan, discarding marinade, and bring to room temperature, about 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Roast the pork for 3 hours, uncovered, until the skin is crispy-brown. Let the meat rest on a cutting board for 10 minutes before slicing. Meanwhile, pour pan juices through a sieve into a fat separator or bowl and discard fat. Add 3/4 cup water to roasting pan and deglaze by boiling over medium-high heat (straddle 2 burners if necessary), scraping up brown bits, 1 minute, then add to pan juices along with enough water to bring total to 1 1/2 cups. Serve meat with pan juices.

On a whim I picked up a bunch of leeks from the produce stand last week and now I don’t know what to do with them. I planned on making a nice, hearty, wintery leek and potato soup but then I used all of my potatoes to make a last minute Shepherd’s Pie. Ordinarily I’d just use the leeks in recipes that call for onions, but I’ve still got half of a five pound bag of organic onions in the pantry that look like they’re getting ready to sprout so I’ve been erring on the side of using them first.

Last week my mom came to visit and we took Sam to the bookstore to play with the trains. My mom went to the cafe to get some coffees for us and returned with a few stratas as well. Ordinarily I’m not a fan of most egg dishes, especially when I’m pregnant, but the strata, made with spinach, artichoke hearts and roasted peppers was delicious. Sam liked it too.

Back to the leeks. I’ve also got half a dozen eggs from local, pastured chickens in the fridge. I’ve been using them for cooking and baking as needed, but I keep reading that high quality eggs should be showcased in dishes that are egg focused. Again, I don’t love eggs, but perhaps this recipe for a Leek and Swiss Chard Tart that uses frozen puff pastry could help change my mind. I’m a sucker for anything in puff pastry. If I finely chopped the handful of baby carrots I have remaining from the five pound bag I bought (please someone remind me that I need to stay far, far away from five pound bags of anything perishable) I could add some color and texture and save some more veggies from the compost bin.

Double posted from Farm to Philly

One of the unfortunate side effects of pregnancy for me is an aversion to most vegetable matter. Ordinarily I cook several vegetable heavy meatless meals a week, but since learning I was pregnant in September we’ve mostly eaten take out pizza, meals involving ground beef, and cheesy pasta dishes. This does not bother my husband at all. My taste for vegetables eventually returned, but my desire to buy and prepare food other than pizza and cookies has been lackluster at best. I used to go out of my way to shop at the farmer’s market in Ardmore every week. Now I’m feeling ambitious if I manage to stop in to the Marketplace at East Falls on our way to the zoo or Smith Playhouse. Our refrigerator has never been so bare. One week we even forgot to get our Meadow Run Farm monthly meat order from the pick up site and sheepishly found it still on the porch the next day. It’s a good thing it’s cold outside.

Yesterday, after eating a cupcake and Utz (local!) pretzels with Bobbi’s (local!) hummus for lunch I figured it was time to cook something that wouldn’t be found on a school cafeteria menu. I knew I had a butternut squash still in the dark cabinet beneath the pantry and decided to use it. I found a recipe for Butternut Squash, Bacon, Rosemary and Phyllo Pizza on Epicurious and scoured the kitchen and freezer in the garage for the rest of the ingredients.

In the freezer I unearthed some bacon from Meadow Run and my rosemary plant is still thriving out back. I didn’t have scallions or red onion, but I had a regular onion that I sautéed in reserved bacon drippings with a clove of garlic from my CSA I found hiding behind the squash. There was half of a package of phyllo dough in the freezer, and to add some greens to the dish (since I had no intention of making anything other than the pizza for dinner) I pulled out some Swiss Chard I’d frozen early in the fall when I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.

I’m pretty good with phyllo so the whole thing took about an hour from start to finish. I wasn’t sure at first, but after my second slice I decided the pizza was delicious. It could have used a bit more rosemary, and the squash puree needed some seasoning other than salt and pepper, but on the whole it was good. Really, I’m a sucker for just about anything made with phyllo dough. (And it was a lot easier to make than the butternut squash and caramelized onion that filled my house with smoke last month.) I would definitely make it again as party appetizer using phyllo cups instead of sheets.

The local ingredients were bacon from Meadow Run Farm, butternut squash, garlic and Swiss chard from Red Earth Farm CSA and rosemary from my backyard.

Since I started feeling sort of human again I’ve been in the mood for some Thai Red Curry. There’s something comforting about the sweet/hot combination and the Thai spices seem to clear the sinuses right up.

I wanted to make it on Saturday night but found we only had crème of coconut in the cupboard instead of plain coconut milk. This depressed me on more than one front. First of all, I wanted me some curry. Secondly, I was reminded of all of the pina coladas I can’t drink because I’m pregnant. Sadly, I resigned myself to a dinner of matzo ball soup.

Yesterday we picked up a few cans of coconut milk at the market so we were ready to go. But alas, last night we went to my in-laws’ house for a meal I thankfully didn’t have to cook. Instead of curry I ate a large meal of salty foods and gravy. It was comforting in its own way, but it wasn’t the Thai curry I wanted.

Tonight was the night. I had cooked chicken ready to go, green beans that needed to be used, fish sauce and brown sugar aplenty, coconut milk in stock, bottled lime juice, a mango, canned pineapple and fresh Thai basil. I opened the fridge to take out the last necessary ingredient, the red curry paste and sadly found a jar of green curry paste in its place.

I like green curries too, but it just wasn’t what I wanted. There’s no knowing if either of the supermarkets within a mile of my house carry red curry paste for sure so rather than run out and risk further frustration and disappointment I decided to go for it and make the green curry instead. It was good. Not what I was hoping for, but it was good. Tomorrow the leftovers will still be good and I’ll be glad that I made it. But the can of coconut milk remaining in the cupboard is ear marked for red curry. No substitutions.

Red Thai Curry

2 cans coconut milk (unsweetened, not coconut creme!)
2 tablespoons prepared red curry paste
2 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 cup of fresh cilantro or basil
juice of 1 lime
1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts (optional)

1 cup or more of vegetables of your choice (green beans, snow peas, bell peppers, peas, broccoli, and mushrooms all work well)
Chicken/meat/tofu/fish

Add 1 cup of coconut milk to a large dutch oven and whisk together with the curry paste until most of the liquid evaporates, about 5 minutes. Whisk in the rest of the coconut milk with the fish sauce and brown sugar and cook about 5 minutes more. Add whatever veggies, fruits, and meats you’d like and cook through. Remove the pot from the heat and mix in the lime juice and herbs. Serve over rice and top with peanuts.

I’ve been tired and lazy and haven’t much felt like cooking. When I was pregnant with Sam I had a second trimester energy burst that led to me cooking and baking like crazy. Right now I’m in a second trimester slump that’s led to two nights in a row of pasta with jarred sauce and a night of pizza and french fries. I’m lacking energy and inspiration and Sam’s return to middle of the night wakeups isn’t helping matters much. But I took a large frozen whole chicken breast from my organic, pastured meats stash out to defrost and have no choice but to cook it since I can’t bear the idea of letting it go to waste. Looking for a one-pot meal I can cook before I head off to water aerobics tonight I decided on arroz con pollo.

Arroz Con Pollo, Rice with Chicken, is a Latin American favorite. When I taught high school in a predominantly Puerto Rican part of the city (90-some percent of my students were Puerto Rican and the rest were Dominican) many of our PTO-sponsored events served homemade, Latin American dishes. Arroz con Pollo was a staple. It was always deliciously seasoned, yet the cut up chicken parts were always flabby and greasy. I never tried to make the dish at home because as a rule, I generally try to avoid cooking anything that I know will be flabby and greasy.

But a recipe on one of my favorite cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen, turned up a recipe that looks and sounds neither flabby or greasy and stresses the importance of it being a one-pot dish. It unfortunately requires a number of ingredients I don’t have in the house and don’t feel like going out to get. (I’m too pregnant and tired to go out to the store again.)So I found another recipe, this one from Simply Recipes, that only requires things I have in the house. Combining the two is my best bet. I’ll post the adjusted recipe tomorrow.

Remember how I wrote that I was going to attempt to start using some quick and easy recipes? It turns out I’m not so good at it. The Saturday after Christmas we had my husband’s aunt, uncle, cousins and their kids over for Christmas round two and I decided that to make things easy on myself I’d make a salad, two lasagnas (because I could make them in advance) and let everyone else bring the rest. I new that one of the lasagnas I planned to make was labor-intensive. It’s a Lasagna Bolognese from Cook’s Illustrated and I’ve been eying it for months. But for the second lasagna I decided to make a regular spinach and cheese lasagna as simply as possible.

Of course I couldn’t make it simple. Rather than use a jarred sauce like most easy lasagna recipes call for I decided to make my own. Two days before the scheduled dinner I pulled out the tomatoes I froze over the summer and made a quick (ish) chunky tomato sauce. Then I started the ragu for the bolognese. As the meat simmered I realized that most of my husband’s family wouldn’t understand a plain meat lasagna. They’d want to know where the cheese was. So I decided to make a third lasagna with meat and cheese. This meant making more sauce because if I was making homemade for the first two I certainly wasn’t going to buy a sauce for the third.

While it should have taken no more than 2 hours to assemble all three lasagnas it ended up taking most of the following afternoon after making another batch of tomato sauce, reheating the ragu, making a bechamel sauce, cooking the meat for the third lasagna, chopping, cleaning and spinning spinach and basil, combining the ricotta mixture and grating four cups of Parmesan. Once all of that was done it took no time at all to assemble the three lasagnas, but I really could have simplified things by buying a couple of jars of sauce, pre-grated cheese and frozen spinach.

Here they are assembled and uncooked. From left to right: meat and cheese, spinach and cheese, bolognese

Sam just woke up from his nap so tomorrow I’ll post the recipes for the meat and cheese and the spinach and cheese. I promise I’ll make it easier for you than I did for me.

Delaware Online’s article about quick, healthy meals got me thinking. I don’t generally cook anything quickly. The majority of my meals take a minimum of half an hour unless I’m eating something unhealthy or eating something that’s primarily leftover based. Part of the problem may be that my definition of healthy may be a little different than most. For example, many quick recipes call for the addition of rotisserie chicken purchased cooked from the supermarket. I’ve bought them in the past and I don’t think there’s much that’s healthy about them. They’re salty and soggy and the chickens used come from factory farms. You might get a slightly better chicken from a market like Whole Foods, but it’s still supermarket chicken. Other quick recipes ask for store bought sauces and dressings. Unless you’re good at reading labels and know how to choose the healthiest options, most sauces, no matter how healthy and organic they claim to be are full of extra sugar, sodium and added oils. I prefer to make my own sauces, stocks and dressings which often adds to my total prep time.

So how do you make something healthy quickly? The article suggests stocking up on canned beans, chick peas, couscous and frozen vegetables and using the stove top instead of the oven and recommends purchasing a cookbook for quick and easy recipes. Focused grocery shopping, crock pot meals, and actually using leftovers for the next day’s meal (instead of letting them sit until they’re unrecognizable) will also cut down on prep time.

If your family eats fast food more often than you’d like to admit and you want to start cooking healthy meals, the article recommends choosing two nights a week to cook and moving on from there. Shopping with your kids on the perimeter of the supermarket where the fresh foods are located can help get them interested in the process. Getting them involved in prepping the food by chopping vegetables or tearing lettuce if they’re too young to use a knife can also ease your prep burden and make them more invested in the process. Using fruits and vegetables in your meals is key in making them healthy.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to try to change my mindset and move from slow food to quick and healthy. I may even bust out my dusty crock pot to see if I can find an appetizing recipe. If you have any suggestions leave them in the comments.

Here’s a recipe idea from the article with the timing to get you (and me) started.

Berman said parents don’t have to be “uber-organized” to get a healthy dinner ready, but Erica Cover enjoys her detailed methodology when meal planning. She creates her family’s meals for the week on a computer spreadsheet.

She put the tortilla dish in the oven, set to bake for 30 minutes. The time was 5:23. It took Cover 15 minutes to make a dinner that, before 6 p.m., would feed the whole family.