Healing with Food Article
Finding Time to Cook
Accompanying recipe: Steamed Millet
No matter my dietary resolve, when I’m hungry, I eat. If there are only chips at hand, I eat chips. If this sounds familiar, please congratulate yourself. Eating when hungry is a sign of health. Eating good food when hungry is a sign of planning ahead.
It’s like having clean socks to put on in the morning. You could make do with yesterday’s socks, but fresh ones are more pleasurable. So organizing is the first secret. The second is doing it in steps, just as you do your laundry. These strategies enable busy people to find time to cook.
Imagine walking into your home after a long day and being welcomed by enticing aromas of soup simmering in a crock-pot. You instinctively favor a freshly cooked meal over stale or shoddy foods.
It’s comforting to remember that when given the choice, you opt for quality. Resolve to have quality foods at hand before hunger strikes.
Because you feel best when you eat well, make kitchen time a priority.
Organize your Kitchen
With each pot and ingredient in its own place, cooking is efficient and more fun. My hot pads, for example, hang on their hook next to the range. When my nose says “time to take the cookies out”, one hand opens the oven door, the other retrieves a hot pad and in one seamless motion, the goodies are out.
Conversely…imagine needing the hot pads now and reaching for their usual drawer. But while rummaging for the hot pads, the corkscrew jabs your thumb and now, what’s that you smell? Burnt cookies!
Devote a morning to kitchen organization. Recycle poor-quality or past-prime ingredients and any gadgets or cookware that you don’t use. Scrub down surfaces, remove clutter and give the refrigerator a deep cleaning.
Place each tool in its most handy place. For example, keep compost and colanders near the sink and keep pots and metal spatulas near the stove. Give the most frequently used items easiest access.
My favorite way to keep grains, beans and herbs is labeled and stored in glass jars ranging in size from gallon to 1/2 pints. These same items, if stored in boxes or plastic bags, defy functional organization. Also, by buying these items in bulk my weekly shopping is conveniently reduced to perishable items only.
If systematizing your kitchen sounds intimidating, enlist the help of a friend who is a good organizer. Or, hire someone to do it. Once your kitchen is organized then maintaining it is just something you do, like putting gas in the car before it’s on “empty.”
Cooking in Steps
The second secret for enjoying more home cooking is to do it steps…sort of like your laundry. Remember, if you’re hungry (or need socks) now, then now is not the time to start washing rice (or socks).
Order a pizza for dinner and while you’re waiting for it to arrive, then determine tomorrow’s main dish. If it will be baked chicken, prep the chicken, place it in a marinade and refrigerate. If it’s grain, put it to soak today. Tomorrow, without having any angst about what to cook, the chicken is ready to fire up.
With advanced planning and preparing a dish in stages, then it’s just a matter of tossing a salad and ringing the dinner bell. What a relief.
May you be well nourished,
Rebecca Wood